"All the better for us," said the doctor, and instead of having to cut and hack right and left, the sampan passed easily along the tangled channel, the masses of huge water-lilies giving way before the boat, while, as they got farther on past the grown-up mouth, the river seemed to widen, and the route of the vessel that had passed before could be plainly seen in a narrow channel of leaf-sprinkled water. "That prahu must have been along here, master," said the elder of the two Malays, thoughtfully. "No small sampan could have broken a way like this." "So much the better," said the doctor again; but he grew more thoughtful, for the fact of a boat having been along this little river so lately seemed to rob it of a good deal of its mystery. He had hoped to find it completely unexplored, and here only that day someone had passed along. It was, however, in its upper portion that the doctor hoped to find something to interest him; and after all it was not probable that the occupants of the prahu would be searching for gold. Under these circumstances he set himself to examine the banks on either side, and his men steadily paddled on hour after hour, till a halt was made at an open part where they landed, and made a fire to cook the birds that had been shot on the way up. Then a fresh start was made, and all through the long hot afternoon the doctor sat back scrutinising most diligently the sides of the little river. But it was always the same--one dense bank of verdure on either side, with the trees hanging over the river, and encroaching so that at last the stream was only a few yards wide; but by pulling the branches aside the boat could have been thrust in, to glide along under a natural arcade--the home of thousands of crocodiles, from monsters fifteen and twenty feet long to their spawn not many more inches. It was a perfect paradise for a naturalist, and the doctor grew so much interested that he forgot the prime object of his visit, seeing nothing but birds and insects, to the exclusion of old gold-workings, though had there been anything of the kind it would have been completely hidden amongst the tangled, luxuriant growth. It was growing fast towards sunset when the doctor was suddenly brought back to the matter-of-fact every-day life from a kind of dream about the wondrous beauties of some peculiar beetles he had captured and held beneath his magnifying glass, by a sudden exclamation from the elder Malay. "What is it?" exclaimed the doctor, sharply. "The prahu came no farther than this. See, master, we shall have to cut the branches now to get along." He pointed with his paddle, and it was plain enough to see that the water-weeds and lilies were unbroken higher up, and that some large vessel must have been turned here, for the aqueous growth was crushed to a much greater extent.