The rainy season had greened things up and gone--
temporarily, of course, for in a day or two it would be on us
again in all tropical fury. In the few days since the first rain
the landscape had changed like a theater decoration, a green not
even to be imagined in the temperate zone.
It turned out that the ancient village of Cruces was a mere two-
mile stroll from the canal, a thatch-roofed native town of some
thirty dwellings on the rocky shore of an inner curve of the
Chagres, where travelers from Balboa to the last "Forty-niner"
disembarked from their thirty-six mile ride up the river and
struck on along the ten-mile road through the jungle to Panama--
the famous Cruces trail. Except for its associations the village
was without interest--except some personal Greek interest. Sour
looks were chiefly my portion, for the villagers have never taken
kindly to Americans.
I soon sought out the trail, here a mere path undulating through
rank, wet-hot, locust singing jungle. Here in the tangled somber
mystery of the wilderness grew every tropical thing; countless
giant ferns, draping tangles of vines, the mango tree with its
rounded dome of leaves like the mosque of Omar done in greenery,
the humble pineapple with its unproportionate 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.
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