As soon as you have diverted yourself sufficiently, I would advise you to proceed.' 'Aye, aye, Toby, all in good time: two or three more such famous roots as this, and I shall be with you.' The residue of my downward progress was comparatively easy; the roots were in greater abundance, and in one or two places jutting out points of rock assisted me greatly.

In a few moments I was standing by the side of my companion.
Substituting a stout stick for the one I had thrown aside at the top of the precipice, we now continued our course along the bed of the ravine.
Soon we were saluted by a sound in advance, that grew by degrees louder and louder, as the noise of the cataract we were leaving behind gradually died on our ears.
'Another precipice for us, Toby.' 'Very good; we can descend them, you know--come on.' Nothing indeed appeared to depress or intimidate this intrepid fellow.
Typees or Niagaras, he was as ready to engage one as the other, and I could not avoid a thousand times congratulating myself upon having such a companion in an enterprise like the present.
After an hour's painful progress, we reached the verge of another fall, still loftier than the preceding and flanked both above and below with the same steep masses of rock, presenting, however, here and there narrow irregular ledges, supporting a shallow soil, on which grew a variety of bushes and trees, whose bright verdure contrasted beautifully with the foamy waters that flowed between them.
Toby, who invariably acted as pioneer, now proceeded to reconnoitre.
On his return, he reported that the shelves of rock on our right would enable us to gain with little risk the bottom of the cataract.
Accordingly, leaving the bed of the stream at the very point where it thundered down, we began crawling along one of those sloping ledges until it carried us to within a few feet of another that inclined downwards at a still sharper angle, and upon which, by assisting each other we managed to alight in safety.

We warily crept along this, steadying ourselves by the naked roots of the shrubs that clung to every fissure.

As we proceeded, the narrow path became still more contracted, rendering it difficult for us to maintain our footing, until suddenly, as we reached an angle of the wall of rock where we had expected it to widen, we perceived to our consternation that a yard or two further on it abruptly terminated at a place we could not possibly hope to pass.
Toby as usual led the van, and in silence I waited to learn from him how he proposed to extricate us from this new difficulty.
'Well, my boy,' I exclaimed, after the expiration of several minutes, during which time my companion had not uttered a word, 'what's to be done now ?' He replied in a tranquil tone, that probably the best thing we could do in our present strait was to get out of it as soon as possible.
'Yes, my dear Toby, but tell me how we are to get out of it.' 'Something in this sort of style,' he replied, and at the same moment to my horror he slipped sideways off the rocks and, as I then thought, by good fortune merely, alighted among the spreading branches of a species of palm tree, that shooting its hardy roots along a ledge below, curved its trunk upwards into the air, and presented a thick mass of foliage about twenty feet below the spot where we had thus suddenly been brought to a standstill.

I involuntarily held my breath, expecting to see the form of my companion, after being sustained for a moment by the branches of the tree, sink through their frail support, and fall headlong to the bottom.