At this
abrupt turn, evidences of former floods were plain. Immense rocks were
cut and carved in spiral columns as skillfully as any sculptor could
have chiseled them. Great flocks of wild black ducks peculiar to the
Tagus, were continually rising at my approach.
"At ten o'clock that night, hearing the heavy roar of rapids below and
the river becoming wilder, I decided to stop until daylight. I crept
cautiously in shore until I found an opening and there landed. There was
no wood to build a fire and I laid for several hours in my dress. At
daybreak I resumed the voyage and it looked as though I was penetrating
the very bowels of the mountains, whose crests loomed high in the sky.
I soon discovered the cause of the roar that had arrested my progress
the night before. It was an ugly rapid, madly fighting sharp, broken
rocks and I was dashed in amongst them. In trying to make a passage to
escape a back water, something like that I had gone through on the Arno,
at Florence, I turned so quickly that the little tender was thrown into
the vortex on one side, tearing loose from my belt, while I was rapidly
carried down the other. I never saw her again and what was more, I was
left without provisions of any kind.
"That afternoon the river increased in speed and, dashed along at a mad
rate.
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