THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 197 



ried, against and perhaps astride of her left hip. They 

 were comely women, who did not look jaded or cowed; 

 and they laughed cheerfully and nodded to us as they 

 passed through the rain, on their way to the fields. But 

 the contrast between them and the chief in his soldier's 

 uniform seated at breakfast was rather too striking; and 

 incidentally it etched in bold lines the folly of those who 

 idealize the life of even exceptionally good and pleasant- 

 natured savages. 



Although it was the rainy season, the trip up to this 

 point had not been difficult, and from May to October, 

 when the climate is dry and at its best, there would be 

 practically no hardship at all for travellers and visitors. 

 This is a healthy plateau. But, of course, the men who 

 do the first pioneering, even in country like this, encounter 

 dangers and run risks; and they make payment with their 

 bodies. At more than one halting^place we had come 

 across the forlorn grave of some soldier or laborer of the 

 commission. The grave-mound lay within a rude stock- 

 ade; and an uninscribed wooden cross, gray and weather- 

 beaten, marked the last resting-place of the unknown and 

 forgotten man beneath, the man who had paid with his 

 humble life the cost of pushing the frontier of civilization 

 into the wild savagery of the wilderness. Farther west 

 the conditions become less healthy. At this station Colo- 

 nel Rondon received news of sickness and of some deaths 

 among the employees of the commission in the country 

 to the westward, which we were soon to enter. Beriberi 

 and malignant malarial fever were the diseases which 

 claimed the major number of the victims. 



Surely these are "the men who do the work for which 



