oters were as much surprised as gratified by the signal
success of their stratagem need scarcely be said. One of the panics which
are apt to follow a surprise in war had saved them from threatened
annihilation. They learned, however, the disquieting fact that six miles
farther on was another strong intrenchment which could not be avoided, the
country permitting no choice of roads. In their situation there was
nothing to do but to advance and dare the worst, and fortunately for them
their remarkable success spread such terror before it that, when they
appeared before these new works, the Spaniards made no attack, but
remained quietly behind their breastworks while their dreaded foes marched
past.

The seventeenth day of their march carried them to the banks of the river
towards which their route had been laid. This was the Magdalena, a stream
which rises in the mountains near New Segovia and flows through a
difficult rock channel, with numerous cascades, three of them amounting to
cataracts, finally reaching the Caribbean Sea after a course of several
hundred miles.

How they were to descend this mountain torrent was the question which now
offered itself to them. It presented a more attractive route of travel
than the one so far pursued over the mountains, but was marked by
difficulties of a formidable character. These were overcome by the
freebooters in an extraordinary manner, one almost or quite without
parallel in the annals of travel. The expedient they adopted was certainly
of curious interest.

Before them was a large and rapid river, its current impeded by a
multitude of rocks and broken by rapids and cascades. They were destitute
of ropes or tools suitable for boat-building, and any ordinary kind of
boats would have been of no use to them in such a stream. It occurred to
them that what they needed to navigate a river of this character was
something of the nature of large baskets or tuns, in which they might
float enclosed to their waists, while keeping themselves from contact with
the rocks by the aid of poles.

They had no models for such floating contrivances, and were obliged to
invent them. Near the river was an extensive forest, and this supplied
them abundantly with young trees, of light wood. These they cut down,
stripped off their bark, collected them by fives, and, lacking ropes,
fastened them together with lianas and a tenacious kind of gum which the
forest provided. A large number of small, frail,