The Iwaka at the place where we first came to it is a tremendous torrent flowing in rather a narrow stony bed. A little way further down it spreads out into a wider channel like that of the Wataikwa, but it is much larger than that river and though we searched down stream for three or four miles, we found no place where it was possible to cross.
As we went up the river we very soon found that the river banks became steeper, and it was soon evident that we were at last among the hills. There was a peculiar satisfaction in bending one’s legs to go up hill after having been for so many months on almost level ground. The track was not at all easy, for it appeared that in many places large slices of the hillside had slipped down, bringing with them a chaos of dead and living trees over which we had to pick a precarious way. In some places we crept along the edge of the torrent, and in others we climbed high up the hillside to avoid a precipice where the river ran through a narrow gorge; but it was all a pleasant change from the monotonous jungle of the plains. There was more variety in the vegetation too as we went on; creepers arranged themselves prettily on the rocky river bank, and Fan-palms, which we had not seen before, grew in groups in the more level places. There was a tree growing in many places whose lower branches were covered at that season with small pink flowers, which lent a grateful splash of colour to the usually gloomy green of the jungle. There was an invigorating air of mountains in the river as it came thundering over the huge boulders in its bed, and now and again we even got a glimpse through the trees of the mountains themselves, apparently not so very far distant from us.
LOOKING UP THE MIMIKA RIVER FROM THE CAMP AT PARIMAU.
THE UNFORDABLE IWAKA
Two days’ scrambling up the valley brought us to the rest of the party at the depôt camp, and there we learnt the very unwelcome news of a discovery, which seemed likely to put an immediate end to our explorations. The advanced party had climbed up a spur to the west of the river and had seen that the Iwaka, instead of flowing (as we imagined) from the North-east by an apparently wide valley, actually flowed from the North through a deep, and in some places precipitous gorge, which we could not possibly attempt to traverse with our feeble coolies in the short time that remained to us.
If we were to advance at all, it was necessary for us to go in a North-easterly direction, but there we seemed to be completely cut off by the torrent of the Iwaka River. Attempts were made both upstream and downstream to wade across, but nobody succeeded in doing it, and no better luck attended those who tried to make a bridge by felling a tree across the river, the bridge was at once swept away. As a last expedient a large reward of money was offered to the first man who should find a way across the river, and again they all set out full of hope and armed with axes. The luck fell to two of the Gurkhas, who cleverly felled a large tree straight across the river. Had it fallen a few feet to one side or the other it would not have been long enough to reach the other bank, and if it had bent a little more in the middle, the water would have snatched it up like a straw and carried it away in a moment. But it kept just clear above the water and made a safe temporary bridge by which they could cross, and before nightfall a single rope of rattan was securely tied across the narrowest part of the river.
A RATTAN BRIDGE
During the night the river rose and carried away the tree, and it seemed that with only one strand of rattan across the river the prospect of our reaching the other side was not very good. Nobody seemed inclined to risk the passage, even with the promise of a large reward, until one of the Gurkhas, Jangbir by name, said he would go. “There was only one way to go over—hand over hand, with a rattan round his waist held by us in case the bridge strand broke, a very likely thing, for it was extremely flimsy. Again the rope to hold him had to be very thin, or the weight would tear him from his hold. He got across finely, being dragged out straight by the torrent, until nearly over, when he could make no more headway. The rope tied to his waist was paid out fast, but was caught by the current, and then it was touch and go. Thus he hung for half a minute, dragged out in a horizontal position. If both rattans gave, it meant certain death; if he let go, the great strain would snap the rope round him with a like result. The rope was pulled in as quickly as possible, and then the lucky thing occurred. The strain was too great, and the rope we were pulling on snapped. This freed him, and he pulled himself up further and gained the bank.”[24]
