120 A PLANTATION IN A TROPICAL FOREST 
built, electric power to be developed, mines to be developed 
or worked, or in fact wherever there is anything to be done 
requiring nerve, energy and engineering skill, there we find 
these forerunners of civilization. They are lean, square- 
shouldered, powerful men, without an ounce of superfluous 
flesh, just bone and muscle. They have complexions made 
sallow by fever, and tanned to leather by sun, rain and 
wind, with hard, vertical lined faces. They are men of 
restless energy, with hard features and powerful physique, 
and wherever they go things are done, and done quickly. 
The poor natives look at them with fear and generally 
with hatred. They carry always a 45 Colt revolver at the 
right hip, and generally a machete at the other, and are 
ready with either or with their fists. The Indian moves 
under their control simply from the power of the superior 
personality. Many are coarse, rough laborers and foremen, 
and railroad men from the North, and these have given a 
bad name to all the Southern pioneers. But many also, 
like my hosts, are thorough gentlemen, and men of great 
scientific attainments, but all are men of extraordinary 
force. 
One thinks of life in the tropics as delicious indolence, 
lying in a hammock, drinking one’s coffee and reclining, 
moving from hammock to couch fanned bya soft eyed 
damsel, listening daily to the splash of the fountains in the 
cool shade. It may be so in some places, but this isnot asI 
have seen it. The American planter gets up at 5 a.m. in 
the dark, looks over his men and hurries them off to work. 
He swallows a cup of coffee, and rushes off to a distant 
spot to inspect or start the workmen. He gets back to 
breakfast at 8 or 9 o’clock. After a hasty mealis off again 
perhaps to a place miles away. Heat or cold make no 
difference to him, rain or the terrible insect pests do not 
stop him. Hesnatches a hasty lunch at noon and works 
at keen tension till night, when he takes his dinner, makes 
up his accounts, and tumbles into bed too tired to sit up a 
