150 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
Contribution, Number 162 
DEPARTMENT OF 
TROPICAL RESEARCH 
OF THE 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
JACKING FOR YAPOCKS 
By William Beebe 
T HE Yapock is an aquatic opossum, with 
normal hands and huge webbed feet. It is 
the most beautiful of all opossums, as 
large as a very large rat, with soft silky fur 
and a double dumbell pattern of delicate gull 
grey on a background of purest white. It is 
also one of the rarest of mammals, both in 
actual specimens and in our knowledge of its 
life and habits. I learned of a tributary of 
the Chagres where twenty-five of these beau¬ 
tiful little creatures had been collected and 
others seen, and so under a blazing two o’clock 
sun we set out—my hunter friend and I—to 
spend the night in the tropical swamps of 
Panama. 
We landed on a beach of coral and shells 
and walked through a grove of cocoanut palms, 
with plumes as graceful and delicate as smoke, 
and on through the back yards of mighty gun 
emplacements. Topping a ridge and down into 
steamy greeness took us from sight of man and 
his works, except that for a long time we 
crossed and recrossed narrow ditches draining 
the land of mosquito water. 
Finally we came to low' jungle and for a 
mile or more followed a dim trail. It may 
have been begun by wild animals, it was as¬ 
suredly widened by Indians, and we know for 
certain that old Henry Morgan and his horde 
of buccanneers used it, and today it is pas¬ 
sable for a horse. But Yapocks lived far, even 
from this trail, and we soon launched out at a 
left angle straight into the jungle. Sometimes 
we were helped by a long stretch of shallow 
water; again we had to creep ant-wise through 
a solid mass of agave, moving each thorn- 
lined leaf to one side, and paying for each 
misstep with shreds of clothing and drops 
of blood. In the centre of each plant rested 
a great scarlet bloom, a foot across, its re¬ 
flection turning the heart leaves to a rosy pink, 
but its beauty was hardly compensation for 
the cruel gauntlet of spines. In the intervals 
between the zones of spines, more active, zoo¬ 
logical thorns sought out unexpected places, 
and Azteca ants drove home their stings with 
enthusiasm. Soon we moved in an aura of 
formic acid emanating from those we killed. 
Two miles and a half of this going brought 
us to a ridge where we could look into clear 
sky, and hear the deep distant note of a Royal 
Mailer calling for a canal pilot. 
Down into a new stream we went, with its 
current towards the Chagres, and listened to 
evening flocks of parrots and heard the swish 
of vultures’ wings as they took a last look at 
us, before despairing of our early demise. Doves 
boomed at their water holes, motmots mumbled 
converse deep in side gullies, uh-huh! uh-huh! 
and tree-creepers’ beaks dripped silvery ca¬ 
denzas. 
The kr-ump of a big gun came from the dis¬ 
tance, but in place of an echo, there followed 
a still deeper rumble and we knew that the 
eight months of rain had begun. The jungle 
as a whole was green—the heavy nightly dews 
saw to that, but hosts of flowers and insects 
were waiting for the first downpours to stir and 
develop and fulfil their destiny. 
After about six miles of gruelling pushing 
through jungle which was more like story-book 
jungle than is usual in the tropics, we reached 
Yapock country and sat down on a great flat 
expanse of stone, smoothed by the torrents of 
hundreds of rainy seasons. Here we ate our 
army rations and talked of past hunts with 
Indians and Dyaks, of silky anteaters and fly¬ 
ing lemurs, of cat-bears and kinkajous, and al¬ 
ways we came around to Yapocks. As we sat 
there by the little river, the light softened and 
