202 
EXPLORING FOR CASTILLOA RUBBER 
marines stood off four hundred Colombian regulars ; to take in the 
negro huts that cluster about the town in every swampy spot ; and to 
size up the small, scraggy horses, the parrots, monkeys, and a good per- 
centage of Colon’s two thousand inhabitants. 
The afternoon train scheduled to leave at 245 gets away promptly 
at 3.30. Almost at once the journey is made interesting by the relics 
of the French canal diggers, and such relics! Trains of abandoned 
cars, overgrown with vines, trees, and lusty weeds ; mountains of cor- 
roding iron pipe, hundreds of tons of rusty rails, donkey engines, loco- 
motives, dredges — all crumbling, rotting, sinking out of sight in the 
IN THE CANAL ZONE — RIVER VIEW. 
slime, or covered by the rank swamp growths. Further on were huge 
warehouses, said to be full of expensive machinery, and then the 
chateaus of the French engineers, once trig and neat, now tawdry, deso- 
late, deserted. We saw the Chagres River, and very harmless and 
muddy it looked ; observed Monkey Hill Cemetery, and wondered why 
the French engineers elected to live in a swamp and be buried on a hill ; 
admired the fine work done in excavating the Culebra cut ; took note of 
the types of jungle growth, and at six in the evening arrived at the 
city of Panama. We were met bv the Scout, and at once taken to the 
Hotel Grand Central. 
