Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

148 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
too late to start. This was a most dismal day,
and filled us with anxious thoughts for the passage
of the Shuna and Topo, which rivers the Indians
began to predict would be swollen. They, however,
were consoled by meeting near our ranchos
a band of large monkeys, several of which they
brought down with their blowing-canes.
June 26. Rain again from midnight, but about
nine in the morning it abated so much as to allow us
to get under way. Road dreadful, what with mud,
fallen trees, and dangerous passes, of which two in
particular, along declivities where in places there
was nothing to get hold of, are not to be thought
of without a shudder. In three hours we reached
the Shuna, a larger stream than any we had pre-
viously passed ;
it comes from the north-east in a
steep rocky course, and can only be forded after
long-continued dry weather, and even then with
danger. Now we found it much swollen, but as
the tops of the rocks on which it is customary to
rest the bridge were out of water, though we had
to wade in 3 feet of water to get to them, we
set to work to get materials for the bridge.
These
were merely three long poles, not of the straightest,
laid from rock to rock and lashed together with
lianas. An Indian posted on each rock held up the
opposite ends of a fourth pole to a convenient
height to serve for a hand-rail, by means of which
one could cross the narrow slippery bridge with
some degree of security. We all got safely across
the Shuna, but it had again come on to rain, and
we bent our steps towards the Topo with mis-
givings that we should find it altogether impassable.
On the west side of the Shuna there is a