428 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ABCHIPELAGO. 



At noon we came to the famous suspension 

 bridge of rattan, of wiiich I had been hearing the 

 most frightful accounts for the last hundi*ecl miles. 

 At once I took off my shoes to avoid slipping, and 

 hastened down the airy, oscillating way, M^thout al- 

 lowing myself to look down and become giddy at 

 the feaiful depth beneath me. At the middle it 

 rests on the tops of tall trees, which gi'ow up from a 

 small island in the torrent far below. It has been 

 constmcted by first stretching across thi'ee large rat- 

 tans. On them narrow strips of boards are placed 

 transversely, aud fastened at each end by strips of 

 common rattan. Other rattans, starting from the 

 ground at a little distance back of the bank, pass 

 above the branches of high camphor-trees that grow 

 on the edge of the chasm in which the ton^eut flows. 

 Descending from these branches iq a shai'p curve, 

 they rise again steeply at the taither end of the 

 bridge. From these rattans vertical liaes are fas- 

 tened to the rattans below them, exactly as in onr 

 suspension bridges, and thus aU pai-ts are made to 

 aid in supporting the weight. At each bank the 

 bridge is some eight feet wide, but it narrows tow- 

 ard the middle until it is only two feet, where it 

 vibrates the most. I had been dk'ected to go over, 

 if possible, at a himied walk, aud thus break up the 

 oscillating motion, and particularly cautioned against 

 seizing the side of the bridge, lest it might swing to 

 the opposite side and thi*ow me off into the abyss 

 beneath. When I had gone half-way across the first 

 span I found that one of the cross-boards, on which I 

 was just in the act of placiog my foot, had become 



