202 EXPLORING FOR CASTILLOA RUBBER 



marines stood off four hundred Colombian regulars ; to take in the 

 negro huts that cluster about the town in every swampy spot; and to 

 size up the small, scraggy horses, the parrots, monkeys, and a good per- 

 centage of Colon's two thousand inhabitants. 



The afternoon train scheduled to leave at 2.45 gets away promptly 

 at 3.30. Almost at once the journey is made interesting by the relics 

 of the French canal diggers, and such relics! Trains of abandoned 

 cars, overgrown with vines, trees, and lusty weeds ; mountains of cor- 

 roding iron pipe, hundreds of tons of rusty rails, donkey engines, loco- 

 motives, dredges all crumbling, rotting, sinking out of sight in the 



IN THE CANAL ZONE RIVER VIEW. 



slime, or covered by the rank swamp growths. Further on were huge 

 warehouses, said to be full of expensive machinery, and then the 

 chateaus of the French engineers, once trig and neat, now tawdry, deso- 

 late, deserted. We saw the Chagres River, and very harmless and 

 muddy it looked; observed Monkey Hill Cemetery, and wondered why 

 the French engineers elected to live in a swamp and be buried on a hill ; 

 admired the fine work done in excavating the Culebra cut ; took note of 

 the types of jungle" growth, and at six in the evening arrived at the 

 citv of Panama. We were met by the Scout, and at once taken to the 

 Hotel Grand Central. 



