Twenty to thirty feet long,
sometimes piled high with vegetables, sometimes with several
natives seated Indian file in the bottom, the gunwales a bare two
or three inches above the water, they needed nice management,
especially in the rapids below Cruces. The locomotive power,
generally naked to the waist, stood up in the craft and climbed
his polanca, or long pike pole, hand over hand, every naked brown
muscle in play, moving in perfect rhythm and apparent ease even
up-stream against the powerful current.
Soon after Chagres and trail parted company, the former to wind on
up through the jungle hills to its birthplace in the land of
Darien and wild Indians, the latter to strike for the Pacific.
Over a mildly rough country it led, down into tangled ravines, up
over dense forested hillocks where the jungle had been fought back
by Uncle Sam and on the brows of which I halted to drink of the
fresh breeze sweeping across from the Atlantic. All this time not
a suggestion of anything Greek, though I managed by some simple
strategy to cast a sweeping glance into every hovel along the way.
Then came the real Cruces trail--the rest only follows the general
direction. I fell upon it unexpectedly. It is still there as it
was when the Peruvian viceroys and their glittering trains
clattered along it, surprisingly well preserved; a cobbled way
some three feet wide of that rough and bumpy variety the Spaniard
even to-day fancies a real road, broken in places but still well
marked, leading away southward through the wilderness.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238