There’s Many A Slip. 
265 
50ft. long bamhu was fetched and the empty champagne bottle tied to 
it : we had previously enclosed in it a sheet of paper conveying greetings 
to the officers of the military expedition with the wish that fortune 
might prove just as kind to them in crossing the falls as „she had been 
to us. 
767. In the most cheerful humour we jumped off the crag into the 
boat: I never dreamed at the time that my joy would be changed so soon 
into sorrow : — 
“O’er treacherous paths the Fates still trip: 
There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.”f 
All flags and streamers were run up, the four remaining boats floated 
merrily along on the tranquil surface, and the Union Jack seemed as if 
beckoning to the Prussian colours fluttering far behind to hurry up and 
join it. Just as my captain was about to take up their challenge and was 
turning round the rock — a powerful smash, and everything that the 
corial contained was in the water: he had not noticed a hidden crag and 
the current had upset the boat. The accident happened so quickly and 
unexpectedly that I only recovered my senses when, standing up to my 
neck in water, T saw gliding past me all the articles capable of floating 
and the whole of the Indians busily engaged in swimming after them. 
The general cry of anxiety had recalled the boats hastening ahead, and 
everybody tried their best to save the sinking and floating baggage: they 
were fortunately able to save everything except several packages with 
about 100 plant-specimens and a large number of fish-skeletons, which 
the breaking eddy had already engulfed. Naturally, the water, the 
greatest enemy of all, had made its way into almost all the cases, but as 
the cloudless sky with the scorching sunshine promised an early restituo 
in integrum, we quickly unpacked everything and exposed the saturated 
collections to its full effects. Articles of trade for the Indians, plants, 
bird-skins, and mammal pelts, everything was spread out in a motley 
crowd upon the rock, and four hours later I could again follow the 
remaining boats which proposed waiting for us at the camp. Had the 
accident happened but ten feet farther out in the stream, everything 
would have gone to the bottom or would have come to light again in the 
whirlpool on the farther side of the rapids, smashed to pieces, a fate that 
Stöckle and I would have probably shared, because neither of us could 
swim well enough to withstand so strong a current. 
768. On the farther side of the island encircled with the slender 
bamhu ('Sect. 766) the stream, more than 500 yards wide, seemed 
completely free of obstacles. Its western bank, consisting of a white 
clay, gradually rose more and more until it at last formed a 15-foot high 
white wall. A fairly sharp bend of the river bed had hitherto hidden 
every distant prospect from me, but hardly had we rounded if than the 
Makarapan Range towered up ahead in the S.W. and formed a lovely 
background to a most charming landscape. A number of giant Bombax 
t “ Tückisch sind des Schicksals Mächte, 
Voreilig Jauchzen greift in ihre Rechte,” 
