RETURN ON FOOT. 135 



The shore was a soft mud, in which the small 

 mangroves had found a most congenial soil : while 

 our journey every now and then, arrested by the 

 intervention of one or other of the numerous little 

 creeks of which I have before spoken, promised to 

 prove a more fatiguing, if not more hazardous affair, 

 than we had originally contemplated. 



We managed at first, by ascending their banks 

 for a short distance from the river, to jump across 

 these opposing creeks, but as the tide rose, they 

 filled and widened in proportion, and each moment 

 increased the difficulties of our position, now height- 

 ened by the untoward discovery that William Ask, 

 the seaman who had accompanied us, was unable to 

 swim ! 



Time and tide, however, wait for no man, and 

 the rapidly rising waters had flooded the whole of 

 the low land which formed this bank of the river, 

 so that we were compelled to wade, feeling with a 

 stick for the edges of the creeks in our route, over 

 each of which Mr. Helpman and myself had alter- 

 nately to swim in order to pass the arms undamaged; 

 and then Ask, making the best jump that he could 

 muster for the occasion, was dragged ashore on the 

 opposite side. At length we reached a creek, the 

 breadth of which rendered this mode of proceeding 

 no longer practicable, and we were compelled to stop, 

 being fortunately very near the point where I had 

 directed the boat to meet us. Our situation was 

 now anything but pleasant, the water being already 



