196 Travels and Adventures 



length of the craft while in motion appeared to me 

 a difficult question. Not so to the native. His 

 drinking-cup, a calabash shell, was lying beside him ; 

 without a moment of reflection he placed one of 

 the large rolls of native tobacco in the calabash 

 and dropped it into the water ; in another moment 

 it had floated down stream and was alongside the 

 native who sat in the stern ; he coolly lifted the 

 calabash out of the water, lighted his roll of tobacco, 

 and went on his way rejoicing. 



As we neared the higher waters of the river, 

 navigation became more and more difficult, and 

 before long we were obliged to tie up our canoe, 

 make a kind of camp, and prepare to enter the 

 forest on foot. The Santo Domingo river, in the 

 part where it runs down the mountain-side, has 

 always been famous for the quantity and purity of the 

 gold found there. The natives have many legends 

 about it as well as about the mountains of San Lucas. 

 The story most in vogue before the expedition 

 was sent by Captain Lopez was that the towering 

 stone pinnacle seen from so great a distance was 

 literally a deposit of gold, and that the higher part 

 of the mountain was inhabited by some pigmy race of 

 gold-diggers. Many of the men who accompanied the 

 expedition were not a little surprised when they 

 reached the pinnacle to find it nothing but a huge 



