We came to the edge of the first, and I climbed on the guide's back.
He went bare-legged into the stream deeper and deeper till my feet,
though held up high, just touched the water; then laboriously he
climbed the further shore, and I got down upon dry land. It had been
but twenty yards or so, and he knew the place well. I had seen, as we
crossed, what a torrent this first little stream was, and I now knew
the difficulty and understood the warnings of the inn.
The second branch was impassable. We followed it up for nearly a mile
to where 'an island' (that is, a mass of high land that must have been
an island in flood-time, and that had on it an old brown village)
stood above the white bed of the river. Just at this 'island' my guide
found a ford. And the way he found it is worth telling. He taught me
the trick, and it is most useful to men who wander alone in mountains.
You take a heavy stone, how heavy you must learn to judge, for a more
rapid current needs a heavier stone; but say about ten pounds. This
you lob gently into mid-stream. _How,_ it is impossible to describe,
but when you do it it is quite easy to see that in about four feet of
water, or less, the stone splashes quite differently from the way it
does in five feet or more. It is a sure test, and one much easier to
acquire by practice than to write about. To teach myself this trick I
practised it throughout my journey in these wilds.
Having found a ford then, he again took me on his shoulders, but, in
mid-stream, the water being up to his breast, his foot slipped on a
stone (all the bed beneath was rolling and churning in the torrent),
and in a moment we had both fallen. He pulled me up straight by his
side, and then indeed, overwhelmed in the rush of water, it was easy
to understand how the Taro could drown men, and why the peasants
dreaded these little ribbons of water.
The current rushed and foamed past me, coming nearly to my neck; and
it was icy cold. One had to lean against it, and the water so took
away one's weight that at any moment one might have slipped and been
carried away. The guide, a much taller man (indeed he was six foot
three or so), supported me, holding my arm:
