en deep
and placid miles from where Uncle Sam releases it from custody, to the
ocean. Its jungled banks were without a break, for the one or two
clusters of thatch and reed huts along the way are but a part of the
living vegetation. Now and then we had glimpses across the tree-tops of
brilliant green jungle hills further inland, everywhere were huge
splendid trees, the stack-shaped mango, the soldier-erect palm heavy,
yet unburdened, with cocoanuts. Some fish resembling the porpoise rose
here and there, back and forth above the shadows winged snow-white
cranes so slender one wondered the sea breeze did not wreck them. Above
all the quiet and peace and contentment of a perfect tropical day
enfolded the landscape in a silence only occasionally disturbed by the
cry of a passing bird. Once a gasoline launch deep-laden with
Sunday-starched Americans, snorted by, bound likewise to Fort Lorenzo
at the river's mouth; and we lay back in our soft, rumpled khaki and
drowsily smiled our sympathy after them. When they had drawn on out of
earshot life began to return to the banks and nature again took
possession of the scene. Alligators abounded once on this lower
Chagres, but they have grown scarce now, or shy, and though we sat with
H----'s automatic rifle across our knees in turns we saw no more than a
carcass or a skeleton on the bank at the foot of the sheer wall of
impenetrable verdure.

Till at length the sea opened on our sight through the alley-way of
jungle, and a broad inviting cocoanut grove nodded and beckoned on our
left. Instead we paddled out across the sandbar to play with the surf
of the Atlantic, but found it safer to return and glide across the
little bay to the drowsy straw and tin village. Here--for the mouth of
the Chagres like its source lies in a foreign land--a solitary
Panamanian policeman in the familiar Arctic uniform enticed us toward
the little thatched office, and house, and swinging hammock of the
alcalde to register our names, and our business had we had any. So
deep-rooted was the serenity of the place that even when "Dusty," in
all Zone innocence, addressed the white-haired little mulatto as
"hombre" he lost neither his dignity nor his temper.

The policeman and a brown boy of merry breed went with us up the grassy
rise to the old fort. In its musty vaulted dungeons were still the
massive, rust-corroded irons for feet, waist and neck of prisoners of
the old brutal days; blind owls stared upon us;