ore I should be reduced to a
state which would render me altogether unable to perform the journey.
Accordingly we now commenced it by descending the almost perpendicular
side of a steep and narrow gorge, bristling with a thick growth of
reeds. Here there was but one mode for us to adopt. We seated ourselves
upon the ground, and guided our descent by catching at the canes in our
path. This velocity with which we thus slid down the side of the ravine
soon brought us to a point where we could use our feet, and in a short
time we arrived at the edge of the torrent, which rolled impetuously
along the bed of the chasm.

After taking a refreshing draught from the water of the stream, we
addressed ourselves to a much more difficult undertaking than the last.
Every foot of our late descent had to be regained in ascending the
opposite side of the gorge--an operation rendered the less agreeable
from the consideration that in these perpendicular episodes we did not
progress a hundred yards on our journey. But, ungrateful as the task
was, we set about it with exemplary patience, and after a snail-like
progress of an hour or more, had scaled perhaps one half of the
distance, when the fever which had left me for a while returned with
such violence, and accompanied by so raging a thirst, that it required
all the entreaties of Toby to prevent me from losing all the fruits of
my late exertion, by precipitating myself madly down the cliffs we had
just climbed, in quest of the water which flowed so temptingly at their
base. At the moment all my hopes and fears appeared to be merged in
this one desire, careless of the consequences that might result from its
gratification. I am aware of no feeling, either of pleasure or of pain,
that so completely deprives one of an power to resist its impulses, as
this same raging thirst.

Toby earnestly conjured me to continue the ascent, assuring me that a
little more exertion would bring us to the summit, and that then in less
than five minutes we should find ourselves at the brink of the stream,
which must necessarily flow on the other side of the ridge.

'Do not,' he exclaimed, 'turn back, now that we have proceeded thus far;
for I tell you that neither of us will have the courage to repeat the
attempt, if once more we find ourselves looking up to where we now are
from the bottom of these rocks!'

I was not yet so perfectly beside myself as to be heedless of these
representations, and therefore toi