b, c, the stream runs deep, and usually beneath overhanging banks; whilst in front of promontories, as at A, B, and C, the water is invariably shoal, unless it be a jutting rock that makes the promontory.  Therefore, by entering the stream at one promontory, with the intention of leaving it at another, you ensure that at all events the beginning and end of your course shall be in shallow water, which you cannot do by attempting any other line of passage.

[Sketch of river as described].

To Cross Boggy and Uncertain Ground.—­Swamps.—­When you wish to take a wagon across a deep, miry, and reedy swamp, outspan and leg the cattle feed.  Then cut faggots of reeds and strew them thickly over the line of intended passage.  When plenty are laid down, drive the cattle backwards and forwards, and they will trample them in.  Repeat the process two or three times, till the causeway is firm enough to bear the weight of the wagon.  Or, in default of reeds, cut long poles and several short cross-bars, say of two fee long; join these as best you can, so as to make a couple of ladder-shaped frames.  Place these across the mud, one under the intended track of each wheel.  Faggots strewn between each round of the ladder will make the causeway more sound.  A succession of logs, laid crosswise with faggots between them, will also do, but not so well.

Passing from Hand to Hand.—­When many things have to be conveyed across a piece of abominably bad road—­as over sand-dunes, heavy shingle, mud of two feet deep, a morass, a jagged mountain tract, or over stepping-stones in the bed of a rushing torrent—­it is a great waste of labour to make laden men travel to and fro with loads on their backs.  It is a severe exertion to walk at all under these circumstances, letting along the labour of also carrying a burden.  The men should be stationed in a line, each at a distance of six or seven feet from his neighbour, and should pass the things from hand to hand, as they stand.

Plank Roads.—­“Miry, boggy lines of road, along which people had been seen for months crawling like flies across a plate of treacle, are suddenly, and I may almost say magically, converted into a road as hard and good as Regent Street by the following simple process, which is usually adopted as soon as the feeble funds of the young colony can purchase the blessing.  A small gang of men, with spades and rammers, quickly level one end of the earth road.  As fast as they proceed, four or five rows of strong beams or sleepers, which have been brought in the light wagons of the country, are laid down longitudinally, four or five feet asunder; and no sooner are they in position than from other wagons stout planks, touching each other, are transversely laid upon them.  From a third series of wagons, a thin layer of sand or grit is thrown upon the planks, which instantly assume the appearance of a more level McAdam road than in practice can ever be obtained.  Upon this new-born road the wagons carrying the sleepers,