separate owner, who takes his own timber, and lets
the rest go on. The cables are fastened to the high
rocks on either bank/and they stretch across the river,
like Himalayan rope bridges, except that they lie for
the most part on the water. The trunks of gigantic
trees fastened to them increase thè weight of their
resistance, and they make a boom across the river which
looks as if it meant to bar all progress. But there are
intervals of bare cane, and it is like working through
a Chinese puzzle to find one’s way through them all.
As the boat slips over, the cane yields under the water,
and rubs along the keel with the sound of stage thunder.
A ferry canoe plies across the river, and at the far end,
beyond the last cable, the house-raft of the forest
ranger lies at anchor. Here for many months of the
year this Englishman lives in solitude. The raft lies
in a sheltered cove, protected by an array of rocky
pinnacles against the driving flood. The jungle, all
but impenetrable, rises behind him, and every movement
of the river conveys its message to his floating
home. It looks like a neat little Japanese house, with
its thatched eaves and its hanging orchids, and it is
built on mammoth logs of teak that bear the marks
of a dozen owners. Seventy feet of limpid water lie
below, and one can see it when one is there between
the great logs of the floor, and the sunlight quivering
in its deeps. The view as I turn my face away to the
south is of white scarred rocks, motionless timber, and
water that seems asleep. Up-stream there are near
mountains, lofty and precipitous, under whose pedestals
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