A Trip to PmiaTna and Darien. 307 



to stream, and where two streams thus connected were tributaries 

 of a common river, all of which had been previously surveyed, a 

 closed figure was obtained, an adjustment for errors of closure 

 made, and by putting together the topographical data obtained 

 by the four lines, there was generally found to be sufficient 

 information to give a satisfactory though of course a crude 

 delineation of the included area. 



After a number of rivers had been examined with more or less 

 accuracy in this way, it was finally decided that the area for one 

 portion of the grant best suited for the purposes of the Canal 

 Company lay on the right bank of the Tuyra river, and that the 

 portion of the river which lay between the mouths of two of its 

 tributaries, the Rio Yape and the Rio Pucro, should be one of 

 the boundaries of the grant. The Yape and Pucro have courses 

 approximately parallel to each other and at right angles to the 

 Rio Tuyra, and these streams were also chosen as boundary lines, 

 so that the grant would have the three rivers as natural bounda- 

 ries, and the fourth and closing boundary was to be a straight 

 line from a certain point on the Yape to the Pucro, so located as 

 to include within the four boundaries an area approximately equal 

 to the amount of the grant, which in this particular case was 

 25,000 hectares. The problem then presented was : given three 

 rivers for three boundaries of a figure to establish a fourth and 

 artificial line, completing the figure in such a way that it should 

 contain a given area, and also to procure data for a topographical 

 map of the country surveyed. 



This survey was put under my direction and I was instructed 

 to proceed to a point overlooking the Tuyra river, between the 

 Rio Yape and the Rio Pucro, near the mouth of the Rio Capite, 

 for the purpose of establishing a base camp. Leaving Real de 

 St. Marie on the evening of March 1 5th, with a fleet of twelve 

 canoes and about thirty native laborers, we reached the site for 

 the camp in two days. After landing everything, the work of 

 clearing away trees and underbrush over an area sufficiently large 

 for the camp was commenced. The men worked willingly with 

 axe and machete, and soon the forest receded and left bare a 

 semi-circular space facing the river. 



Two houses were needed and without saw, nail or hammer the 

 construction was commenced and prosecuted rapidly. Straight 

 trees about six inches in diameter and twenty feet long were cut 

 and planted vertically in holes dug out with the machete, and 



