Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/411

 pain, as one by one they slowly collapsed, toppling into the river, whence they were towed into the shal- lows to be trimmed of their branches and cut to the requisite length. A couple of hours' hard work saw four stout rafts floating high out of the water, the river fretting and fuming about their slippery green sides, the newly cut rattans exuding a milky sap as my men bound the bamboos together by means of strong cross-pieces fore and aft and amidships. Small raised platforms were erected in the centre. of each raft, and on three of these we stowed our baggage. The fourth raft was reserved for me; and when I had rewarded the Sâkai for his pains with a wedge of coarse tobacco and a palm-leaf bag filled with black rock-salt, I took my seat upon the plat- form prepared for my accommodation and bade my men push out into the stream.

"In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compas- sionate!" they cried; and my raft slid across the glassy surface into the tug of the current, the three others following us in single file.

Until you have had the good fortune to taste of it, the peculiar fascination of exploring a belt of coun- try in which no white man and very few human be- ings of any kind have hitherto set foot cannot easily be realized. To find one's self penetrating, the first of all one's kind, into one of Nature's secret fast- nesses, where free from the encroachments of man- kind she has worked her mighty will during cons upon eons of unrecorded time, is extraordinarily stimulating to the imagination. One looks round