oportionate fruit, everywhere the banana, king of
vegetables, clothed in its own immense leaves, the frondy zapote, now
and then in a hollow a clump of yellowish-green bamboo, though not
numerous or nearly so large as in many another tropical land, above all
else the symmetrical Gothic fronds of the palm nodding in a breeze the
more humble vegetation could not know. The constant music of insect
life sounded in my ears; everywhere were flowers of brilliant hue,
masses of bush blossoms not unlike the lilac in appearance, but like
all down on the Isthmus, odorless--or rather with a pungent scent, like
strong catsup.

Four months earlier I should have been chary of diving back into the
Panamanian "bush" alone, above all on a criminal hunt. But it needs
only a little time on the Zone to make one laugh at the absurd stories
of danger from the bush native that are even yet appearing in many U.
S. papers. They are not over friendly to whites, it is true. But they
were all of that familiar languid Central American type, blinking at me
apathetically out of the shade of their huts, crowding to one edge of
the trail as I passed, eying me silently, a bit morosely, somewhat
frightened because their experience of Americans is of a discourteous
creature who shouts at them in a strange tongue and swears at them
because they do not understand it. The moment they heard their own
customary greetings they changed to children delighted to do anything
to oblige--even to the extent of dragging their indolent forms erect to
lead the way a quarter-mile through the bush to some isolated shack.
Far from contemplating any injury, all these wayward children of the
jungle ask is to be let alone to drift through life in their own way.
Still more absurd is the notion of danger from wild beasts--other than
the tiny wild beast that burrows its painful way under the skin.

So I pushed on, halting at many huts to make covert inquiries. It was a
joyous, brilliant day overhead. Down in the dense, rampant, singing
jungle I sweated profusely--and enjoyed it. Choking for a drink in a
hutless section, I took one of the crooked, tunnel-like trails to the
left in the direction of the Chagres. But it squirmed off through thick
jungle, through banana groves and untended pineapple gardens to come
out at last at an astonished hut on a knoll, from which was not to be
seen a sign of the river. I crawled through another struggling
side-trail further on and this time rea