Then, as the Boy Scouts looked, thinking of the glory of a camp in the thicket—of a retired nook on some dry knoll—the jungle disappeared as if by magic, and the train was winding up grassy hills. Beyond, higher up, the scattered houses of a city of fair size came into view.
“That’s Gatun,” cried Fenton. “I’ve read half a dozen descriptions of it lately. Great town, that.”
“The houses look like boxes from here,” Jimmie observed.
“Of course,” Peter replied, “they are all two-story houses, square, with double balconies all screened in. Might be Philadelphia, eh?”
There were smooth roads in front of the houses, and there were yards where flowers were growing, and where neatly dressed children were playing. Jimmie turned from the homelike scene to Frank.
“I thought there would be something new down here,” he complained. “This is just like a town up the Hudson.”
“Jimmie expected to find people living in tents made out of animal skins,” laughed George. “He thinks the natives eat folks alive.”
“You wait until you get out of the country,” Frank said, “before you talk of cottages up the Hudson. There will be something stirring before we get off the Isthmus.”
“I hope so,” Jimmie replied. “There surely will be if we camp back there in the jungle, among the snakes and lizards.”
“Why not camp on the hills back there?” asked Jack.