lves, trended west. The lead giving the great
depth of six fathoms, we were induced to follow the latter. Utter
darkness soon surrounded us; the trees, on either side, over-shadowing
the river, which in this branch was not eighty yards wide.

PROGRESS IMPEDED.

Our progress, also, at length began to be impeded by fallen or sunken
trees, which not only rendered the ascent dangerous, but at the end of
about two miles fairly brought us to a standstill, and forbade our
further advance. This detention was a bitter disappointment to us all,
and we crept into our blanket-bags with disgust, but with the hope that
in the morning a passage might still be found.

August 4.

Daylight brought no better hopes of our taking the boats higher up by
this branch, as a succession of large trees lay across it a quarter of a
mile above. It was a gloomy corner we had got into, and so sheltered that
it seemed as though a breath of wind had never swept through it; the
leaves of the low-spreading palms that drooped over the water, damp with
the morning dew, had unbroken edges, as if an eternal quietude had
pervaded the spot.

BEAUTY OF THE LANDSCAPE.

This triste appearance wore off as the sun rose, and the scenery under
his smiles was soon clothed with beauty. Trees with every variety of
foliage overhung each other, connected, as it were, by bowers of creepers
depending in festoons and concealing odd-shaped fragments of fallen
timber, which here and there reared their blackened heads out of the
water, the unruffled smoothness of which was occasionally disturbed by
the splash of some wildfowl, and chequered with alternate spots of gold
and gloom by the sun's rays, as they pierced through the dense
surrounding foliage.

Returning, we entered the south branch; the opening of which was almost
equal in beauty, as the reader will perceive from the view in the
beginning of the first volume; but we were again stopped by fallen trees
after proceeding about a mile and a half.

Here we observed driftwood and rushes in the trees, fifteen feet above
our heads. It was now quite clear that all hopes of water carriage
towards the interior were at an end. The boats were at this time above
fifty miles from the entrance, and our provisions only admitting of the
remainder of this day being spent in land exploration, a party was
immediately selected for this service.

LAND EXCURSION.

Following up a short woody valley, on reaching the summit of the lev