472 AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
canoe was driven, and, borne down by the weight of the 
waters, was soon split in two, one side of which got 
jammed below, and the other was tilted upward. To 
this the almost drowned man clung, while perched on 
the rocky point, with his ankles washed by the stream. 
To his left, as he faced up-stream, there was a stretch of 
50 yards of falling water ; to his right were nearly fifty 
yards of leaping brown waves, while close behind him 
the water fell down sheer six to eight feet, through a 
gap 10 yards wide, between the rocky point on which 
he was perched and a rocky islet 30 yards long. 
“ When called to the scene by his weeping friends, 
from my labours up-river, I could scarcely believe my 
eyes, or realise the strange chance which placed him 
there, and, certainly, a more critical 
position than the poor fellow was in 
cannot be imagined. The words 
‘there is only a step between me 
and the grave ’ would have been 
very appropriate coming from him. 
But the solitary man on that narrow- 
pointed rock, whose knees were 
sometimes washed by rising waves, 
was apparently calmer than any of 
us ; though we could approach him 
within fifty yards he could not hear a word we said ; he 
could see us, and feel assured that we sympathised with 
him in his terrible position. 
“ We then, after collecting our faculties, began to 
prepare means to save him. After sending men to 
collect rattans, we formed a cable, by which we attempted 
to lower a small canoe, but the instant it seemed to 
reach him the force of the current hurrying to the fall 
was so great that the cable snapped like pack-thread, 
and the canoe swept by him like an arrow, and was 
engulfed, shattered, split, and pounded into fragments. 
Then we endeavoured to toss towards him poles tied 
to creepers, but the vagaries of the current and its 
convulsive heaving made it impossible to reach him 
with them, while the man dared not move a hand, but 
CANOE scoors. 
