all aglow with
convolvuli and other flowers, and innumerable rope-like creepers, the
graceful festoons and hanging tendrils of which gave inexpressible
softness to the scene. In the middle of the lake-like expanse were
numerous mud-flats, partly covered with tropical reeds and rushes of
gigantic size.

The course our voyagers had to pursue made it necessary to keep close
under the right bank, which was unusually steep and high. They were all
silent, for the hour and the slumbering elements induced quiescence. A
severe thunderstorm accompanied by heavy rains had broken over that
district two days before, and Lawrence observed that deep watercourses
had been ploughed among the trees and bushes in several places, but
every other trace of the elemental war had vanished, and the quiet of
early morning seemed to him sweet beyond expression, inducing his
earnest spirit to wish that the mystery of sin had never been permitted,
and that it were still possible for man to walk humbly with his God in a
world of peacefulness as real as that of inanimate nature around him.

When the sun arose, a legion of living creatures came out from wood and
swamp and reedy isle to welcome him. Flamingoes, otters, herons white
and grey, and even jaguars, then began to set about their daily work of
fishing for breakfast. Rugged alligators, like animated trunks of
fallen trees, crawled in slimy beds or ploughed up the sands of the
shore in deep furrows, while birds of gorgeous plumage and graceful--
sometimes clumsy--form audibly, if not always visibly, united to chant
their morning hymn.

Such were the sights on which our travellers' eyes rested, with a sort
of quiet delight, when Pedro broke the silence in a low voice.

"You'd better keep a little farther out into the stream," he said to
Tiger.

The Indian silently obeyed.

It was well that he did so promptly, for, in less than a minute, and
without the slightest premonition, the immense bank above them slid with
a terrific rumbling noise into the river. The enormous mass of sand and
vegetable detritus thus detached could not have been much, if at all,
less than half a mile in extent. It came surging and hurling down--
trees and roots and rocks and mud intermingling in a chaos of grand
confusion, the great cable-like creepers twining like snakes in agony,
and snapping as if they were mere strands of packthread; timber
crashing; rock grinding, sometimes bursting like cannon shots, an