"We continued our journey, though the river was still rough and growing worse. We were constantly among rocks and foaming, headlong torrents of water, while steep rocky walls confined the stream to very narrow limits, and dark, shadowy mountain peaks loomed up in the background, reminding us of the Tennessee about Chattanooga. We went on from bad to worse, until at last, during the latter part of the night, we were incautiously drawn into a gorge, where it seemed that the destruction of our boat was inevitable. Such was the force and velocity of the water, that we lost all control of the boat, and in one instant would be spinning around in a furious eddy until our heads were fairly dizzy, and in the next we would be dashed against the rocks until it seemed as if our boat would be splintered to pieces. We regarded our escape here as the narrowest we had made, and as quick as we could do so with safety we landed on the rocks and, with many regrets, abandoned our little craft to begin a tedious, toilsome land journey of three days and nights over rocky hills, bluffs, and mountains along the river. "Just as we landed from the boat Mark started to walk out, and, losing his balance, fell headlong into the river. With considerable difficulty I fished him out, and, the early morning being quite cool, the poor fellow was chilled through and through, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I finally succeeded in getting him up into the mountains, and continued to exercise him by walking, so as to get up a good circulation of his blood. But he became so benumbed that I finally let him lie down, and gathered a lot of cedar boughs and piled them thickly over him, and then crawled in with him myself, and kept him as warm as possible. Here we slept and rested until late in the afternoon of that day, which became very warm under the bright rays of the sun. "Our progress was very slow, and towards the last extremely painful. The old bruises and blisters on our feet, which were not entirely healed, came back worse than ever, and much of the time we crept along on the rocks on our hands and knees, believing that if once we could get below this range of mountains, we would find navigable waters. We came in sight of several isolated cabins in these wild, rocky hills, where we managed to beg a little food on two different occasions, which helped us very much. The suffering we endured on our last night's travel I cannot describe. It seemed as if we must give up and die where we were. But at last, when daylight came, to our great delight we saw the spires and smoke-stacks of a town in the distance. We knew this to be Columbus, Georgia, and that when we got below it the river was navigable clear to the Gulf.