By this time it was clear that whatever stream they were on it was not the Strickland, for the Strickland flowed south-west, and this river ran nearly due east. The natives, who had never seen a white man before, took them to their village and treated them kindly. The good repute of the British official throughout the wilds now stood them in good stead. They hoped that the river would soon be clear of rapids; but to their consternation there was nothing but gorges and whirlpools for another hundred miles. The stream was the Kikor in its middle reaches, the same stream as they had ascended from the coast. It took them twenty-nine days to pass the hundred miles of gorges, and during that time they rarely had a full meal. On one occasion the whole party worked for seven days without getting anything to eat except a few handfuls of soup-powder and a few tins of cocoa, saved from the capsized rafts. They had no matches, so they had to keep a fire burning day and night. They slept in caves and under palm leaves, which made no pretence of keeping out the rain. By the twenty-ninth day the river seemed smooth enough for rafts, and the explorers again embarked, and managed to cover fifty miles without any serious misadventure. But next day the rapids began again, and their two canoes, made of hollow logs, were upset. They descended the rapids for ten miles, hanging on to the upturned logs, before they could land. That night they spent in the rain, without food; and starting again at daybreak, they suddenly saw, to their immense relief, European tents, and were welcomed by an officer of the constabulary, who had been sent out to look for them. They had reached the exact spot from which they had struck north to Mount Murray at the beginning of their journey! When, two days later, they arrived at the coast, they had travelled in fifteen weeks approximately 524 miles through utterly unknown country--374 miles on foot and 150 by river. Mr. Staniforth Smith encountered every misfortune that can meet the traveller except one--he had no trouble with the natives. Indeed, by his tact and patience he made friends everywhere with the bushmen, and the survivors of the party owed to them their lives. By some strange system of bush telegraphy the repute of the white men was spread from village to village. It was the one piece of good fortune that befell the explorers, and it was final in its effect, for it made the difference between life and death. I do not know any narrative of exploration which contains adventures more desperate than those whirling voyages on upturned rafts through black ravines; or that month when starving men hacked their way through the jungle along the torrent's bank in a perpetual tempest of rain.* * For this journey Mr. Staniforth Smith received in 1923 the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. IX MOUNT EVEREST MOUNT EVEREST (_Map_, p. 272.) I