uctures, each large
enough to hold two men (and in appearance something like huge wicker
baskets) were completed, vessels and crew were ready.

[Illustration]

The safest plan was to stand upright in them, armed with long poles to
push them off from the rocks, against which the fierce current every
moment threatened to dash them. As it was, they sank two or three feet
deep in the water, so that we were nearly always immersed up to our
waists.

This river rises in the mountains of Segovia, and falls into the sea at
Cape Gracia a Dios, after having flowed for a long distance, with
frightful rapidity, among an infinite number of huge rocks, and between
the most terrible precipices imaginable. We had to pass more than a
hundred cataracts great and small, and there were three which the most
daring of us could not look at without turning giddy with fear, when we
saw and heard the water plunging from such a height into those horrible
gulfs. Everything was so fearful that only those who have experienced
it can imagine it; as for me, though I shall all my life have my memory
full of pictures of the perils of that voyage, it would be impossible
for me to give any idea of it which would not be far below the reality.

We let ourselves go with the current, so rapid that often, in spite of
our resistance, it bore us into foaming whirlpools, where we were
engulfed with our pieces of wood. But happily before the greatest
cataracts, and also just beyond them, there was a basin of calm water,
which made it possible for us to gain the bank, drawing our piperies
after us. Then, taking out of them whatever valuables we had there, we
descended with these, leaping from rock to rock till we had reached the
foot of the cataract. Then one of us would return and throw the
piperies, which we had left behind, down into the flood--and we below
caught them as they descended. Sometimes, indeed, we failed to catch
them, and had to make new ones.

When we first set out we voyaged all together, that in case of accident
we might come to each other's aid. But in three days, being out of all
danger of the Spaniards, we began to travel separately, since a piperie
dashed against the rocks had often been prevented from freeing itself by
other piperies which the current hurled against it. It was arranged for
those who descended first, when they came to an especially dangerous
rapid, to hoist a little flag at the end of a stick, not to warn those
behind of