" I answered, smiling back upon her at the remembrance of the
wood.

The stream was a wide flat here, and our boatmen suddenly directed the
boat to the bank and brought it to a standstill. "We want to go on
land here and buy mangoes," he explained in Spanish.

"Very good mangoes can be got here."

We looked round and saw, some distance from the margin, amongst the
stems of the trees standing thickly together, an adobe building, low
and flat, and some figures, not much more clothed than our boatmen,
squatting in front of it, counting mangoes from a great pile into
baskets.

He fastened the dug-out to one of the many tree stems, drawing it
close to the bank, and then he and his companion landed, leaving us
alone in the lightly swaying boat.

"We'll have lunch here, Suzee, don't you think?" I asked her,
beginning to unpack the small basket we had brought. "Can you make tea
for us there, do you think?"

"Oh yes, quite easily; they have a little kitchen here."

In the forepart of the boat the Indians had fixed a piece of tin with
a few bricks round it, forming a hearthstone and stove. On this they
cooked their own food as their surrounding pots and kettles shewed. A
few embers from their last cooking glowed still between the bricks.
Suzee leant over them, blew them into a blaze and then set our kettle
on, getting out her little cups and saucers and ranging them on the
floor of the boat.

I sat back and watched her. The whole scene was a delightful one and
rivalled the one I had noted at starting. The gleaming water spread
itself in large flat mirrors on every side, and the trees standing in
it reflected beneath, and reaching up to the lofty roof of
overarching, interlaced boughs above us, gave the effect of a hall of
a thousand columns. The adobe house of the fruit-seller seemed
standing on a precarious island, so high had the floods risen round
it, and numerous empty baskets and crates, evidently lifted from their
moorings on the bank, drifted slowly about on the silvery tide. Our
boat itself was a lovely object with its fairy lines, its thread of
smoke going up from it, and the little Oriental figure bending over
the red embers in its prow.

We lunched and had our tea in this cool retreat of softened light, and
knew the sun was beating with its murderous noonday glare just
without. The boatmen came back after an interval with a huge load of
mangoes which they piled into the boat, and offered us sixty for five