black men do the rough manual labor where it is
not worth while to have machines do it. It is an epic feat, and one of
immense significance.

The deluge of rain meant that many of the villages were knee-deep in
water, while the flooded rivers tore through the tropic forests. It is a
real tropic forest, palms and bananas, breadfruit trees, bamboos, lofty
ceibas, and gorgeous butterflies and brilliant colored birds fluttering
among the orchids. There are beautiful flowers, too.

All my old enthusiasm for natural history seemed to revive, and I would
have given a good deal to have stayed and tried to collect specimens. It
would be a good hunting country too; deer, and now and then jaguars and
tapir, and great birds that they call wild turkeys; there are alligators
in the rivers. One of the trained nurses from a hospital went to bathe
in a pool last August and an alligator grabbed him by the legs and was
making off with him, but was fortunately scared away, leaving the man
badly injured.

I tramped everywhere through the mud. Mother did not do the roughest
work, and had time to see more of the really picturesque and beautiful
side of the life, and really enjoyed herself.

P. S. The Gatun dam will make a lake miles long, and the railroad now
goes on what will be the bottom of this lake, and it was curious to
think that in a few years great ships would be floating in water 100
feet above where we were.

ON THE WAY TO PORTO RICO

U. S. S. _Louisiana_, At Sea, November 20, 1906.

DEAR TED:

This is the third day out from Panama. We have been steaming steadily in
the teeth of the trade wind. It has blown pretty hard, and the ship
has pitched a little, but not enough to make either Mother or me
uncomfortable.

Panama was a great sight. In the first place it was strange and
beautiful with its mass of luxuriant tropic jungle, with the treacherous
tropic rivers trailing here and there through it; and it was lovely
to see the orchids and brilliant butterflies and the strange birds and
snakes and lizards, and finally the strange old Spanish towns and the
queer thatch and bamboo huts of the ordinary natives. In the next place
it is a tremendous sight to see the work on the canal going on. From the
chief engineer and the chief sanitary officer down to the last arrived
machinist or time-keeper, the five thousand Americans at work on the
Isthmus seemed to me an exceptionally able, energetic lot, some of them
grumbling, of