the explorer repaid by such sights for all his toils! To ascend a hill
and say you are the first civilized man that has ever trod on this spot;
to gaze around from its summit and behold a prospect over which no
European eye has ever before wandered; to descry new mountains; to dart
your eager glance down unexplored valleys, and unvisited glens; to trace
the course of rivers whose waters no white man's boat has ever cleaved,
and which tempt you onwards into the bosom of unknown lands: these are
the charms of an explorer's life.

Mr. Forsyth accompanied me. We landed nearly opposite the rugged ridge I
have before mentioned, for a few angles and bearings. Here we found two
native rafts of precisely the same construction as those we had
previously seen on the North-west coast, formed out of nine poles. The
shape the reader will remember from the sketch in that part of the work,
and with the exception of only two instances, where they appeared merely
temporary affairs, we have noticed no other kind of rafts in use.
Wherever this great similarity in their mode of water-conveyance
prevails, we may infer the natives have had communication with each
other.

We passed the night in the end of a crooked reach, near the only rocky
islet in the river, lying four miles East-South-East from the furthest
point I had before attained. With the exception of a squall from
north-east in the afternoon, there was scarcely any wind, and the night
was cloudy with some slight showers of rain. As the mosquitoes allowed us
little rest, we were glad, when the day broke, to be again moving. We now
found the river take a north-east direction for eight miles, averaging in
width upwards of three-quarters of a mile, and in depth at low-water two
fathoms. A sudden change in the trend of the reaches brought in sight the
strange appearance of the country represented in the woodcut annexed.