At noon we came to the famous suspension
bridge of rattan, of which I had been hearing the
most frightful accounts for the last hundred miles.
At once I took off my shoes to avoid slipping, and
hastened down the airy, oscillating way, without allowing
myself to look down and become giddy at
the fearful depth beneath me. At the middle it
rests on the tops of tall trees, which grow up from a
small island in the torrent far below. It has been
constructed by first stretching across three large rattans.
On them narrow strips of boards are placed
transversely, and fastened at each end by strips of
common rattan. Other rattans, starting from the
ground at a little distance back of the bank, pass
above the branches of high camphor-trees that grow
on the edge of the chasm in which the torrent flows.
Descending from these branches in a sharp curve,
they rise again steeply at the farther end of the
bridge. From these rattans vertical lines are fastened
to the rattans below them, exactly as in our
suspension bridges, and thus all parts are made to
aid in supporting the weight. At each bank; the
bridge is some eight feet wide, but it narrows toward
the middle until it is only two feet, where it
vibrates the most. I had been directed to go over,
if possible, at a hurried walk, and thus break up the
oscillating motion, and particularly cautioned against
seizing the side of the bridge, lest it .might swing to
the opposite side and throw me off into the abyss
beneath. When I had gone half-way across the first
span I found that one of the cross-boards, on which I
was just in the act of placing my foot, had become