“It keeps the girth reduced,” I might have replied.
“It cahn’t be done,” dogmatized the monopolist. “Absurd! Why—why—a man cahn’t travel on foot in Colombia. His social standing depends on how fine a mule he rides. If he walked, he’d be taken for a bally peon, lose his caste entirely, y’ know, and all that sort of thing.”
“Horrible!” I gasped.
“Besides, you’ve got to have a mule-train to carry your tent and bed and supplies and.... Why, what on earth would you eat?”
“Huts ...” I began.
“Eh? Of the natives? Of course, but they haven’t a blessed thing to eat, y’ know. They live on corn cakes and beans, and bananas and bread, and that sort of thing. Now and then a chicken perhaps, but you’d starve to death. And if they saw a white man coming, they’d know he had a lot of money and rob him. Bandits and that sort of thing, y’ know. And how are you going to cross the rivers—?”
“Swim—” I tried to say, but the sentence was drowned in his cataract of words.
“And the mud! Why, bless me, one time a party was going along the road in Colombia and they saw a hat, an English hat, lying in a mud-hole. One of them started to kick it, when a man’s voice shouted:
“’Ere, stop it! That’s my bally ’ead!’
“‘What on earth are you doing down there?’ said the party.