The common method of navigation of small streams by the native Panamans is by 
means of the cayuca or dugout, which varies in length from 8 to 35 feet and is cut from a 
single tree. 
These boats are used by the natives for bringing fruit and produce to market, 
and it is a common sight to see them loaded with sugar-cane cut in sections 8 or 10 feet in 
length. 
are green with long-leaved plants, the in- 
tervening pools bearing purple clumps of 
drifting water hyacinths (see page 167). 
Here, too, are floating islands, with 
waving grasses and slender reeds, des- 
tined to live forever, and when anchored 
by projecting snags or hemmed in be- 
tween tree trunks, will gradually become 
great tremulous bogs, unsafe alike for 
man and all sharp-hoofed animals, but a 
place of sunshine and of comfort to the 
coming alligators, a refuge and a feeding 
place for the herons, ibises, and other 
water birds, long exiled on the shoreless 
trees, where little frogs will be speared 
and many a minnow lifted from along 
the ragged edges. 
Day after day we explored these un- 
known wastes, ever alert in avoiding the 
sudden fall of tree-tops and massive 
limbs weakened by inward decay or by 
heavily burdened masses of parasitic 
plants. ‘Twice we were nearly over- 
163 
whelmed and once the camera and flash- 
light at the edge of the shore were buried 
out of sight. 
The anticipated encroachments of the 
lake resulted in a timely relocation of the 
Panama Railroad along the Chagres Val- 
ley (as shown in the comparison maps, 
pages 180 and 181); but most of the 
foot-trails were obliterated and the nar- 
row, well-defined canoe routes became 
lost in a maze of flooded forests, the 
tortuous channels no longer indicated by 
wooded banks or rapid currents. 
WHERE A RIVER GOT LOST 
In going up the estuary formed by the 
flooded valley of the Trinidad, there was 
no suggestion of the swift stream of 
former years, once navigable for many 
miles in a canoe, for now the broad, stag- 
nant, forested waters were covered here 
and there by floating vegetation and 
driftwood that often blocked the old 
