estruction,
should breathe into it a breatli of malignant perfume, and give it over to slimy reptiles and ravenous beasts ; to panthers, tigers, leopards and cougars, to long lash- like snakes, and lazy alligators, and poisonous ants, and black stinking cormorants.
The river here is a clear, but somewhat shallow stream, about fifty yards wide ; its banks at first low and marshy rise into hills as you ascend, and roll off in distant mountains. Now it is full of bongos and canoes coming and going, racing, knocking against each other; and at every turning of the crooked stream the boatmen's cries and shouts of passengers are heard cheering as they pass. So winding is this river in its course that more than fifty miles are traversed in order to reach a point thirty miles distant.
On they go, the prospective diggers, panting after a sight of the yellow dross as harts pant for water. To them it was nothing but the nakedness of God's creation, all this wild, weird beauty about them, the glorious quivering and play of light and shadow, where the black reflects the cliffs of eternal foliage rising sheer from its very edge. As we ascend, though still tropic, the river scenery becomes more subdued, and the country in places begins to look as if cultivation was being attempted.
At Dos Hermanos we stopped a little before night for our supper. Before one of the principal eating- houses we found a table spread in the open air, covered with a clean cloth, and attended by a mahogany- colored woman, bare to the waist, with a white loose flowered cotton skirt trimmed with lace, a broad- brimmed Panama hat, and a golden necklace adorned with coins. On her unstockinged feet were a pair of yellow satin slippers, and in her mouth a long large cisrar. On the table were red earthen jugs and odd- shaped dishes filled with tortillas, dried meat, boiled fowl, eggs, fresh rolls, and coffee.
Scarcely had we started on our way when night
