Stopping to adjust instruments and repair boats for a day, they proceeded to the battle with the cataracts on May 31st.

For forty-one miles they would now have their courage, muscle, and nerve put to the full test.

Stanton records seventy-five rapids and cataracts, fifty-seven of them within a space of nineteen miles, with falls in places of sixteen to twenty feet.

This, then, was what they were approaching with these frail craft.

Two miles down they heard the roar of falling water and the place was reconnoitred, with the result that a large rapid was found to bar the way.