Nearly seven miles had been traversed in the same South-West 1/2 South direction, when our hopes of proceeding further were suddenly for a time destroyed, by the appearance of a dense woody mass ahead.  A little further on, the moon peering through the matted foliage showed one branch of the river turning off to the southward, whilst another, in the mouth of which we found ourselves, trended west.  The lead giving the great depth of six fathoms, we were induced to follow the latter.  Utter darkness soon surrounded us; the trees, on either side, over-shadowing the river, which in this branch was not eighty yards wide.

PROGRESS IMPEDED.

Our progress, also, at length began to be impeded by fallen or sunken trees, which not only rendered the ascent dangerous, but at the end of about two miles fairly brought us to a standstill, and forbade our further advance.  This detention was a bitter disappointment to us all, and we crept into our blanket-bags with disgust, but with the hope that in the morning a passage might still be found.

August 4.

Daylight brought no better hopes of our taking the boats higher up by this branch, as a succession of large trees lay across it a quarter of a mile above.  It was a gloomy corner we had got into, and so sheltered that it seemed as though a breath of wind had never swept through it; the leaves of the low-spreading palms that drooped over the water, damp with the morning dew, had unbroken edges, as if an eternal quietude had pervaded the spot.

BEAUTY OF THE LANDSCAPE.

This triste appearance wore off as the sun rose, and the scenery under his smiles was soon clothed with beauty.  Trees with every variety of foliage overhung each other, connected, as it were, by bowers of creepers depending in festoons and concealing odd-shaped fragments of fallen timber, which here and there reared their blackened heads out of the water, the unruffled smoothness of which was occasionally disturbed by the splash of some wildfowl, and chequered with alternate spots of gold and gloom by the sun’s rays, as they pierced through the dense surrounding foliage.

Returning, we entered the south branch; the opening of which was almost equal in beauty, as the reader will perceive from the view in the beginning of the first volume; but we were again stopped by fallen trees after proceeding about a mile and a half.

Here we observed driftwood and rushes in the trees, fifteen feet above our heads.  It was now quite clear that all hopes of water carriage towards the interior were at an end.  The boats were at this time above fifty miles from the entrance, and our provisions only admitting of the remainder of this day being spent in land exploration, a party was immediately selected for this service.

LAND EXCURSION.