AN ELEPHANT 215 



rent than the preceding one. The water we boiled, 

 of course, so that it lost some of its blackness, 

 though very little of its unpleasant odor and taste. 

 The stronger current reduced our rate of progress 

 from four to three miles an hour— but we kept at 

 it from sunrise to sunset, much to the disgust of 

 my aristocratic company, and so made good day's 

 travelling of it. At Pakam, where we left the 

 Siak, the river was fully a quarter of a mile in 

 width, but the stream we turned into narrowed to 

 one hundred feet within a few miles, and to sev- 

 enty-five feet after a couple of days ; the next river 

 was not half that width at its mouth, and much less 

 where we abandoned it for another. These rivers 

 were all really wider than they seemed; a species 

 of palm growing a stalk two inches in diameter, 

 and lifting its broad unserrated leaves six to ten 

 feet above the water, flanked the river sides in 

 dense growth and extended from ten to twenty 

 feet in impenetrable array out from the banks. If 

 you wished to get to the river bank you cut your 

 way to it, but being at the bank, you found no foot- 

 ing, for the ground reached back, with creepers 

 and vines and trees and gigantic bushes, coming 

 together in one tangled swamp land. Several 

 times where I found footing I made difficult ex- 

 cursions to the back country. Once I saw and 

 heard the barking deer so common to all this East 



