The Worst Of These Lay Between Efoua And Egaja, Where
We Struck A Part Of The Range That Was Exposed
To the south-east.
These falls had evidently arisen from the tornados, which from time
to time have hurled down
The gigantic trees whose hold on the
superficial soil over the sheets of hard bed rock was insufficient,
in spite of all the anchors they had out in the shape of roots and
buttresses, and all their rigging in the shape of bush ropes. Down
they had come, crushing and dragging down with them those near them
or bound to them by the great tough climbers.
Getting over these falls was perilous, not to say scratchy work.
One or another member of our party always went through; and precious
uncomfortable going it was, I found, when I tried it in one above
Egaja; ten or twelve feet of crashing creaking timber, and then
flump on to a lot of rotten, wet debris, with more snakes and
centipedes among it than you had any immediate use for, even though
you were a collector; but there you had to stay, while Wiki, who was
a most critical connoisseur, selected from the surrounding forest a
bush-rope that he regarded as the correct remedy for the case, and
then up you were hauled, through the sticks you had turned the wrong
way on your down journey.
The Duke had a bad fall, going twenty feet or so before he found the
rubbish heap; while Fika, who went through with a heavy load on his
back, took us, on one occasion, half an hour to recover; and when we
had just got him to the top, and able to cling on to the upper
sticks, Wiki, who had been superintending operations, slipped
backwards, and went through on his own account.
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