three or four inches in thickness, and several feet long, which,
after twisting among the fissures of the rock, shot
perpendicularly from it and ran tapering to a point in the air,
hanging over the gulf like so many dark icicles. They covered
nearly the entire surface of one side of the gorge, the lowest of
them reaching even to the water. Many were moss grown and
decayed, with their extremities snapped short off, and those in
the immediate vicinity of the fall were slippery with moisture.

Toby's scheme, and it was a desperate one, was to entrust
ourselves to these treacherous-looking roots, and by slipping
down from one to another to gain the bottom.

'Are you ready to venture it?' asked Toby, looking at me
earnestly but without saying a word as to the practicability of
the plan.

'I am,' was my reply; for I saw it was our only resource if we
wished to advance, and as for retreating, all thoughts of that
sort had been long abandoned.

After I had signified my assent, Toby, without uttering a a
single word, crawled along the dripping ledge until he gained a
point from whence he could just reach one of the largest of the
pendant roots; he shook it--it quivered in his grasp, and when he
let it go it twanged in the air like a strong, wire sharply
struck. Satisfied by his scrutiny, my light limbed companion
swung himself nimbly upon it, and twisting his legs round it in
sailor fashion, slipped down eight or ten feet, where his weight
gave it a motion not un-like that of a pendulum. He could not