perhaps a thing as curious - a fish, with which these head
waters of the stream are alive. They are some of them as
long as my finger, should be easily caught in these shallows,
and some day I'll have a dish of them.

Very soon after I came to where the stream collects in
another banana swamp, with the bananas bearing well. Beyond,
the course is again quite dry; it mounts with a sharp turn a
very steep face of the mountain, and then stops abruptly at
the lip of a plateau, I suppose the top of Vaea mountain:
plainly no more springs here - there was no smallest furrow
of a watercourse beyond - and my task might be said to be
accomplished. But such is the animated spirit in the service
that the whole advance guard expressed a sentiment of
disappointment that an exploration, so far successfully
conducted, should come to a stop in the most promising view
of fresh successes. And though unprovided either with
compass or cutlass, it was determined to push some way along
the plateau, marking our direction by the laborious process
of bending down, sitting upon, and thus breaking the wild
cocoanut trees. This was the less regretted by all from a
delightful discovery made of a huge banyan growing here in
the bush, with flying-buttressed flying buttresses, and huge
arcs of trunk hanging high overhead and trailing down new
complications of root. I climbed some way up what seemed the
original beginning; it was easier to climb than a ship's
rigging, even rattled; everywhere there was foot-hold and
hand-hold. It was judged wise to return and rally the main
body, who had now been left alone for perhaps forty minutes
in the bush.