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Updated: May 17, 2025
We pitch headlong into holes hidden by treacherous banks of ferns; we swing over little precipices by the help of supple-jacks and lianes; we press through thorny bush-lawyers, heedless of the rags and skin we leave behind us; we splash through mud and water up to our waists; hot and breathless, torn and bleeding, bruised and muddy, we come tumbling, crashing, plunging, bounding down the sides of the gully, mad with the fierce excitement of the moment.
The ladders were remarkable contrivances: a pole in the centre, from 4 to 6 inches in diameter, to which were lashed by vines cross pieces of wood, about two feet long. To steady these and hold on by were double shrouds of supple-jacks. The rungs of the ladder were at unequal distances, 42 upon the 50 feet ladder.
I have noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes." Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply confronting, dominating truths.
"Fury!" cried the trooper, with affected anger, "I shall have my fellows as limber as supple-jacks on such fare; afraid of an Englishman as a Virginian negro is of his driver." "Well," said Lieutenant Mason, dropping his knife and fork in a kind of despair, "my jaws have more sympathy than many men's hearts. They absolutely decline making any impression on the relics of their old acquaintance."
"Yes, a bridge of supple-jacks," said John Mangles. "The convicts passed over, but " "But what?" said Glenarvan, who foreboded some new misfortune. "They burned it after they passed!" said Paganel. IT was not a time for despair, but action. The swollen and tumultuous waters had not gone down the least. They rushed on with indescribable fury. It would be risking life to battle with them.
The roots of trees covered the path in all directions, rendering it necessary to watch every step we took, in order to prevent being thrown down; the supple-jacks, suspended and twining from tree to tree, making in many places a complete net-work; and while we were toiling with the greatest difficulty through this miserable road, our natives were jogging on as comfortably as possible: use had so completely accustomed them to it, that they sprung over the roots, and dived under the supple-jacks and branches, with perfect ease, while we were panting after them in vain.
On the spaces of ground unoccupied by these roots, there grew a kind of supple-jack, which in general was as thick as a man's leg; these supple-jacks ran up the trees, and as they grew in every direction, they formed an impenetrable kind of net-work; bending some trees to the ground, and then taking root again, they twined round other trees in the same manner, until the whole became an impervious forest.
I went up into the tree-house by a very good ladder of bamboos and supple-jacks, quite as easily as one goes up the rigging of a ship, and my ten days at Bauro were spent among a people whose language I know, and where my life was as safe and everybody was as disposed to be friendly as if I had been in your house at Weston. But, of course, it is all "missionary hardships and trials."
Their little airs of sylvan simplicity were very pretty; and the gallant gentlemen were not backward in their part. They bowed and simpered until they resembled so many supple-jacks, pulled by the finger of a child. "Look," said Jacques to Belle-bouche, and sighing slightly as he gazed upon the fresh beauty of her face; "see those lovers yonder " "Lovers?" said Belle-bouche, smiling.
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