At last we were really in a river, an overflowed river, to be
sure, where it would have been hard to find a landing-place or a
bank among those tree trunks knee-deep in water. We had long since
crossed the Zone line, but our badges were still valid. For it has
pleased the Republic of Panama, at a whispered word from "Tio
Sam," to cede to the Z. P. command over all Gatun Lake and for
three miles around it, as far as ever it may spread.
Then all at once we were startled by a hearty hail from among the
trees and I looked up to see Y----, of the Smithsonian, fully
dressed, standing waist-deep in the water at the edge of the
forest, waving an insect trap in one hand.
"What the devil are you doing there?" I gasped.
"Doing? I'm taking a walk along the old Gatun-Chorrera trail, and
I fancy I 'll be about the last man to travel it. Come on up to
camp."
On a mango-shaped knoll thirty miles from Gatun that will also
soon be lake bottom, we found a native shack transformed into the
headquarters of a scientific expedition. We sat down to a frontier
lunch which called for none of the excuses made for it by Y----
when he appeared in his dripping full-dress and joined us without
even bothering to change his water-spurting shoes. In his boxes he
had carefully stuck away side by side an untold number of members
of the mosquito family.
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