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As the water at the shallowest part of the entrance is only about twenty-two feet, vessels of twenty-feet draught and over have to remain outside, where, however, there is good anchorage and shelter, unless when the wind blows strong from the south. The water inside the reefs is usually smooth, though the waves outside may be dashing themselves to foam on their crests.

The Governor and company having arrived at that village of Andabailla, they supped and spent the night there. On the next day, they arrived at the village of Airamba from where the captain had written that he was with the armed troops waiting for them upon the road. Having arrived at a village, they find much silver in plates twenty-feet long.

The tall giraffe, with his prehensile lip, raised nearly twenty-feet in the air, can browse upon these trees without difficulty. Not so the elephant, whose trunk cannot reach so high; and the latter would often have to imitate the fox in the fable, were he not possessed of a means whereby he can bring the tempting morsel within reach that is, simply by breaking down the tree.

He can break through ant-hills quite as big and bigger some of them twenty-feet high he can project as long and as gluey a tongue twenty inches long he can play it as nimbly and "lick up" as many white ants, as any tamanoir. He can grow as fat too, and weigh as heavy, and, what is greatly to his credit, he can provide you with a most delicate roast when you choose to kill and eat him.

In a short time the tree, which had been furnished with low-spreading limbs, was completely stripped of these to a height of nearly twenty-feet from the ground; while the space underneath had become strewn with twigs, leaves, and broken branches, crushed into a litter under the broad, ponderous hooves of the mammoth as he kept moving incessantly over them.

Several boulders of large dimensions rested upon the ground, at short distances apart; and there was one of a pillar-shape that stood some twenty-feet high, while it was only about five or six in diameter. It bore a sort of rude resemblance to an obelisk; and one might easily have fancied that the hand of man had accomplished its erection.

This order of nautical heroes will probably go down, along with the ships in which they fought valorously and strutted most intolerably. How can an admiral condescend to go to sea in an iron pot? What space and elbow-room can be found for quarter-deck dignity in the cramped lookout of the Monitor, or even in the twenty-feet diameter of her cheese-box?

"Inspann and trek!" was the command: and Swartboy, who was proud of the reputation he had earned as a wagon-driver, was now seen waving his bamboo whip like a great fishing-rod. "Inspann and trek!" echoed Swartboy, tying upon his twenty-feet lash a new cracker, which he had twisted out of the skin of the hartebeest antelope.

During the short time that their eyes had been averted from it, a complete change had taken place in that curious tableau. Instead of a tall column of stone, standing twenty-feet perpendicular, the same column was now seen lying along the earth in a nearly horizontal position, with a huge mass of broken boughs and branches of trees crushed under its top.

Not a moment was allowed them to take measures for securing the safety of their companion. Before they could recover from the surprise, with which his first shout had inspired them, they saw that his descent was every moment becoming more accelerated: now in gradual declination, then in quick, short jerks until he had got within about twenty-feet of the ground.