Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume VIII, No. 5 [‎19r] (40/154)

JOURNEY ROUND SIAM.
443
to those of dismay and abhorrence when I reached the Chiengkhan
rapids, and spent eight long and anxious days battling against the
surging and boiling waters, creeping cautiously round jagged rocks,
pulling strenuously with ropes, shoving with boat-hooks, struggling
and shouting, or simply sitting helplessly in the bottom of the rude
dug-out with secret terror in my heart, as I gazed at the wildly hissing
water, and speculated how far a body would be carried before it reached
the surface of these boiling whirlpools. Twice we had to unload the
boats and transport all baggage across the rocks and sand, but this
was the most difficult season of the year, on account of the lowness
of the water. The river, of which the average width above the rapids
is about half a mile, with say an average depth of 4 or 5 feet, here
gets contracted into a narrow rocky channel not more than 60 or 100
yards wide in places, shut in by black and sharply jutting rocks from
10 to 30 feet high. In the rainy season the water rises and spreads
hundreds of yards beyond this little channel, and then small boats
creep along the banks in a somewhat easier fashion. The different
rapids or shoots of water, which are each distinguished by a local
name, number fourteen in all, and are spread over a distance ol 50
miles. The intervening spaces are, of course, not so difficult as the
rapids, but during the whole of these eight days the ropes were hardly
ever cast off the boats.