e. But then, on second thought it was better for once to enjoy
nature as it was without trying to carry it away. Kodaking is a species
of covetousness, anyway, an attempt to bear away home with us and hoard
for our own the best we come upon in our travels. Whereas here, of
course, it was impossible. The greatest of artists could not have
carried away a tenth of that scene, a scene so fascinating that though
we had tossed into the bottom of the boat at the start a bundle of
fresh New York papers--and fresh New York papers are not often scorned
down on the Zone--they still lay in the bottom of the boat when the
trip ended.

At length little thatched cottages began to appear on knolls along the
way, and as we chugged our way around the tree-tops upon them the
inhabitants slipped quickly into some clothes that were evidently kept
for just such emergencies. Then we began nearing higher land, so that
the upper and then the lower branches of the forest stood out of water,
then only the ends of the lower limbs dipped in the rising flood,
downcast, as if they knew the sentence of death was upon them also. For
though there was sunk already beneath the flood a forest greater than
ten Fontainebleaus, the lake was steadily rising a full two inches a
day. Where it touched that morning the 27-foot level, in a few months
more, says "the Colonel," it will reach the 87-foot level and spread
over one hundred and sixty-four square miles of territory--and when
"the Colonel" makes an assertion wise men hesitate to put their money
on the other horse. Then will all this vast area with more green than
in all the state of Missouri disappear forever beneath the flood and
man may dive down, down into the forest and see what the world was like
in Noah's time, and fancy the sunken cities of Holland, for many a
famous route, and villages older than the days of Pizarro will be
forever wiped out by the rising waters--a scene to be beheld today
nowhere else, and in a few years not even here. At last we were really
in a river, an overflowed river, to be sure, where it would have been
hard to find a landing-place or a bank among those tree trunks
knee-deep in water. We had long since crossed the Zone line, but our
badges were still valid. For it has pleased the Republic of Panama, at
a whispered word from "Tio Sam," to cede to the Z. P. command over all
Gatun Lake and for three miles around it, as far as ever it may spread.

Then all at once we were star