As I drifted on, the murmur grew louder, but with a slowness that was ominously suggestive of a great volume of sound travelling a long distance, and several reaches were passed before it seemed much nearer. Gradually, however, it waxed in intensity, until it rose clear above the hiss of the rain, and I began to look ahead with keen anxiety at each turn of the river’s tortuous course. At length, creeping along inshore on the shallow side, I rounded a rocky promontory, and met the full roar of the cataract, which appeared to be half way down the next reach. Yet there was little to see. The river seemed to break off abruptly, and its continuation at a lower level was visible through a steamy haze. I ran the canoe inshore where a small, stout tree grew close to the water’s edge, and to this I prepared to make fast. The canoe was fitted with a painter (or mooring rope) of plaited bark, the strongest piece of cordage I possessed, twenty feet long, and fixed to the stem-post with an eye-splice; so there was no fear of her breaking away from her moorings. Having hitched the painter securely to the tree, I tied on my wig, and taking my spear and catapult, stepped ashore. There was no one in sight on either bank, so with a cautious look round, I made my way along the shore towards the rapids. When I reached them their aspect filled me with despair. They commenced with a sheer drop of seven or eight feet; but this was only the beginning, for the water poured down into a chaos of rocks, amidst which it boiled and spouted, only to dash onward into a new labyrinth. I wandered dejectedly down stream, eagerly looking for the end of the rapids, but at each few paces a fresh stretch of foaming water came into view, tumbling boisterously among great blocks of stone, and filling the air with noise and spray. I walked on for about half a mile without seeing any sign of the river resuming its ordinary course, and then, growing uneasy about the canoe, turned back, terribly disheartened, and at my wits’ end how to proceed. It looked as if my voyage must end here, for it seemed as impossible to carry the canoe this distance on land, as it was to navigate her through the cataract. And how much farther did the rapids extend? That was a question I could not answer, and yet until it was settled I could form no plan. As I turned my face upstream, I noticed with no little surprise that the fall was out of sight, for my attention had been so fixed upon the water that I had not observed the way in which the river curved, and I now found that I had traversed nearly a quarter of a circle, and that the curve below continued to turn in the same direction.