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Chapter one. The Beginning |
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Every evening brought a new camp-site and new people crowding it, brown, slim, curious, unhurried, with a strangely unsavage courtesy. Even now I get a catch at the heart from the sharp, clean smell of new huts - the fresh-cut bamboo and thatch, and the scraped wet earth of the floor. Night after night the mists shut down on the valley, the moon shone thinly through, and the porters, like young bronze statues, came up to sit by the fire. We passed the three great falls of the Barak, each sliding in a giant step between ever-rising walls of grey sandstone, and started below them with new (13) rafts, paddling down long, still reaches on a widening stream. And then, at last, we came to the suspension-bridge carrying the Silchar track, and the end of our river journey. |
