168 
prove almost as interesting to visitors as 
the game refuges along the government 
railroad in British East Africa. 
While breakfasting on the house-boat, 
a strange, uncouth sound came from the 
hills to the west, rising and falling in a 
torrent of guttural notes. It was the first 
greeting of the “black howler,” the largest 
of the South American monkeys, whose 
uproarious conduct, whether in_ tribal 
conversation, in protestation against man 
or the weather, was a source of aston- 
ishment thereafter. My friend Fuertes, 
the bird artist and naturalist, whose mim- 
icry of bird notes is quite equal to the 
fidelity of his brush, declares that the 
noise of the “howler” is by far the most 
striking sound in the American tropics, 
being “‘a deep, throaty, bass roar, with 
something of the quality of grunting pigs 
or of the barking bellow of a bull alli- 
gator or an ostrich. The noise was as 
loud as the full-throated roaring of lions, 
and its marvelous carrying power was 
frequently attested when we heard it 
from the far side of some great Andean 
valley.” 
It is a popular belief on the Isthmus 
that the “black howler” is an infallible 
weather prophet, and especially so in 
predicting a shower. So far as we could 
discover, it was only when the clouds 
blackened overhead and the first prelimi- 
nary drops began to fall that this prog- 
nosticator considered it safe to commit 
himself in the forecast. 
About 10 o'clock Mr. Anthony, carry- 
ing a gun, and his guide a pack of steel 
traps, left for the only open trail in the 
neighborhood, leading to an older plan- 
tation bordering the lake on the other 
side of the promontory, while I went in 
another direction, along a dry creek bot- 
tom, to select places for the flashlight 
and cameras, where the bait was to be 
the freshly skinned carcass of the trapped 
specimens, were they accommodating 
enough to serve this double purpose. 
And in passing it may be noted that the 
only natural foot-trails, and that during 
the dry season, are the creek bottoms, 
which are cleared of all underbrush and 
fallen trees by the torrential rains falling 
during eight months in the year. It is 
here, too, that many of the wild animals, 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
large and small, seek easy routes of 
travel, as well as coming for the purpose 
of quenching their thirst at the small 
pools and pot-holes scooped out in the 
soft sandstone formation of all the 
creeks, while others come to prey upon 
those exposing themselves to attack. 
On returning at noon the trapping 
party discovered a band of black howlers 
passing overhead, with a result described 
in the collector's notebook as follows: 
“T felt a pang of regret at silencing one 
of the ‘howlers,’ but as a specimen was 
needed I shot the foremost and heard 
him crash through the limbs to the 
ground. Pangs of a more effective source 
were experienced when my native boy 
and IT attempted to retrieve the monkey, 
for he had fallen through a bee’s nest the 
size of a bushel basket and we found the 
nest too late to avoid the consequences.” 
Taking a lantern after dark the specimen, 
a fine large male, was recovered and 
brought to the house-boat (see page 189). 
The following morning the traps only 
yielded a number of small rodents, while 
the runways, formerly used by larger 
game, showed scarcely a track—plain evi- 
dence that the heavy smoke from the 
clearing had driven them away. This 
compelled long and hard trips into the 
more distant forests, where trails had to 
be cut with a machete, foot by foot, re- 
sulting in a wonderful collection of ticks 
and red bugs and little game until the 
trails had been cleared for a day or two. 
But it was our experience here and else- 
where that the jungles of Panama are 
abundantly supplied with a great variety 
of wild life. 
Observing about the house-boat sev- 
eral good-sized fish, a coarse line and a 
single rusty hook were put in service, 
with the result of soon landing a dozen 
averaging a pound or more. ‘These re- 
sembled the black mullet and were fairly 
edible, proving, however, of greater serv- 
ice in baiting the traps and the flashlight 
machines. Whether they are land-locked 
fish from the sea, imprisoned on the clos- 
ing of the locks, or coming from the nu- 
merous streams, they have certainly mul- 
tiplied wonderfully, for we found them 
everywhere about the lake. 
A smaller variety of fish was also no- 
