ead over some poisonous
mineral in the soil. But life there was none, except the rampant green
dying plant life in every direction to the horizon. There were not even
birds, other than now and then a stray snow-white slender one of the
heron species that fled majestically away across the face of the
nurtureless waters as we steamed--no, gasolined down upon it. Soon
after leaving Gatun we had passed a couple of jungle families on their
way to market in their cayucas laden with mounds of produce,--plump
mangoes with a maidenly blush on either cheek, fat yellow bananas,
grass-green plantains, a duck or a chicken standing tied by one leg on
top of it all and gazing complacently around at the scene with the air
of an experienced tourist. It was two hours later that we sighted the
next human being. He was a solitary old native paddling about at the
entrance to the "grass-bird region" in a huge dugout as time-scarred as
himself.

It was near here that weeks before I had turned with "Admiral" B---- up
a little stream now forever gone to a knoll on which sat the thatched
shelter of a negro who had "taken to the bush" and refused to move even
when notified that he was living on U. S. public domain. When we had
knocked from the trees a box of mangoes and turkey-red maranones, B----
touched a match to the thatch roof and almost before we could regain
the launch the shack was pouring skyward in a column of smoke. Even the
squatter's old table and chair and a barrel of tumbled odds and ends
entirely outside the hut--it had no walls--caught fire, and when, we
lost sight of the knoll only the blazing stumps of the four poles that
had supported the roof remained.

B---- had burned whole villages in this lake territory, after the
owners with legal claims had been paid condemnation damages. Long ago
the natives had been warned to move, and the banks of the lake-to-be
specified. But many of these skeptical children of nature had taken
this as a vain "yanqui" boast and either refused to move until burned
out or had rebuilt their hovels on land that in a few months more would
also be flooded.

The rescue expedition proceeded. Once we got caught in the top-most
branches of a tree, released from which we pushed on along the sinuous
river that had no banks. It was not hot, even at noonday. We sweated a
bit in poling a thirty-foot boat out of a tree-top, but cooled again
directly we were off. My kodak was far away at the other end of the
Zon