Once more I was aroused by a violent blow, and as my arm was raised mechanically to grasp, I passed it over the trunk of a large floating tree, and holding on for dear life, I was hurried down with the foaming waters. The hard battle for breath past, fear came again, and I looked despairingly from left to right for rescue from my perilous position, but everywhere ruin and desolation, while the din of the rushing waters was frightful. Everywhere the sides of the ravine seemed to be crumbling down, and masses of earth and rock were undermined and fell with a terrible splash into the stream, growing more furious every moment, while, wherever the gorge narrowed, the turbulence was awful. Dashed against masses of drift wood, and bruised against the summits of the projecting rocks, I was faint and despairing, when all at once the roots of the tree I was in caught against a massive stone, the trunk swung round, and I found myself brought up by the side of the gorge, where the branches of a tree hung down; and rousing my last strength I clutched them, and drew myself up, till I could rest my knees upon the floating tree; then I nearly over-balanced myself as the trunk rolled about, but getting hold of a stouter branch I again drew myself up, so that I stood, and then as the trunk again broke loose and floated away, I got one foot upon the rocky side, and hung suspended over the stream, whose waves seemed to leap angrily, to beat me down. To an uninjured man a slight effort would have been sufficient to place him in safety, but a strange fear seemed to creep over me, as I felt that in a few moments I must fall from my hold, and be swept away. But once more the desire for life came again to renew my strength, and slowly and painfully I got hold for my other foot, and then crawled to a rift, where a little stream of water was rushing down from the table-land above, when by dint of again battling with the blinding water, falling from weakness again and again, I managed to reach the top, crawl beyond the reach of the stream, and then fell exhausted, where I could gaze down upon the raging torrent.