Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/220

had ascended to a point so far from the coast, and the difficulties in the way of navigation which had been encountered since leaving Pnom Penh had been great. The gear and supplies of the explorers were therefore transferred to native boats—long crafts fashioned from tree-trunks, warped open by fire, their carrying capacity being increased by plank sides built up from the solid keels. Each boat was furnished with a bamboo deck, supporting a low, thatched cabin amidships, and was propelled by a number of punters armed with long, iron-shod poles.

Heavy rains had already begun to fall in the interior, and the river was some sixteen feet above its normal level. On July 16th the first formidable rapids of the Sombor flight were reached, and thus early in his journey Garnier was forced to resign one of his most cherished dreams. On each bank of the great river rose marvellous tangles of untouched forest—giant trees with buttress-roots, treading on one another's toes, standing knee-deep in striving underwood, their branches interlocked, and bound each to each by vine and creeper, shaggy with ferns and mosses, draped with hanging parasitic growths, and set here and there with the delicate stars of orchids. Between these sheer cliffs of vegetation the great river rolled, sullen and persistent, its brown waters sweeping downward with irresistible force their freight of wallowing tree-trunks, rushing with a fierce hissing sound through the brushwood on either bank, foaming and fighting around the islands which here bespatter the surface of the stream, and squabbling noisily with the rough-hewn