My Poor Fellows
Were Dreadfully Alarmed When They Saw Me Parted From The Cattle,
And About Twenty Of Them Made A Simultaneous Rush Into The Water
For My Rescue, And Just As I Reached The Opposite Bank One Seized My Arm,
And Another Threw His Around My Body.
When I stood up, it was most gratifying
to see them all struggling toward me.
Some had leaped off the bridge,
and allowed their cloaks to float down the stream. Part of my goods,
abandoned in the hurry, were brought up from the bottom after I was safe.
Great was the pleasure expressed when they found that I could swim,
like themselves, without the aid of a tail, and I did and do feel grateful
to these poor heathens for the promptitude with which they dashed in to save,
as they thought, my life. I found my clothes cumbersome in the water;
they could swim quicker from being naked. They swim like dogs,
not frog-fashion, as we do.
In the evening we crossed the small rivulet Lozeze,
and came to some villages of the Kasabi, from whom we got some manioc
in exchange for beads. They tried to frighten us by telling of
the deep rivers we should have to cross in our way. I was drying my clothes
by turning myself round and round before the fire. My men laughed
at the idea of being frightened by rivers. "We can all swim:
who carried the white man across the river but himself?"
I felt proud of their praise.
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