Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

122 NOTES OF A BOTANIST
in the branches overhead. Here we held on, the
Indians using all their efforts to prevent the canoes
from being smashed by blows from each other or
from the floating trees which now began to career
past us like mad bulls. So dense was the gloom
that we could see nothing, while we were deafened
by the pelting rain, the roaring flood, and the
crashing of the branches of the floating trees, as
each other but
they rolled over or dashed against ;
each lightning-flash revealed to us all the horrors
of our position. Assuredly I had slight hopes of
and I shall for ever feel
living to see the day,
grateful to those Indians who, without any orders
from us, stood through all the rain and storm of
that fearful night, relaxing not a moment in their
efforts to save our canoes from being carried away
by the flood, or dashed to pieces by swinging
against each other, or against the floating timber.
As the waters rose higher, the stern of my canoe
got entangled in overhanging prickly bamboos,
which threatened to swamp it, and which we with
some difficulty cut away. Every hour thus passed
seemed an age, and the coming of day scarcely
ameliorated our position, for the flood did not abate
until 10 o'clock. About an hour before this, the
river began to fall a little, and as soon as the rain
passed we got the cargoes out and carried up to
the Governor's house. It was past noon ere we got
breakfast wearied to death, and myself in a high
fever, which happily passed off in the following night.
The river is only 40 yards broad in that place
(indeed before the flood there had not been more
L
than 25 yards of water, nowhere 3 feet deep), and
the rise during the night had been 18 feet. I