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 reached the stream, but at a bank too sheer and bush-
matted to descend. The third attempt brought me to where the river
made a graceful bend at my feet and I descended an abrupt jungle
bank to drink and stroll a bit along the stony shore; then plunged
in for a swim. It was just the right temperature, with dense
jungle banks on either side like great green unscalable walls, the
water clear and a bit over waist deep in the middle of the stream.
Now and then around the one or the other bend came a cayuca, the
native dug-out made of the hollowed trunk of a tree, usually the
cedro--though to a jungle native any tree is a "cedro" if he does
not happen to think of its right name.
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