was to sit in the canoe until it actually started.

With luck they got off late in the afternoon, and made ten or twelve
miles to Gatun. The journey up the lazy tropical river was exciting and
interesting. The boatmen sang, the tropic forests came down to the banks
with their lilies, shrubs, mangoes, cocos, sycamores, palms; their
crimson, purple, and yellow blossoms; their bananas with torn leaves;
their butterflies and paroquets; their streamers and vines and scarlet
flowers. It was like a vision of fairyland.

Gatun was a collection of bamboo huts, inhabited mainly by fleas. One
traveler tells of attempting to write in his journal, and finding the
page covered with fleas before he had inscribed a dozen words. The gold
seekers slept in hammocks, suspended at such a height that the native
dogs found them most convenient back-scratchers. The fleas were not
inactive. On all sides the natives drank, sang, and played monte. It
generally rained at night, and the flimsy huts did little to keep out
the wet. Such things went far to take away the first enthusiasm and to
leave the travelers in rather a sad and weary-eyed state.

By the third day the river narrowed and became swifter. With luck the
voyagers reached Gorgona on a high bluff. This was usually the end of
the river journey. Most people bargained for Cruces six miles beyond,
but on arrival decided that the Gorgona trail would be less crowded, and
with unanimity went ashore there. Here the bargaining had to be started
all over again, this time for mules. Here also the demand far exceeded
the supply, with the usual result of arrogance, indifference, and high
prices. The difficult ride led at first through a dark deep wood in clay
soil that held water in every depression, seamed with steep eroded
ravines and diversified by low passes over projecting spurs of a chain