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loved war so well that they could be persuaded to bend their sleek brown shoulders to labor if the reward were blood. One section of the parade of piracy was composed of negroes lately escaped from Spanish servitude. They wore red bandoliers, crossing like wounds on their naked breasts. The leader, a huge buck with a face like a ferocious black moose, wore nothing at all save a broad yellow belt and a cavalier hat, the plume of which hung limply down and curled under his glistening black chin.

The boats, in a long line, edged up the stream. The English shouted tuneless chanteys, swaying their bodies to preserve the rhythm; the French sang softly of the little loves they might have had; and the Cimarones and blacks chattered their endless monologues directed at no one in particular.

And Chagres twisted on ahead in loops and tremendous horseshoe turns. The yellow water, like a frightened, leprous woman, timidly caressed the hulls. On this Chagres you might pole your boat all day, and at night make your camp not half a mile by straight line from the starting place. It was a sluggish, apathetic river of many shallows where the bright sand glittered in the sun. Chagres was a dilettante in the eternal and understood business of rivers—that of getting to the ocean with as little bother and effort as possible. Chagres dreamed about over the country, seemingly reluctant to lose its lazy individuality in the worried sea.

After a time the boats came to a land where the thick jungle rolled to the river's edge and stopped