ssed their satisfaction by a cheer, and that they might
have three full days, the starboard watch, to which I belonged, at once
shoved off. A surf was breaking on the bar, where an upset would have
been a serious matter, as sharks abounded ready to pick us up. We
crossed, however, in safety, and pulled up the stream for five or six
miles. The scenery was very pretty. In many places the trees grew
thickly on the banks, their branches, among which numbers of amusing
little monkeys were sporting, hanging completely over the water; now we
could see the creatures peeping out at us from among the leaves; now
they would skip off with wonderful activity; now come back and drop
sticks and nuts down on our heads, keeping up a constant chattering all
the time. As an American sailor observed, we might as well have tried
to stop a flow of greased lightning as to lay hold of their tails.

While we were watching the monkeys I saw what I had taken to be a dead
log begin slowly to move, and presently a huge pair of jaws opened and
an alligator glided off the bank into deep water; we found, indeed, as
we got higher up, that the river swarmed with alligators, so that none
of us were disposed to take a bath in fresh water. We might have gone
up to Tumbez by the river, but as this would have given us a long pull
against the current, we landed at a plantation owned by a kind old lady,
who offered us fruit and cakes and wine, and said that she should be
happy to see me again.

We then proceeded for three miles or so through orange groves and
sandhills to the town, a wretched tumble-down-looking place, half choked
up with sand. Here, as it was now dark, we took shelter in a house
called an inn, but, except in the public hall, where the eating and
drinking went on, not a room contained a particle of furniture, so that
we had to lie down on the floor and be devoured by mosquitoes and
creeping things innumerable. There were several young Americans of a
superior class with whom I had associated during the afternoon, and when
we got up we agreed that the wisest thing we could do would be to get
out of the town as fast as possible. We scarcely knew each other at
first, so swollen were our faces and necks from the bites of the
voracious insects. Early in the night the greater part of our men were
drunk, and it appeared probable that before the day was much older the
rest would be so. We, however, had to wait for breakfast, and before we
l