August 13
During the night the river staged an eight foot rise, and though we thought we were safely high and dry, half of our camp was flooded out and a couple of more feet would have forced us to take to the canoes. We started upstream and continued for an hour by dint of hard work. At this point, as we reached a stretch of particularly bad water, the Dyaks decided it would be impossible to proceed further until the water dropped. So we turned around and came back to camp, making the trip down in two minutes which had taken us an hour and a quarter going up. Here we unloaded on shore and prepared to wait awhile. Le Roux[,] with an empty canoe and a crew of Dyaks[,] decided to try and go up to Head Camp. During the day I worked steadily dividing the collections we made on the way up. There is certainly a large amount. This is the camp which the Papuans twice attacked but thus far we have seen no sign of them.
|
