The "Speakities," the colored people of the jungle, all believe in lost treasure and are superstitious regarding the evil spirits which are guarding it. Some have even bits of Spanish gold which have been found. Indeed, true treasure trove is frequent—if the treasure be not great.
We made but slow progress in the jungle. Rainy weather and consequent mud held us. I changed my guides three times. None cared to go far from home. Two nights were spent in the scantiest shelter. Thousands of flaming fireflies lit the floating mists which along the edge of a jungle clearing looked like phantoms living in dark houses. The wraiths were of unstable dimensions, now swelling to a bank of mist, now tailing away to nothingness. But the fireflies lighted their way—myriads of fireflies. I lay in all the clothes I possessed and in my boots and wearing gloves, but still the mosquitoes bit. How combat a foe that you actually take in with your breath!
Tongues of fire among white mists in intense darkness, howling of monkeys, the creaking and wailing and prolonged noise of insects in the trees, mosquitoes as noiseless and attentive as breath, the air not vital, suffocating—of such were the nights. In a hotel you would turn and turn, but something in the jungle constrains you to lie like one dead all the night long, and that something also banishes thought.
There breaks out the throb of a native drum, one only, but you cannot say where it comes from. It is far away, it is close at your ear—it is wandering in the jungle. Who could be beating it, and why? But it is no matter. Your eyes close. You fall into a light slumber and lie dreamlessly—you cannot estimate how long. But suddenly horror breaks upon your soul. You start up; you look around, you fall back in a cold sweat. A roaring as of lions has torn through your consciousness. You think a puma has found you, and then, as suddenly, you laugh and relax. It is a pack of night-howling monkeys, beating their hairy breasts high among the branches and howling like lost souls. A vague thought enters the mind, the lost souls of those who murdered Indians for their gold....
Morning comes and proves that each bad night was but a bad dream, a nightmare and not God's creation. For even over the "white man's grave" it is fresh, with fair rose colors in the sky.
The natives think that I am a gringo surveyor planning a new road, and are quite pleased. They have never heard of Balboa or of Drake, or indeed of any one except Morgan. They think the Camino Real was built about fifty years ago. They know nothing. But I found them extremely dignified and courteous. The women seemed especially modest and discreet, and those stories of the Speakities selling their young girls for a few dollars and of the Indians selling their children are not true except of the people on the coast, those corrupted by traders.
The men and women are not "married," but then there are no priests. Religion is nothing to them, but something of ethics is instinctive. They are said to be poor workers. It is hard to tempt them out of the jungle to do a day's work for pay. They do not want a victrola or a five-foot shelf of books. A few bright cottons for the women and powder for the men is all they ask. Money is scarce. In the depths of the jungle Chinamen keep little stores with a daily turnover of about twenty-five cents. An opened packet is a stock of cigarettes, and they sell them one at a time. They will even sell a half of a cigarette—the only people in the world who would undertake such a trade.
I wondered at the swarm of children of these Chinamen, begotten of their black wives. "What will you do with them when you make your fortune?" I asked one.
"The best boys I take with me to China—the rest I leave behind," he said.
I found that in the native huts I never had to pay for hospitality. It is true, however, that whole families enjoyed my provisions—gloated over tinned milk, drank mug after mug of dense Nombre de Dios coffee, ate chocolate as a wonderful novelty. In return, they would put in the midst of the red mud floor a large pot of rice and pieces of smoked fish and forest berries soaked in brine. They brought down branches of fat, little, cream-colored bananas from the roof. A parrot would lift itself by its beak on to my fingers whilst I ate, and in the same way up my coat to my shoulder, calling and out-calling its mate who was perched on an ox-limbed woman in colored overalls. In such a hut I met Martinez, a man with no arms and only one eye. He had lost his members dynamiting fish. Martinez had hooks tightly corded to the stumps of his wrists, and had learned to do all that most of us can do with hands—thus, he struck a match and lighted a cigarette, he shouldered my knapsack, he lifted down an old gun from the wall, he slung it on his back. Even using hooks for hands he was a good shot with a gun.