184 Naturalist at Large 



camp followers were carriers of malaria, we kept one jump 

 ahead of infection since it takes eight days for the 

 mosquitoes to become vectors. Before long, a number of 

 our Indians, including Churima, sent for their wives. This 

 is a sign that one has won their complete confidence. As a 

 matter of fact, they rather like Americans and distinctly 

 dislike Spanish-speaking people, who were, and I suspect 

 possibly are still, inclined to be afraid of them, or at least 

 to patronize them. We possessed such mysteries as desic- 

 cated vegetables and dried soups, so that every meal was 

 an adventure to the Indians, and they greatly appreciated 

 the beads and other trinkets which we brought with us. 



Mrs. Churima, as we called her, was a sleek, buxom 

 damsel of tender years, very pretty, with a tiny baby 

 slung in her bark-cloth scarf. She had a short skirt of trade 

 cotton, I suspect a flour sack, and was industrious beyond 

 belief. She rolled stones in search of frogs and lizards while 

 the baby dozed. I never heard it cry, and never saw her 

 put it down, even when she was hanging over the fire 

 cooking. 



Darien is warm and moist and we were there in the 

 spring, when it was raining a good deal. I am pretty heavy 

 and I remember a number of occasions when my Gold 

 Medal cot sank down so that before morning I was in a 

 puddle of water well tinged with humic acid, which seeped 

 up through the canvas of the cot and greatly irritated my 

 prickly heat. We got nearly a thousand birds, a number 

 of them new, quite a lot of mammals, including a new 

 arboreal mouse, and a wonderful new genus of lizards. We 

 considered ourselves richly rewarded. 



That mouse was a veritable gem among mice, a lovely 



