VICISSITUDES 
which we reached at 4 P.M., after a march of about six 
hours. We found the river very low but beautifully 
limpid and very rapid. For our camp we immediately 
chose a small patch of sand close to the stream, the 
only clear space we could find; for the river bed and 
the gorge itself were filled with enormous boulders 
piled one upon the other in the wildest confusion. 
Our temporary dwellings were of the simplest. 
Harry and I occupied an ordinary fly-tent, and another 
was pitched for our native followers. On the day 
after our arrival we set about constructing a rough 
bridge for our own convenience. This we did by 
felling a tree on one side of the stream and letting 
it fall across the river bed as far as it would go. We 
repeated the operation with a thinner tree, which we 
let fall from the opposite bank, and the branches of 
the two intertwining in the middle, gave the structure 
some sort of continuity. Along the two trunks we 
could scramble without any very great difficulty. Our 
feat of engineering, however, was as nothing compared 
to the one achieved by our savage neighbours, for at a 
little distance up the stream the Papuans had spanned 
the gorge with a most wonderful suspension bridge. 
Across the ravine they had swung four main chains 
of bamboo. These were fastened at each end to a 
rigid horizontal cross-piece, and this again was braced 
on one side of the river to two trees, of no very great 
thickness, but of tremendous sustaining power, while 
on the other the chains were laid over the top of an 
enormous crag, then across a little depression in the 
eround behind it, and so were made fast to trees at 
the height of a few feet from the ground. The four 
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