sk of carrying the various items of their
equipment up through the quarter of a mile of roughly cut pathway, which
consumed the whole of another day. And finally came the dismembering of
the raft itself, and the porterage of its component parts and the canoe
to the upper end of the rapids, where it was put together again. Thus,
altogether, the intervention of those rapids involved the travellers in
a loss of no less than five days.

The four which followed were much more favourable, the raft covering a
distance of nearly sixty miles during that period. Then a stretch of
some four miles of river bed was encountered so cumbered and choked with
rocks that its navigation was impossible, and the raft had again to be
taken to pieces and transported overland. And when this obstacle was at
length surmounted, it was found that the channel of the stream had
become so contracted that the further use of the raft as a concrete
structure was out of the question; the wooden platform, with the masts
and sails, as also the metal decks of the two canoe-like pontoons, were
therefore abandoned, after carefully enveloping them in tarpaulins
brought along for the purpose; and after their place of concealment had
been marked, so that it might easily be found again in the event of the
expedition returning by that route, the journey was continued in the
open pontoons and the canoe. Finally, when at length the party had been
travelling for nearly five weeks upon the river, they reached a point
where navigation was no longer possible, even for the small canoe, and
it became necessary to take to the forest, still, however, keeping in
touch with the stream as nearly as possible, for the sake of the water.

It is not necessary for the purposes of this story to enlarge upon the
difficulties with which the travellers now had to contend; they may be
left to the imagination of the reader, merely remarking that in many
places the trees grew so thickly together, and the undergrowth between
them was so dense, that to accomplish a march through it of three miles
between sunrise and sunset of a single day was regarded as a feat worthy
of especial note. Not, however, it must be understood, that these
conditions uniformly prevailed; very far from it indeed; for there were
days when, from circumstances difficult to account for, the going was so
comparatively easy that a distance of ten, or even twelve miles was
accomplished. But this did not occur until