2 34 
EXPLORING FOR CASTILLOA RUBBER 
But they would not allow the skin to be cut, although they did 
prop the sufferer up, heels in the air and head to the ground, and 
watched all night to see the bullet as it rolled out. 
Of the thousands of shell mounds that contain the graves of their 
ancestors, the natives know little, and cheerfully assist the despoiler 
to open them and secure such relics or treasure as they may contain. 
The women are quite pretty when young, particularly those who 
live in the mountains, and have a custom of filing their teeth so that the 
points are as sharp as needles, said to be most becoming, from an Indian 
point of view. The mountain men who are physically the best Indian 
specimens, wear only a shirt and a pair of pants cut off at the knees, 
and are known in the lowlands as the “short pants/* 
That night in Rio Negro camp it was really cold. The air was 
damp, and it was raining heavily, although only a little came through 
the roof. We were sitting about too grumpy to talk until the gray 
mule took possession of the kitchen, and, in the mix-up that followed, 
led us to forget our woes. Then the Prospector began to talk about 
rubber plantations, and my conceit got a shock, for he told me of some 
that I had never heard of. It was on Gorgonas Island, which lies off 
the coast of Colombia, owned by the fine old Spaniard, Don Ramon, 
whom we met in Panama City, where are some five thousand cultivated 
trees four and one-half years old. The Prospector feared that the 
revolutionists from the main land might have destroyed some of them 
in their periodic forays, but was not sure. Then the Pioneer took the 
floor. He had formerly been manager for the Darien Gold Mining Co., 
and for them he cleared wide paths through the forest in which to plant 
Castilloa trees. The planting was in part from seed, and in part of 
young trees, for which he paid the natives five dollars a hundred, in silver. 
This was in 1900, and there were some three hundred thousand trees 
on land some miles from the coast, planted at an altitude of fifteen 
hundred feet. Since leaving the company, his successor had planted 
certainly as many more. 
The trips that I have outlined are a few of many, long and short, 
that taken as a whole gave me a knowledge of the lands as a whole. 
The final journey was to be along the "hog backs” that extended 
up to the mountains, then over them and down to the further shore, 
whence the Almirantc had been despatched to meet and convey us to 
Panama City. 
First came the preparations, the most important of which was the 
packing of the camera supplies. Considering the fact that the mule 
