"Do they raise anything here besides alligators, snakes, lizards, and monkeys?" Walter asked the captain, who was looking on, while sipping his morning cup of black coffee.
Glancing up, the captain good-humoredly replied, "Oh, yes; they raise plantains, bananas, oranges, limes, lemons, chocolate-nuts, cocoanuts——"
"Pardon me," Walter interrupted; "those things are luxuries. I meant things of real value, sir."
"A very proper distinction," the captain replied, looking a little surprised. "Well, then, before you get across you will probably see hundreds of mahogany trees, logwood trees, fustic and Brazil-wood trees, to say nothing of other dye-woods, more or less valuable, growing all about you."
"Oh, yes, sir, I've seen all those woods you tell of coming out of vessels at home, but never growing. Somehow I never thought of them before as trees."
"Then there is cochineal, indigo, sugar, Indian corn, coffee, tobacco, cotton, hides, vanilla, some India rubber——"
Walter looked sheepish. "I see now how silly my question was. Please excuse my ignorance."
"That's all right," said the captain pleasantly. "Don't ever be afraid to ask about what you want to know. I suppose I've carried twenty thousand passengers across, and you are positively the first one to ask about anything except eating, sleeping, or when we are going to get there."
The two succeeding days were like the first, except that the river grew more and more shallow in proportion as it was ascended, and the country more and more hilly and broken. This furnished a new experience, as every now and then the boats would ground on some sand-bar, when all hands would have to tumble out into the water to lighten them over the rift, or wade ashore to be picked up again at some point higher up, after a fatiguing scramble through the dense jungle. "Whew! This is what I calls working your passage," was Bill's quiet comment, as he and Walter stood together on the bank, breathing hard, after making one of these forced excursions for half a mile.
"Is here where they talk of building a canal?" Walter asked in amazement, casting an oblique glance into the pestilential swamps around him. "Surely, they can't be in earnest."