BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 617 
swung out into the river! "lime for deliberation there was 
none—as Falconer says: 
“ No season this for council or delay, 
Too soon the eventful moments haste away." 
A man's life depended on every minute, and the loss of a very 
few of those small portions of time would have doomed us 
all to a common and ignominious death. I, for my part, 
cannot swim, and the gentleman sitting by my side had laid 
hold of my right arm, and with a death-like hue ou his cheek, 
uttered in broken accents, the words, “ We are lost i—we 
are lost!" “Not yet," I answered, striving, however, to 
extricate myself from his spasmodic grasp; and then, observ- 
ing that the boat was driving obliquely towards the face of 
the cascade, I ordered the steersman to direct it down, 
headlong. Silence followed this command, which, happily, 
was not obeyed, Captain Arabi knowing our situation better 
than I did; and now it was gratifying to see with what 
manly decision he and his companions, roused, perhaps, by 
the prospect of destruction, strove to repair the culpable 
recklessness of their brethren on shore. They simultaneously 
Snatched up their paddles, and plied them with all their 
might against the roaring element, and succeeded in cross- 
ing the river to the opposite shore, but not till we were 
ës a man's length of the very face of the fall. Drowned, 
after all, we must have been, had not one of the negroes 
possessed sufficient presence of mind to seize hold of the 
overhanging branch of a friendly tree, which happily proved 
faithful to the trust which he placed in its tenacity. 
The negroes of whom I am speakin 
vilized that can be imagined, and the best of them will rea- 
dily transgress every rule of morality for a bottle of rum. 
Happily for me, there was nothing which any of them could 
gain by swimming, else I had assuredly been left alone to 
perish in the “ Gunshot.” This night we spent at a more 
elevated spot than any we had hitherto reached, and right 
Opposite our camp, on the French side, we saw a mountain 
222 
