B---- had burned whole villages in this lake territory, after the
owners with legal claims had been paid condemnation damages. Long
ago the natives had been warned to move, and the banks of the
lake-to-be specified. But many of these skeptical children of
nature had taken this as a vain "yanqui" boast and either refused
to move until burned out or had rebuilt their hovels on land that
in a few months more would also be flooded.
The rescue expedition proceeded. Once we got caught in the top-
most branches of a tree, released from which we pushed on along
the sinuous river that had no banks. It was not hot, even at
noonday. We sweated a bit in poling a thirty-foot boat out of a
tree-top, but cooled again directly we were off. My kodak was far
away at the other end of the Zone. 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.
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