_Mar. 16._—On the 16th of March, having explored as far as the Gordon- Bennett River, and obtained a clear idea of our situation during the 15th, we began our labours with energy. Goods, asses, women, and children, with the guard under Frank, first moved overland to a temporary halting-place near the confluence. Then manning the boat, I led the canoe-men from point to point along the right bank, over the first rapids. We had some skilful work to perform to avoid being swept away by the velocity of the current; but whenever we came to rocks we held the rattan hawsers in our hands, and, allowing the stream to take them beyond these dangerous points, brought them into the sheltered lee. Had a hawser parted nothing could have saved the canoe or the men in it, for at the confluence of the Gordon-Bennett with the great river the entire river leaps headlong into an abyss of waves and foam. Arriving in the Gordon-Bennett, we transported the Expedition across, and then our labours ended at 5 P.M. for the day. Itsi of Ntamo had informed us there were only three cataracts, which he called the “Child,” the “Mother,” and the “Father.” The “Child” was a two hundred yards’ stretch of broken water; and the “Mother,” consisting of half a mile of dangerous rapids, we had succeeded in passing, and had pushed beyond it by crossing the upper branch of the Gordon-Bennett, which was an impetuous stream, 75 yards wide, with big cataracts of its own higher up. But the “Father” is the wildest stretch of river that I have ever seen. Take a strip of sea blown over by a hurricane, four miles in length and half a mile in breadth, and a pretty accurate conception of its leaping waves may be obtained. Some of the troughs were 100 yards in length, and from one to the other the mad river plunged. There was first a rush down into the bottom of an immense trough, and then, by its sheer force, the enormous volume would lift itself upward steeply until, gathering itself into a ridge, it suddenly hurled itself 20 or 30 feet straight upward, before rolling down into another trough. If I looked up or down along this angry scene, every interval of 50 or 100 yards of it was marked by wave-towers—their collapse into foam and spray, the mad clash of watery hills, bounding mounds and heaving billows, while the base of either bank, consisting of a long line of piled boulders of massive size, was buried in the tempestuous surf. The roar was tremendous and deafening. I can only compare it to the thunder of an express train through a rock tunnel. To speak to my neighbour, I had to bawl in his ear. The most powerful ocean steamer, going at full speed on this portion of the river, would be as helpless as a cockle-boat. I attempted three times, by watching some tree floated down from above, to ascertain the rate of the wild current, by observing the time it occupied in passing between two given points, from which I estimate it to be about thirty miles an hour!