the bed of the
chasm.

After taking a refreshing draught from the water of the stream, we
addressed ourselves to a much more difficult undertaking than the last.
Every foot of our late descent had to be regained in ascending the
opposite side of the gorge--an operation rendered the less agreeable from
the consideration that in these perpendicular episodes we did not progress
a hundred yards on our journey. But, ungrateful as the task was, we set
about it with exemplary patience, and after a snail-like progress of an
hour or more, had scaled perhaps one half of the distance, when the fever
which had left me for awhile returned with such violence, and accompanied
by so raging a thirst, that it required all the entreaties of Toby to
prevent me from losing all the fruits of my late exertion, by
precipitating myself madly down the cliffs we had just climbed, in quest
of the water which flowed so temptingly at their base. At the moment all
my hopes and fears appeared to be merged in this one desire, careless of
the consequences that might result from its gratification. I am aware of
no feeling, either of pleasure or of pain, that so completely deprives one
of all power to resist its impulses, as this same raging thirst.

Toby earnestly conjured me to continue the ascent, assuring me that a
little more exertion would bring us to the summit, and that then in less
than five minutes we should find ourselves at the brink of the stream,
which must necessarily flow on the other side of the ridge.

"Do not," he exclaimed, "turn back, now that we have proceeded thus far;
for I tell you that neither of us will have the courage to repeat the
attempt, if once more we find ourselves looking up to where we now are
from the bottom of these rocks!"

I was not yet so perfectly beside myself as to be heedless of these
representations, and therefore toiled on, ineffectually endeavouring to
appease the thirst which consumed me, by thinking that in a short time I
should be able to gratify it to my heart's content.

At last we gained the top of the second elevation, the loftiest of those I
have described as extending in parallel lines between us and the valley we
desired to reach. It commanded a view of the whole intervening distance;
and, discouraged as I was by other circumstances, this prospect plunged me
into the very depths of despair. Nothing but dark and fearful chasms,
separated by sharp crested and perpendicular ridges as far as the e