night expired, and even five-and-twenty days, when,
giving over all hopes, they constructed a raft on which they ventured
themselves, with their provisions and property. The raft, badly framed,
struck against the branch of a sunken tree, and overset, all their
effects perishing in the waves, and the whole party being plunged into
the water. Thanks to the little breadth of the river at this place no
one was drowned, Madame Godin being happily saved, after twice sinking,
by her brothers. Placed now in a situation still more distressing than
before, they collectively resolved on tracing the course of the river
along its banks. How difficult an enterprise this was, you, Sir, are
well aware, who know how thickly the banks of the rivers are beset with
trees, underwood, herbage and lianas, and that it is often necessary to
cut one's way. They returned to their hut, took what provisions they had
left behind, and began their journey. By keeping along the river's side,
they found its sinuosities greatly lengthened their way, to avoid which
inconvenience they penetrated the wood, and in a few days they lost
themselves. Wearied with so many days' march in the midst of woods,
incommodious even for those accustomed to them, their feet torn by
thorns and brambles, their provisions exhausted, and dying with thirst,
they were fain to subsist on a few seeds, wild fruit, and the palm
cabbage. At length, oppressed with hunger and thirst, with lassitude and
loss of strength, they seated themselves on the ground without the power
of rising, and, waiting thus the approach of death, in three or four
days expired one after the other. Madame Godin, stretched on the ground
by the side of the corpses of her brothers and other companions,
stupified, delirious, and tormented with choking thirst, at length
assumed resolution and strength enough to drag herself along in search
of the deliverance which providentially awaited her. Such was her
deplorable condition, she was without shoes, and her clothes all torn to
rags. She cut the shoes off her brothers' feet, and fastened the soles
on her own. It was about the period, between the 25th and 30th of
December 1769, that this unfortunate party (at least seven of the number
of them) perished in this miserable manner; the date I gather by what I
learn from the only survivor, who related that it was nine days after
she quitted the scene of the wretched catastrophe described before she
reached the banks of the