Carving a Cocoa-nut

Carving a Cocoa-nut (1877) Cornhill Magazine

THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT.

By GRANT ALLEN.

FOR many centuries the occult problem how to account for the milk in the cocoa-nut has awakened the profoundest interest alike of ingenious infancy and of maturer scientific age. Though it can not be truthfully affirmed of it, as of the cosmogony or creation of the world, in "The Vicar of Wakefield," that it "has puzzled the philosophers of all ages" (for Sanchoniathon was certainly ignorant of the very existence of that delicious juice, and Manetho doubtless went to his grave without ever having tasted it fresh from the nut under a tropical veranda), yet it may be safely asserted that for the last three hundred years the philosopher who has not at some time or other of his life meditated upon that abstruse question, is unworthy of such an exalted name. The cosmogony and the milk in the cocoa-nut are, however, a great deal closer together in thought than Sanchoniathon or Manetho, or the rogue who quoted them so glibly, is ever at all likely, in his wildest moments, to have imagined.

The cocoa-nut, in fact, is a subject well deserving of the most sympathetic treatment at the gentle hands of grateful humanity. No other plant is useful to us in so many diverse and remarkable manners. It has been truly said of that friend of man, the domestic pig, that he is all good, from the end of his snout to the tip of his tail; but even the pig, though he furnishes us with so many necessaries or luxuries—from tooth-brushes to sausages, from ham to lard, from pepsine-wine to pork pies—does not nearly approach, in the multiplicity and variety of his virtues, the all-sufficing and world-supplying cocoa-nut. A Chinese proverb says that there are as many useful properties in the cocoa-nut palm as there are days in the year; and a Polynesian saying tells us that the man who plants a cocoa-nut plants meat and drink, hearth and home, vessels and clothing, for himself and his children after him. Like the great Mr. Whiteley, the invaluable palm-tree might modestly advertise itself as a universal provider. The solid part of the nut supplies food almost alone to thousands of people daily, and the milk serves them for drink, thus acting as an efficient filter to the water absorbed by the roots in the most polluted or malarious regions. If you tap the flower-stalk you get a sweet juice, which can be boiled down into the peculiar sugar called (in the charming dialect of commerce) jaggery; or it can be fermented into a very nasty spirit known as palm-wine, toddy, or arrack; or it can be mixed with bitter herbs and roots to make that delectable compound "native beer." If you squeeze the dry nut you get cocoa-nut oil, which is as good as lard for frying when fresh, and is "an excellent substitute for butter at breakfast," on tropical tables. Under the mysterious name of copra (which most of us have seen with awe described in the market reports as "firm" or "weak," "receding" or "steady") it forms the main or only export of many oceanic islands, and is largely imported into this realm of England, where the thicker portion is called stearine, and used for making sundry candles with fanciful names, while the clear oil is employed for burning in ordinary lamps. In the process of purification, it yields glycerine; and it enters largely into the manufacture of most better-class soaps. The fiber that surrounds the nut makes up the other mysterious article of commerce known as coir, which is twisted into stout ropes, or woven into cocoa-nut matting and ordinary door-mats. Brushes and brooms are also made of it, and it is used, not always in the most honest fashion, in place of real horse-hair, in stuffing cushions. The shell, cut in half, supplies good cups, and is artistically carved by the Polynesians, Japanese, Hindoos, and other benighted heathen, who have not yet learned the true methods of civilized machine-made shoddy manufacture. The leaves serve as excellent thatch; on the flat blades, prepared like papyrus, the most famous Buddhist manuscripts are written; the long mid-ribs or branches (strictly speaking, the leaf-stalks) answer admirably for rafters, posts, or fencing; the fibrous sheath at the base is a remarkable natural imitation of cloth, employed for strainers, wrappers, and native hats; while the trunk, or stem, passes in carpentry under the name of porcupine-wood, and produces beautiful effects as a wonderfully-colored cabinet-maker's material. These are only a few selected instances out of the innumerable uses of the cocoa-nut palm.

Apart even from the manifold merits of the tree that bears it, the milk itself has many and great claims to our respect and esteem, as everybody who has ever drunk it in its native surroundings will enthusiastically admit. In England, to be sure, the white milk in the dry nuts is a very poor stuff, sickly, and strong-flavored and rather indigestible. But in the tropics, cocoa-nut milk, or, as we oftener call it there, cocoa-nut water, is a very different and vastly superior sort of beverage. At eleven o'clock every morning, when you are hot and tired with the day's work, your black servant, clad from head to foot in his cool clean white linen suit, brings you in a tall soda-glass full of a clear, light, crystal liquid, temptingly displayed against the yellow background of a chased Benares brass-work tray. The lump of ice bobs enticingly up and down in the center of the tumbler, or clinks musically against the edge of the glass as he carries it along. You take the cool cup thankfully and swallow it down at one long draught; fresh as a May morning, pure as an English hill-side spring, delicate as—well, as cocoa-nut water. None but itself can be its parallel. It is certainly the most delicious, dainty, transparent, crystal drink ever invented. How did it get there, and what is it for?

In the early green stage at which cocoa-nuts are generally picked for household use in the tropics, the shell hasn't yet solidified into a hard, stony coat, but still remains quite soft enough to be readily cut through with a sharp table-knife—just like young walnuts picked for pickling. If you cut one across while it's in this unsophisticated state, it is easy enough to see the arrangement of the interior, and the part borne by the milk in the development and growth of the mature nut. The ordinary tropical way of opening cocoa-nuts for table, indeed, is by cutting off the top of the shell and rind in successive slices, at the end where the three pores are situated, until you reach the level of the water, which fills up the whole interior. The nutty part around the inside of the shell is then extremely soft and jelly-like, so that it can be readily eaten with a spoon: but as a matter of fact very few people ever do eat the flesh at all. After their first few months in the tropics, they lose the taste for this comparatively indigestible part, and confine themselves entirely (like patients at a German spa) to drinking the water. A young cocoa-nut is thus seen to consist, first of a green outer skin, then of a fibrous coat, which afterward becomes the hair, and next of a harder shell which finally gets quite woody; while inside all comes the actual seed or unripe nut itself. The office of the cocoa-nut water is the deposition of the nutty part around the side of the shell; it is, so to speak, the mother-liquid, from which the harder eatable portion is afterward derived. This state is not uncommon in embryo seeds. In a very young pea, for example, the inside is quite watery, and only the outer skin is at all solid, as we have all observed when green peas first come into season. But the special peculiarity of the cocoa-nut consists in the fact that this liquid condition of the interior continues even after the nut is ripe, and that is the really curious point about the milk in the cocoa-nut which does actually need accounting for.

In order to understand it one ought to examine a cocoa-nut in the act of budding, and to do this it is by no means necessary to visit the West Indies or the Pacific Islands; all you need to do is to ask a Covent Garden fruit-salesman to get you a few "growers." On the voyage to England, a certain number of precocious cocoa-nuts, stimulated by the congenial warmth and damp of most ship-holds, usually begin to sprout before their time; and these waste nuts are sold by the dealers at a low rate to East End children and inquiring botanists. An examination of a "grower" very soon convinces one what is the use of the milk in the cocoa-nut.

It must be duly bone in mind, to begin with, that the prime end and object of the nut is not to be eaten raw by the ingenious monkey, or to be converted by lordly man into cocoa-nut biscuits, or cocoa-nut pudding, but simply and solely to reproduce the cocoa-nut palm in sufficient numbers to future generations. For this purpose the nut has slowly acquired by natural selection a number of protective defenses against its numerous enemies, which serve to guard it admirably in the native state from almost all possible animal depredators. First of all, the actual nut or seed itself consists of a tiny embryo plant, placed just inside the softest of the three pores or pits at the end of the shell, and surrounded by a vast quantity of nutritious pulp, destined to feed and support it during its earliest unprotected days, if not otherwise diverted by man or monkey. But, as whatever feeds a young plant will also feed an animal, and as many animals betray a felonious desire to appropriate to their own wicked ends the food-stuffs laid up by the palm for the use of its own seedling, the cocoa-nut has been compelled to inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very solid and defensive shell. And, once more, since the palm grows at a very great height from the ground—I have seen them up to ninety feet in favorable circumstances—this shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the cocoa-nut gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best adapted among numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all its kind in past time.

Now, when the cocoa-nut has actually reached the ground at last, and proceeds to sprout in the spot where chance (perhaps in the bodily shape of a disappointed monkey) has chosen to cast it, these numerous safeguards and solid envelopes naturally begin to prove decided nuisances to the embryo within. It starts under the great disadvantage of being hermetically sealed within a solid wooden shell, so that no water can possibly get at it to aid it as most other seeds are aided in the process of germination. Fancy yourself a seed-pea, anxious to sprout, but coated all round with a hard covering of impermeable sealing-wax, and you will be in a position faintly to appreciate the unfortunate predicament of a grower cocoa-nut. Natural selection, however—that deus ex machina of modern science, which can perform such endless wonders, if only you give it time enough to work in and variations enough to work upon—natural selection has come to the rescue of the unhappy plant by leaving it a little hole at the top of the shell, out of which it can push its feathery green head without difficulty. Everybody knows that if you look at the sharp end of a cocoa-nut you will see three little brown pits or depressions on its surface. Most people also know that two of these are firmly stopped up (for a reason to which I shall presently recur), but that the third one is only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can be easily bored through with a pocket-knife, so as to let the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we have all learned during our ardent pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a small, roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, which knob is in fact the embryo palm or seedling, for whose ultimate benefit the whole arrangement (in brown and green) has been invented. That is very much the way with man: he notices what concerns his own appetite, and omits all the really important parts of the whole subject. We think the use of the hole is to let out the milk; but the nut knows that its real object is to let out the seedling. The knob grows out at last into the young plantlet, and it is by means of the soft hole that it makes its escape through the shell to the air and the sunshine which it seeks without.

This brings us really down at last to the true raison d’être for the milk in the cocoa-nut. As the seed or kernel can not easily get at much water from outside, it has a good supply of water laid up for it ready beforehand within its own encircling shell. The mother-liquid from which the pulp or nutty part has been deposited remains in the center, as the milk, till the tiny embryo begins to sprout. As soon as it does so, the little knob which was at first so very small enlarges rapidly and absorbs the water, till it grows out into a big, spongy cellular mass, which at last almost fills up the entire shell. At the same time, its other end pushes its way out through the soft hole, and then gives birth to a growing bud at the top—the future stem and leaves—and to a number of long threads beneath—the future roots. Meanwhile, the spongy mass inside begins gradually to absorb all the nutty part, using up its oils and starches for the purpose of feeding the young plant above, until it is of an age to expand its leaves to the open tropical sunlight and shift for itself in the struggle for life. It seems at first sight very hard to understand how any tissue so solid as the pulp of cocoa-nut can be thus softened and absorbed without any visible cause; but in the subtile chemistry of living vegetation such a transformation is comparatively simple and easy to perform. Nature sometimes works much greater miracles than this in the same way: for example, what is called vegetable ivory, a substance so solid that it can be carved or turned only with great difficulty, is really the kernel of another palm-nut, allied to the cocoa-palm, and its very stony particles are all similarly absorbed during germination by the dissolving power of the young seedling.

Why, however, has the cocoa-nut three pores at the top instead of one, and why are two out of the three so carefully and firmly sealed up? The explanation of this strange peculiarity is only to be found in the ancestral history of the cocoa-nut kind. Most nuts, indeed, start in their earlier stage as if they meant to produce two or more seeds each; but, as they ripen, all the seeds except one become abortive. The almond, for example, has in the flower two seeds or kernels to each nut; but in the ripe state there is generally only one, though occasionally we find an almond with two—a philopena, as we commonly call it—just to keep in memory the original arrangement of its earlier ancestors. The reason for this is that plants whose fruits have no special protection for their seeds are obliged to produce a great many of them at once, in order that one seed in a thousand may finally survive the onslaughts of their Argus-eyed enemies; but, when they learn to protect themselves by hard coverings from birds and beasts, they can dispense with some of these supernumerary seeds, and put more nutriment into each one of those that they still retain. Compare, for example, the innumerable small round seedlets of the poppy-head with the solitary large and richly-stored seed of the walnut, or the tiny black specks of mustard and cress with the single compact and well-filled seed of the filbert and the acorn. To the very end, however, most nuts begin in the flower as if they meant to produce a whole capsuleful of small unstored and unprotected seeds, like their original ancestors; it is only at the last moment that they recollect themselves, suppress all their ovules except one, and store that one with all the best and oiliest food-stuffs at their disposal. The nuts, in fact, have learned by long experience that it is better to be the only son and heir of a wealthy house, set up in life with a good capital to begin upon, than to be one of a poor family of thirteen needy and unprovided children.

Now, the cocoa-nuts are descended from a great tribe—the palms and lilies—which have as their main distinguishing peculiarity the arrangement of parts in their flowers and fruits by threes each. For example, in the most typical flowers of this great group, there are three green outer calyx-pieces, three bright-colored petals, three long outer stamens, three short inner stamens, three valves to the capsule, and three seeds or three rows of seeds in each fruit. Many palms still keep pretty well to this primitive arrangement, but a few of them which have specially protected or highly developed fruits or nuts have lost in their later stages the threefold disposition in the fruit, and possess only one seed, often a very large one. There is no better and more typical nut in the whole world than a cocoa-nut—that is to say, from our present point of view at least, though the fear of that awful person, the botanical Smelfungus, compels me to add that this is not quite technically true. Smelfungus, indeed, would insist upon it that the cocoa-nut is not a nut at all, and would thrill us with the delightful information, innocently conveyed in that delicious dialect of which he is so great a master, that it is really "a drupaceous fruit with a fibrous mesocarp." Still, in spite of Smelfungus with his nice, hair-splitting distinctions, it remains true that humanity at large will still call a nut a nut, and that the cocoa-nut is the highest known development of the peculiar nutty tactics. It has the largest and most richly stored seed of any known plant; and this seed is surrounded by one of the hardest and most unmanageable of any known shells. Hence the cocoa-nut has readily been able to dispense with the three kernels which each nut used in its earlier and less developed days to produce. But though the palm has thus taken to reducing the number of its seeds in each fruit to the lowest possible point consistent with its continued existence at all, it still goes on retaining many signs of its ancient threefold arrangement. The ancestral and most deeply ingrained habits persist in the earlier stages; it is only in the mature form that the later acquired habits begin fully to predominate. Even so our own boys pass through an essentially savage childhood of ogres and fairies, bows and arrows, sugar-plums and barbaric nursery tales, as well as a romantic boyhood of mediaeval chivalry and adventure, before they steady down into that crowning glory of our race, the solid, sober, matter-of-fact, commercial British Philistine. Hence the cocoa-nut in its unstripped state is roughly triangular in form, its angles answering to the separate three fruits of simpler palms; and it has three pits or weak places in the shell, through which the embryos of the three original kernels used to force their way out. But as only one of them is now needed, that one alone is left soft; the other two, which would be merely a source of weakness to the plant if unprotected, are covered in the existing nut by harder shell. Doubtless they serve in part to deceive the too inquisitive monkey or other enemy, who probably concludes that, if one of the pits is hard and impermeable, the other two are so likewise.

Though I have now, I hope, satisfactorily accounted for the milk in the cocoa-nut, and incidentally for some other matters in its economy as well, I am loath to leave the young seedling, whom I have brought so far on his way, to the tender mercies of the winds and storms and tropical animals, some of whom are extremely fond of his juicy and delicate shoots. Indeed, the growing point or bud of most palms is a very pleasant succulent vegetable, and one kind—the West Indian mountain-cabbage—deserves a better and more justly descriptive name, for it is really much more like seakale or asparagus. I shall try to follow our young seedling on in life, therefore, so as to give, while I am about it, a fairly comprehensive and complete biography of a single flourishing cocoa-nut palm.

Beginning, then, with the fall of the nut from the parent-tree, the troubles of the future palm confront it at once in the shape of the nut-eating crab. This evil-disposed crustacean is common around the sea-coast of the Eastern tropical islands, which is also the region mainly affected by the cocoa-nut palm; for cocoa-nuts are essentially shore-loving trees, and thrive best in the immediate neighborhood of the sea. Among the fallen nuts, the clumsy-looking thief of a crab (his appropriate Latin name is Birgus latro) makes great and dreaded havoc. To assist him in his unlawful object he has developed a pair of front legs, with specially strong and heavy claws, supplemented by a last or tail-end pair armed only with very narrow and slender pincers. He subsists entirely upon a cocoa-nut diet. Setting to work upon a big fallen nut—with the husk on, cocoa-nuts measure in the raw state about twelve inches the long way—he tears off all the coarse fiber bit by bit, and gets down at last to the hard shell. Then he hammers away with his heavy claw on the softest eye-hole till he has pounded an opening right through it. This done he twists round his body so as to turn his back upon the cocoa-nut he is operating upon (crabs are never famous either for good manners or gracefulness) and proceeds awkwardly but effectually to extract all the white kernel or pulp through the breach with his narrow pair of hind pincers. Like man, too, the robber-crab knows the value of the outer husk as well as of the eatable nut itself, for he collects the fiber in surprising quantities to line his burrow and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs and the rapacity and cunning of all-appropriating man! The spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fiber it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk on his own account, and then he eats the industrious crab who has laid it all up, while he melts down the great lump of fat under the robber's capacious tail, and sometimes gets from it as much as a good quart of what may be practically considered as limpid cocoa-nut oil. Sic vos non vobis is certainly the melancholy refrain of all natural history. The cocoa-nut palm intends the oil for the nourishment of its own seedling; the crab feloniously appropriates it and stores it up under his capacious tail for future personal use; the Malay steals it again from the thief for his own purposes; and ten to one the Dutch or English merchant beguiles it from him with sized calico or poisoned rum, and transmits it to Europe, where it serves to lighten our nights and assist at our matutinal tub, to point a moral and adorn the present tale.

If, however, our cocoa-nut is lucky enough to escape the robber-crabs, the pigs, and the monkeys, as well as to avoid falling into the hands of man, and being converted into the copra of commerce, or sold from a costermonger's barrow in the chilly streets of ungenial London at a penny a slice, it may very probably succeed in germinating after the fashion I have already described, and pushing up its head through the surrounding foliage to the sunlight above. As a rule, the cocoa-nut has been dropped by its mother-tree on the sandy soil of a sea-beach; and this is the spot it best loves, and where it grows to the stateliest height. Sometimes, however, it falls into the sea itself, and then the loose husk buoys it up, so that it floats away bravely till it is cast by the waves upon some distant coral reef or desert island. It is this power of floating and surviving a long voyage that has dispersed the cocoa-nut so widely among oceanic islands, where so few plants are generally to be found. Indeed, on many atolls or isolated reefs (for example, on Keeling Island) it is the only tree or shrub that grows in any quantity, and on it the pigs, the poultry, the ducks, and the land-crabs of the place entirely subsist. In any case, wherever it happens to strike, the young cocoa-nut sends up at first a fine rosette of big, spreading leaves, not raised as afterward on a tall stem, but springing direct from the ground in a wide circle, something like a very big and graceful fern. In this early stage nothing can be more beautiful or more essentially tropical in appearance than a plantation of young cocoa-nuts. Their long, feathery leaves spreading out in great clumps from the buried stock, and waving with lithe motion before the strong sea-breeze of the Indies, are the very embodiment of those deceptive ideal tropics which, alas! are to be found in actual reality nowhere on earth save in the artificial palm-houses at Kew, and the Casino Gardens at too entrancing Monte Carlo.

For the first two or three years the young palms must be well watered, and the soil around them opened; after which the tall, graceful stem begins to rise rapidly into the open air. In this condition it may be literally said to make the tropics—those fallacious tropics, I mean, of painters and poets, of "Enoch Arden" and of "Locksley Hall." You may observe that, whenever an artist wants to make a tropical picture, he puts a group of cocoa-nut palms in the foreground, as much as to say, "You see there's no deception; these are the genuine, unadulterated tropics." But as to painting the tropics without the palms, he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the ordinary palm-type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their pollen. The flower, however, is fertilized by the wind, which carries the pollen-grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to an enormous size, and ripen very slowly, even under the brilliant tropical sun. (I will admit that the tropics are hot, though in other respects I hold them to be arrant impostors, like that precocious American youth who announced on his tenth birthday that in his opinion life wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.) But the worst thing about the cocoa-nut palm, the missionaries always say, is the fatal fact that, when once fairly started, it goes on bearing fruit uninterruptedly for forty years. This is very immoral and wrong of the ill-conditioned tree, because it encourages the idyllic Polynesian to lie under the palms all day long, cooling his limbs in the sea occasionally, sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neæra's hair, and waiting for the nuts to drop down in due time, when he ought (according to European notions) to be killing himself with hard work under a blazing sky, raising cotton, sugar, indigo, and coffee, for the immediate benefit of the white merchant,and the ultimate advantage of the British public. It doesn't enforce habits of steady industry and perseverance, the good missionaries say; it doesn't induce the native to feel that burning desire for Manchester piece-goods and the other blessings of civilization which ought properly to accompany the propagation of the missionary in foreign parts. You stick your nut in the sand; you sit by a few years and watch it growing; you pick up the ripe fruits as they fall from the tree; and you sell them at last for illimitable red cloth to the Manchester piece-goods merchant. Nothing could be more simple or more satisfactory. And yet it is difficult to see the precise moral distinction between the owner of a cocoa-nut grove in the South-Sea Islands and the owner of a coal-mine or a big estate in commercial England. Each lounges decorously through life after his own fashion; only the one lounges in a Russia-leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, while the other lounges in a nice soft dust-heap beside a rolling surf in Tahiti or the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Curiously enough, at a little distance from the sandy levels or alluvial flats of the sea-shore, the sea-loving cocoa-nut will not bring its nuts to perfection. It will grow, indeed, but it will not thrive or fruit in due season. On the coast-line of Southern India, immense groves of cocoa-nuts fringe the shore for miles and miles together; and in some parts, as in Travancore, they form the chief agricultural staple of the whole country. "The state has hence facetiously been called Cocoanutcore," says its historian; which charmingly illustrates the true Anglo-Indian notion of what constitutes facetiousness, and ought to strike the last nail into the coffin of a competitive examination system. A good tree in full bearing should produce one hundred and twenty cocoa-nuts in a season; so that a very small grove is quite sufficient to maintain a respectable family in decency and comfort. Ah, what a mistake the English climate made when it left off its primitive warmth of the Tertiary period, and got chilled by the ice and snow of the Glacial epoch down to its present misty and dreary wheat-growing condition! If it were not for that, those odious habits of steady industry and perseverance might never have been developed in ourselves at all, and we might be lazily picking copra off our own cocoa-palms, to this day, to export in return for the piece-goods of some Arctic Manchester situated somewhere about the north of Spitzbergen or the New Siberian Islands.

Even as things stand at the present day, however, it is wonderful how much use we modern Englishmen now make in our own houses of this far Eastern nut, whose very name still bears upon its face the impress of its originally savage origin. From morning to night we never leave off being indebted to it. We wash with it as old brown Windsor or glycerine soap the moment we leave our beds. We walk across our passages on the mats made from its fiber. We sweep our rooms with its brushes, and wipe our feet on it as we enter our doors. As rope, it ties up our trunks and packages; in the hands of the house-maids it scrubs our floors; or else, woven into coarse cloth, it acts as a covering for bales and furniture sent by rail or steamboat. The confectioner undermines our digestion in early life with cocoanut candy; the cook tempts us later on with cocoa-nut cake; and Messrs. Huntley and Palmer cordially invite us to complete the ruin with cocoa-nut biscuits. We anoint our chapped hands with one of its preparations after washing; and grease the wheels of our carriages with another to make them run smoothly. Finally, we use the oil to burn in our reading-lamps, and light ourselves at last to bed with stearine-candles. Altogether, an amateur census of a single small English cottage results in the startling discovery that it contains twenty-seven distinct articles which owe their origin in one way or another to the cocoa-nut palm. And yet we affect, in our black ingratitude, to despise the question of the milk in the cocoa-nut.—Cornhill Magazine.

Peter, A True Story

PETER.
(A TRUE STORY.)

A short story from the “Little Folk’s Illustrated Annual” 1899. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, August 2010.

DOROTHY lived with her grandparents on a little farm among the mountains. She loved animals, and was never without a pet of some kind.
One day as Dorothy's Grandfather was taking the cow to pasture, he noticed three little creatures playing near a large rock. He thought they were young foxes, and he started to catch one; but before he could reach the place two of the little fellows had tumbled into their hole. The other was about half in when Dorothy's Grandfather grabbed him.
It was not a fox, but a baby woodchuck,— a queer, fuzzy little ball of fur with beady black eyes, stumpy tail, and big yellow teeth.
The baby woodchuck bit, and scratched, and struggled to get away. But at last he was tied in a handkerchief, and then he was carried to Dorothy.
Dorothy was delighted with this new and strange pet; and though her Grandfather said woodchucks rarely became tame, she was sure this one would. She named him "Peter," and then took down her old squirrel cage, and lined it with soft hay and placed him in it, with some fresh-cut clover and a little dish of water.
For a few days Peter was very wild. He behaved very badly. He insisted on spilling his water, and he would snap and bite whenever his little mistress replaced it. But by and by he saw that Dorothy did not mean to hurt him. Then he gave up biting. In two weeks he would drink from his dish without upsetting it, and would nibble clover from Dorothy's hand, and let her scratch his funny little head.
In a month Peter had grown to twice his size, and had become so tame that he would let Dorothy take him in her arms and carry him about.
One day little Dorothy forgot to fasten the cage door, and Peter walked out. But he did not go far, and went back to his cage of his own accord. The door was never fastened again, and all day long Peter would play about the veranda or nibble grass in front of the house. He always returned to his wire house for the night. By this time he had learned to answer to his name. He would run to Dorothy whenever she called him.
One day Dorothy's Grandmother was baking cookies, and she gave one to Peter. It was funny to see the little woodchuck taste it, then taste again, as if he were not quite able to make up his mind whether he liked it or not. Finally he decided that he did like it and he ate it all. From this time, cookies were his favorite food. As soon as Dorothy's Grandmother began to bake he would run to the kitchen, and sit on his haunches in the doorway, and wait patiently until his cooky was given him; then he would scamper off to one of his grassy nooks and eat it at his leisure. He would hold it in his fore-paws and nibble here and there in the very cunningest way until it was all gone.
Several times during the summer Peter wandered off to the woods and spent the day. At last one cool October day Peter went off and did not return.
Dorothy was afraid some one had killed him. All winter long she mourned for Peter.
One fine morning in April as Dorothy was walking down the road with her Grandfather they espied a big red woodchuck sitting on a stump in a field.
"Oh, Grandpa!" cried Dorothy, "see that woodchuck! doesn't he look just like my dear old Peter?"
"Perhaps it is Peter," said her Grandfather. "Call him and see."
Stepping to the side of the road, Dorothy waved her hands and called, "Peter Peter! come here Peter!"
And what do you think happened? Why, the big red woodchuck first looked at Dorothy for a minute, with his head on one side, and then came running across the field— and it was her dear old Peter, safe and sound, coming back to her after his long winter sleep.
Dorothy took the great red fellow in her arms and hugged and kissed him. Peter seemed to share her delight. He rubbed his nose against her cheek and grumbled down in his throat as woodchucks do when they are pleased.
Of course Dorothy carried Peter home and fed and petted him, to make up for all the time he had been away. That afternoon Dorothy's Grandma got out her baking tins and rolling pin. And the moment Peter heard the sound, he started up and ran to the kitchen door, and took his old place again, to wait for his cooky. So you see that during his long winter sleep he had not forgotten about the cookies.
One day Dorothy's Grandpa found that his vegetables had been nibbled off, and as Peter had never been known to go into the garden he thought some wild woodchuck had made his home close by to be near Peter. That night he set a trap. The next day when he visited the trap, there, caught fast by one leg, was Dorothy's Peter!
Poor Peter's leg was broken. He moaned and groaned while it was being bandaged. He was put to bed, and Dorothy smoothed him and petted him, and cried over him, and she felt that Peter understood how sorry she was for him.
After a long time Peter was able to go about as well as ever, but he never again showed any inclination to go into the garden.
A. Hyatt Verrill.

There are at least three more of AHV's illustrations in this book. Here is a Whipoorwill.

Seeking the Copper Mountain

Seeking the Copper Mountain

by Hyatt Verrill

From The Wide World magazine, May 1923; digitized by Doug Frizzle January 2009.

Illustrated by John De Walton, Photos by the Author

Meeting a native who claimed to know the location of a mountain of fabulously rich copper ore, the Author and a companion made an eventful journey through the little-known province of Veraguas, part of the Republic of Panama. Both afloat and on the trail they met with their fill of adventure, as this chatty article shows.

AS a rule people think of Panama as a well-known country, a tiny republic devoid of all interest apart from the Canal. Few realize that much of its area is unexplored, that few miles of the busy, up-to-date capital the highly civilized and ultramodern "Zone," and the monstrous Canal, there are districts as little known, as seldom visited, and as full of interesting and unusual scenes as though thousands of miles from anywhere. Such is Veraguas, a terra incognita to the outside world, but once the most famous spot of the New World, known for its riches as “The Golden Castle,” wherein are the oldest inhabited towns and buildings on the continent of America.

With a friend I had become somewhat interested in the mining possibilities of the country, and when one day a native bought in some samples of ore and told a wonderful tale of a "mountain of copper" on the Veraguas coast we decided it was worth investigating. Of course, neither of us took his story literally—we knew the natives' habit of exaggerating everything—but as Bert had to go up the coast to attend to the shipment of some mahogany logs we decided that, after finishing with them, it would be comparatively easy to continue by sailing vessel to the alleged copper mountain. The steamer which had been chartered to bring down the logs, and on which we were to travel to San Lorenzo, was, to use a slang expression, "some" boat. Originally built as a sand-dumper, she had been sent out from France in De Lesseps's days, and had done strenuous service until the wind-up of the ill-starred French company. Then she had been left to rot and rust until the Americans took hold, when, after a deal of patching and repairing, she had done her bit in digging the big ditch. But at last even Yankee ingenuity could no longer keep her in seagoing shape and, as the next best thing, she had been sold to the Panamanians as old iron. To the native mind, however, anything that will float is a ship, and after plugging the leaky boilers and fastening the dumping-leaves in her bottom with bolts and concrete, her new owners were quite content to trust to luck and a kind Providence to keep her afloat until she could treble their money for them. Luckily the Pacific is well named and, nine times out of ten, it is as calm as a millpond off the coast. So, although the ancient craft wheezed and rattled and protested, she pushed her way steadily across the Bay of Panama at nearly five knots an hour.

Late on the following afternoon we reached San Lorenzo Bay, a charmingly pretty spot with a lovely mile-long beach on which the lazy Pacific rollers break ceaselessly. Back from the sea the river flows between densely forested hills, while on the little flat at the mouth of the deep valley there stands a sawmill and a few tiny houses shaded by nodding coco-palms. But one forgets all about the natural charms of the place with sundown, for then the sandflies come forth in myriads and life becomes a misery until sunrise. It was with deep relief that we saw the last mahogany logs on and were free to continue our trip.

Martinelli, the Italian owner of the sawmill, who was literally "monarch of all he surveyed" hereabouts, had several sailing-craft, and not only rented us a small schooner, but volunteered to go along and show us some other outcrops of ores en route.

The schooner, it may be mentioned, was built entirely of mahogany cut in the neighbouring forest. This district is very rich in timber, especially mahogany, and the logs which Bert shipped were from forty to sixty inches in diameter, and in colour and figure far superior to Mexican or Honduras wood and almost equal to the San Domingan product.

Our crew consisted of six natives who judging by appearances, were all cut-throats or pirates; but certainly were not sailors as was proved by subsequent events. In addition, there was my black boy, Claude; a villainous-looking, half-breed ruffian, who served as cook or steward; a morose, brooding, one-eyed individual who posed as skipper; the native whose story was responsible for our expedition; and old Martinelli —fat, fiercely-moustached, a gentle voiced—in all thirteen men, which perhaps accounted for the events that transpired.

There was a good, off-shore breeze, and we soon left San Lorenzo astern and headed westward along the uninhabited Veraguas coast. By mid-afternoon the wind died out and left us rolling to the swell and baking in the merciless sun. As evening approached the men became almost panic-stricken, vowing that we should drift out to sea and be lost. So great was their fear that they forgot their ordinary laziness and toiled manfully at the clumsy sweeps until the schooner was slowly worked into shallow water and anchored.

With the land-breeze which springs up at daybreak we slipped away from our anchorage, hoping to make Bahia Honda before the wind failed. The sea, scarcely rippled by the breeze, was clear as crystal and, seated on the heel of the bowsprit, we amused ourselves for hours by watching the innumerable bright-hued fishes which played and swam about the bows. Huge yellow and violet dolphins; enormous tuna and yellow-tails; flashing blue bonita and albacore, and scores of lesser fishes were constantly in sight. It was a veritable Paradise for fishermen, and evidently had never been fished, for the fish we absolutely fearless and swam so close to the schooner and the surface that several were secured by an improvised harpoon made from the boat-hook.

MILLIONS OF SEA-SNAKES

It was while watching these interesting creatures that I caught sight of a dull brown, yellow-spotted snake about four feet in length which was swimming alongside. Its flattened tail identified it as a true sea-snake, and I called the others' attention to it. They told me that the bite of these serpents was deadly, and that they inhabited these waters in great numbers. Martinelli and the natives declared that as we approached Coiba and Jicaron Islands I would see them by hundreds, but I considered this an exaggeration and was tremendously surprised to see another and another of the snakes until, presently, they were everywhere in sight. A half mile ahead I noted a large school of porpoises jumping about, while overhead wheeled and screamed scores of sea-birds— boobies, frigate birds, pelicans and gulls— which constantly swooped down among the porpoises. Apparently there was a large school of small fish at the spot, but neither porpoises nor the birds paid the least attention to our approach and, to my amazement, I found they were feeding upon the strange sea-snakes, which actually filled the water. There were countless thousands of them, and for hours we sailed through a sea was fairly alive with the serpents, while the surface eddied and rippled with the squirming, wriggling mass.

Fortunately the breeze held all day, although fitful and baffling, and Bert and myself became thoroughly disgusted with lack of seamanship on the part of the crew. They hadn't the remotest idea how to trim sail, and when, as we were sailing dead before the wind, I winged out the sails, the skipper frowned and muttered and the moment my back was turned ordered them to be changed. In the afternoon when we swung in towards Bahia Honda and had a beam wind, the surly skipper insisted upon close-hauling all sail so that we merely drifted to leeward, and we soon discovered that we must grin and bear it unless we openly mutinied. Even Martinelli took the incompetency of the crew and skipper as a matter of course and, when we remonstrated with him, merely shrugged his shoulders and replied that "Manuel is the captain, so he must know best."

As a result of this we barely made Bahia Honda at sunset and were obliged to anchor in a very exposed position close to shore. Close as we were to the rocks, however, thirty fathoms of chain ran out ere the anchor found bottom, and when we swung around the overhanging branches of the trees fouled our mainmast. Luckily, the night was calm and everything went well, except for the discovery that the water cask leaked and that we were entirely out of water. As a result we were obliged to wait for coffee until two of the men rowed across the bay to a small island where there were a few huts and a spring. During their absence the crew amused themselves by diving overboard and gathering pearl shells from the reef along shore. They reported shell very abundant, but after bringing up a few bushels and finding no pearls they gave it up. Bahia Honda is perhaps the most perfect harbour and the most beautiful bay in Panama. Circular in outline and about six miles in diameter, it is almost completely landlocked, with a narrow entrance protected by several small islands. Stretching back from the shores are wonderful well-watered valleys flanked by heavily-wooded hills and backed by lofty mountains, while scattered about the bay are many charming islets. The water is very deep—hence the name—with as much as a hundred fathoms in places, and it teems with fish and pearl-shell beds. The shores are practically uninhabited, the only sign of man's presence being the huts of a few half-breeds who make a livelihood and lead a happy-go-lucky existence by desultory pearling. The surrounding land is exceedingly rich, the views are superb; the harbour is perfect; there are fishing, hunting, and ample opportunities for yachting, and it only needs a good hotel to transform it into the finest winter resort in the world. But this will never be, for the United States Government has long had its eyes upon Bahia Honda, and has an option upon it for a naval coaling station. But it certainly seems a pity that such a beauty-spot should ever be ruined by filthy coal-dumps, grimy docks, and the dirt, noise, and turmoil of a coaling station. So much time had been wasted in reaching Bahia Honda that Martinelli decided he could go no farther, but would return to San Lorenzo by a fishing boat. We were not sorry for this, as we imagined we could handle the crew better without him, but in this we were doomed to be woefully disappointed.

THE “SEA-DEVILS."

We left Bahia Honda with a very light breeze, but the sea, a few miles out, was ruffled with white-caps from a good wind and two big, four-masted barques were bowling along at a great clip a dozen miles off the coast. We therefore expected that our captain would make an offing and catch the breeze, but he had no such intentions. We entreated, cajoled, threatened, and even tried to bribe him, but all without avail, for he insisted on hugging the coast and trying to sail through the narrow channels between the numerous islands close to shore. The breeze was here completely cut off, and each time the schooner was laboriously brought about, by use of the sweeps, she would drift back and lose all she had gained. As we were thus drifting aimlessly about an enormous devil-fish or giant ray leaped from the water a few rods ahead, and turning in air fell with a terrific splash. Again and again the huge creature leaped, and presently it was joined by a second and third, until the resounding splashes and peculiar hissing noise of the sweeping whip-like tails could be heard on every side. Now and then one of the monsters would swim beneath our boat, plainly visible through the clear water, and the crew became absolutely panic-stricken. Despite our orders, they tugged at the sweeps and drove the schooner close in shore and anchored. It was evident that here they intended to remain, although it was not mid-afternoon, and they gave as a reason that the "sea-devils" would leap up and seize the vessel's masts and pull her over! It was useless to ridicule them or curse them for their folly, and though we fumed and swore at the delay we were obliged to give in and make the best of it. Half a mile away there was a beautiful beach, bordered by coco-palms shading a tiny village, and taking the small boat and Claude, we rowed ashore. The first man who greeted us was a coal-black negro who, to our utter surprise, spoke to us in English with a decided brogue, which at once identified him as a native of Montserrat in the Leeward Islands.

"Hello." I exclaimed, "where did you come from, and how long have you here?”

"Ahm from Montserrat, Baas," he replied "an' Ah don' right'ously know wha' time Ah been hyar, but God knows it's too long for true, Baas."

Later it transpired that he had drifted to this tiny out-of-the-way spot after tiring of labour on the Canal, like many another West Indian one finds here and there in the most distant and inaccessible parts of the Isthmus. He at once took us in charge and seemed to consider himself our self-appointed chaperon and guide; feeling perhaps, that as he was the sole representative of Great Britain in the village he must act in a sort of consular capacity. At any rate, he did his best to make us comfortable, and lorded it over the meek, half-Indian natives in great shape, proud as a peacock over his ability to converse with us in English and the fact that we condescended to talk with him. There was little enough of interest in the village, but we managed to secure a supply of fresh eggs and a couple of turkeys, as well as an abundance of delicious apples.

WE TAKE COMMAND.

The next morning we managed to get under way again, and as we saw no more devil-fishes the men were in good humour, although casting many fearful glances over the sides as we passed among the islands. We had no more than caught the full of the breeze, however, when the captain tacked and commenced to repeat his tactics of the previous day. It was evident that something would have to be done if ever we were to reach our destination, and presently a brilliant idea occurred to me. Claude had received a farewell present from the Montserratean in the shape of a jug of palm wine, and commandeering this, I proceeded to do my best to get the captain drunk. It took a lot of time and a lot of wine, but at last the deed was accomplished and the skipper slumbered noisily in the hold, whereupon we promptly shut and fastened the hatch and took command. At first the crew hesitated to obey us and looked ugly, but the sight of an automatic and a threat to throw them overboard soon brought them to terms and, trimming sail, we headed straight out to sea. Half an hour later we were bowling along to the sweeping wind with lee rail awash and the crew huddled in a frightened knot forward. By the time the rocky point that marked our objective port was sighted, curses and resounding knocks on the hatch apprised us of the fact that the skipper had regained consciousness, but we gave no heed until we swung around a little wooded island and cast anchor in a charming bay. Oddly enough, the rascal appeared to bear no resentment towards us for the treatment we had given him, and no sooner appeared on the deck than he begged for more wine, and seemed very sad when we refused it; but the scheme had worked so well that we intended to save the remainder for future emergencies. Our copper mountain native was in high spirits, and proudly pointed to the rocky shore across the bay which, sure enough, was a beautiful pale-green, and Bert and I began to believe that for once a native had not exaggerated.

With Claude bearing the precious demijohn of wine, and accompanied by our guide, we rowed ashore in high hopes, but one glance at the green rock was enough—it was merely green serpentine with no trace of ore. Nevertheless, our guide insisted that he had brought the samples from the cliffs on the other side of the bay and, leaving Claude seated on his jug, regaling himself with oranges from the tree over his head, we started along the shore towards the cliff. But everywhere we found the same serpentine formation, with no sign of copper, and thoroughly disgusted, we relieved our feelings somewhat by telling the native our opinion of him, and then retraced our way along the beach. It was bad enough to have travelled all this distance and to have wasted our time on a wild-goose chase; but the sight that greeted us as we approached the orange tree was the last straw. Curled comfortably in the shade, snoring lustily, was Claude, while a few feet away sat the captain, the cook, and one of the men—just finishing the last of the wine! All three were maudlin drunk and in no condition to do anything, but there was no use in cursing or scolding and so, after rousing Claude and relieving our minds on him, we managed to pile the crowd into the boat and start them on their way. They managed to get through the first of the surf in safety, but as the second breaker approached, the boat swung around, the wave caught it broadside on, and the next instant all were struggling in the water. Their ducking served to clear their heads, however, and eventually everyone gained the schooner safely. Much to our surprise the skipper made no objection to starting at once and, hoisting sail, we stood out for the entrance to the bay. The wind was blowing directly against us, but with a couple of tacks it would have been easy to have cleared the point. Instead of keeping the sails close-hauled and heading up into the wind, however, the miserable apology for a captain insisted in easing off his sheets and sailing free. As a result, when he came about, he was no nearer the offing than when he started. Over and over again he repeated this manoeuvre, and I longed for a supply of liquor to enable me to again get him below decks and to take charge myself. When, on the fifth tack, the schooner “missed stays" and came within a dozen feet of going on the rocks, I could stand it no longer and, unceremoniously kicking the skipper down the companion-way, I took the helm, while Bert cowed the crew and drove them forward. Then, with Claude's help, we proceeded to beat out of the bay and half an hour later cleared the point and set a course for Bahia Honda. As night came on the crew begged piteously for us to go inshore and anchor, and even the skipper joined in and promised to obey us implicitly in future if we only wouldn't tempt fate and the devils by sailing at night. But we were in control and, paying no heed, kept on our course, taking turns at the tiller, and by daybreak we passed Contreras Islands and could see Bahia Honda ahead. By this time we were thoroughly exhausted and ordered the cook to get coffee, but were informed that there was no more water. There was nothing to do but send ashore and, running close inshore, where there was a stream, we dropped the rowboat with the captain and two men. Standing off and on, we waited for them to appear, but an hour passed and there was no sign of the boat. We had just commenced to think that the rascals had deserted us when Claude spied the boat nearly a mile down the coast. As we ran in to meet and the men climbed aboard with the casks; the captain explained that at the first stream "the monkeys had prevented them from getting water, so they had been obliged to row to the next river." How they ever imagined anything so utterly ridiculous is absolutely beyond explanation, and the funny part of it was they really believed it. The wind held good all day and that evening we sailed into San Lorenzo bay and tied up at Martinelli's dock, only to find that the steamer which was to call for us had put in the day before and gone on to Panama, leaving us to get back as best we could.

It was imperative that we should be back in the capital within four days, and apparently it was an impossibility. There were no horses available, and to walk twenty miles to Soná was out of the question. The only chance seemed to be to sail to Puerto Mutis, on Montijo Bay, walk to Montijo and then ride overland to Santiago, and thence to Agua Dulce and catch the steamer for Panama. The worst of it was we had no means of knowing on what date the steamer sailed, but it was our only chance and we decided to take it, and, transferring our belongings to a small sloop, with a new crew we set sail the same night. The sloop proved a far better boat than the schooner and the men, although far from being sailors, were not the superstitious crowd we had put up with for the past week. Apart from a few hours when we were becalmed, we had no trouble and reached Puerto Mutis the following day. Here there was a telegraph office, and to our chagrin we learned that the steamer was to leave Agua Dulce on Wednesday afternoon, and it was now Monday, thus leaving us less than thirty hours of daylight to make the sixty odd miles from Montijo to Agua Dulce. To those unaccustomed to Panamanian roads and horses, this may seem ample time; but it is a good native horse that can average five miles an hour on a long trip, and the roads, always bad, were in fearful shape from the first downpours of the approaching rainy season. Moreover, there are always vexatious delays to be counted on, time necessary for meals to be taken into consideration, an altogether it seemed a human impossibility. However, we decided to make the attempt and, hastily embarking in the small boat headed up the river towards Puerto Real, The grandiose names given by the Panamanians to their villages and towns are very amusing, and Puerto Real—the Royal Port—proved to be a muddy landing place with a tumble-down, thatched shed as its only building. From there we hurried forward on foot to Montijo, a picturesque, straggling town of "dobe" houses with steep, thatched roofs and with a few more pretentious buildings of wood, roofed with ancient Spanish tiles. Everyone seemed sound asleep, the only signs of life being the mangy yelping curs, the foraging pigs and fowls in the street, and a solitary Indian girl bearing a huge red olla of water on her sleek, black head. There were a few shops, tended by drowsing, bland-faced Chinese, and after a deal of questioning the Celestials directed us to the Alcalde's house. He proved to be an ancient Spaniard clad in much-soiled pyjamas, but possessing all the courtesy and polish of a grandee. He vowed his house and all he owned was ours, invited us to breakfast, and declared it was an honour to place horses at our disposal; but he charged us profiteering prices for the coffee and eggs we ate, and the amount he demanded for the rental of his animals would have purchased a really good pony. After an hour or two, however, we succeeded in securing three ragged, raw-boned, flea-bitten nags, and a still worse pack-horse, from other residents.

Then came the question of saddles, and another house-to-house search of the town was necessary before we gathered together enough odds and ends of ancient saddlery to rig up three makeshift affairs. Never have I ridden such a bone-breaking, hard-gaited, obstinate, worthless beast as that which fell to my lot, and I verily believe that I used more energy in keeping the nag moving than he exerted in making the trip. To add to our troubles, it commenced to pour soon after we left Montijo, and we were speedily soaked to the skin and shaking with the chill wind, while the saddles became water-soaked, sodden and wrinkled, and galled us horribly.

It was a beautiful country through which we were passing, with green rolling hills divided by rich valleys through which poured noisy sparkling streams. Scattered over the hills and valleys were cultivated lands, planted with upland rice, sugar cane and yams, neatly walled with stone or fenced with brush, and with the thatched homes of their owners half-hidden among bananas and bread fruit trees. But we were in no mood to admire the scenery and hurried onward at the best speed we could get from our sorry mounts, and after six hours of torture reached the outskirts of Santiago.

AN ANCIENT CITY

Santiago, the capital of Veraguas, is a very old city, having been founded in 1521, and several of its buildings, among them the churches, date from that time. In the sixteenth century, and for a century and more thereafter, Veraguas was the richest province of the Isthmus, and Charles V. of Spain made it a Dukedom, conferring the title of Duke of Veraguas upon Don Luis de Colon—grandson of Christopher Columbus— a title which the Colon family still hold. Santiago at that time was the commercial centre of all Veraguas, and to it came merchants from far and near to sell and buy, the Santiago people paying for everything in gold-dust from the fabulously rich mines in the surrounding hills and mountains. The amount of gold which was taken from the Veraguas mines in those days is almost incredible, but documentary evidence, in the form of ancient records preserved in Santiago, proves that in 1570 over two thousand slaves were employed in the Veraguas mines, and that from ten to twelve hundredweight of gold were produced in one mining district of the province in a single year, while over four thousand pounds weight of gold was exported from Veraguas annually, without taking into consideration the precious metal used locally, kept by the Church, expended by the mineowners, or put away.

With the abolition of slavery and the uprising of the Indian slaves, as well as the wars of independence, the mines were gradually abandoned, many were lost sight of, and to-day not a single gold-mine is operated in the province—or, for that matter, in the entire Republic. Old Santiago has become of no importance, a dilapidated little country town, down-at-the-heels and shabby, reminding one of some proud old hidalgo whose poverty has reduced him to rags, but who still lives in the visionary glory of his past.

The streets are roughly paved and grass-grown; the ancient church tower bears good-sized trees sprouting from the cracks in the masonry. Many a fine old house has been given over to Chinese shops or drinking places, and the people are a polyglot race of every shade and colour. There are, however, a few neat, well-kept houses; there are good shops about the plaza; there is a hospital, a large jail, a telegraph station, and a pretty flower-filled plaza, while a few of the noble old Veraguas families still cling tenaciously to their ancestral homes. For its existence, the town depends mainly upon cattle and rice—the surrounding hills and valleys being very rich—while the adjacent plains and prairies are ideal for cattle.

On the way from Montijo I had picked up a few pieces of "float" malachite, and while awaiting our dinner I examined these on the porch of the hotel. Presently a wild-visaged horseman drew up, and after watching me intently for a moment, remarked that he knew where there were "prettier green stones than those." In reply to my questions, he stated that he had some of the stones at his home and, wheeling his pony, he dashed madly off, scattering naked children, squealing pigs, and squawking chickens from his path. Half an hour later he came dashing back and handed me some of the richest samples of copper ore I had ever seen.

Of course we were immediately interested and plied the fellow with questions. He insisted that there were quantities of the ore and that it was near, but he admitted that he had never seen it and did not know its exact location, explaining that the vein had been discovered by a friend. However, he agreed to take us to this man and promised to be ready at daybreak the next day. We realized that to look up this prospect would mean the loss of the best part of a day, but it was so alluring that we decided to attempt it, even though it meant riding all night to make up for his lost time.

The fellow didn't show up at dawn, but he did arrive by nine o'clock—which was surprisingly punctual for a native—and, mounted on fresh horses and with better saddles, we cantered out from Santiago. Fortunately the "friend" lived in the direction of Agua Dulce, so we were not going out of our way, and three miles from town our guide turned into a side trail and soon pointed out a tiny thatched hut as his friend's residence.

The only occupant was a young Indian girl whose front teeth were filed to needle-like points, and who was at once sent off in search of her husband, who soon returned with her.

During her absence our guide had made himself thoroughly at home and helped himself liberally to his friend's store of chicha and was, as a result, quite hilarious. Rushing out he seized his friend by the hand, slapped him on the back, kissed his cheeks and, dancing about, cried: "Juan, Juan, we are millionaires!"

Juan, who proved to be a Porto Rican, was a quiet, polite little chap, and gave little heed to his brigandish comrade. He had a number of additional samples, and gladly agreed to lead us to the spot where he had obtained them, as soon as he had had some breakfast.

AN ODD CHARACTER.

As we chatted while he waited for his meal, I discovered that Juan had travelled quite extensively and had even been to Mexico and the United States. When I inquired the reason for his wanderings, judge of my surprise when he informed me that he had been with a circus as a hypnotist!

In confirmation he went to an old chest and brought forth a bundle of hand-bills, testimonials, clippings, etc., all of which referred to one "Juan Fuente" and his remarkable feat of burying subjects alive while in an hypnotic state and disinterring them after several days. I have met with many surprises and many curious characters during the years I have knocked about out-of-the-way places in the tropics, but I do not think that any equalled this discovery of a skilled hypnotist and circus performer living in a thatched hut with an Indian consort in an obscure corner of Veraguas. Juan, however, seemed to take it quite as a matter of course, and assured us that he had frequently buried his Indian mate, a statement which she smilingly confirmed. Indeed, he even offered to give an exhibition then and there, but we were satisfied to take his word for it. Subsequently, however, I did witness a demonstration of his strange power, and saw him bury a man for over an hour under eight feet of earth and afterwards revive him without the least sign of injury or inconvenience on the part of the subject.

The natives’ ideas of distances are very vague, and our brigand's "near" proved to be a five hours' ride. En route we stopped for our lunch at a little village, where Señior Brigand promptly proceeded to get outrageously drunk. He soon became a great nuisance and we were all thankful when he finally became quarrelsome and was promptly arrested and locked up by the Alcalde.

When we at last reached the spot whence the copper had come we could find no trace of any more, and although Juan and a native, who lived near, searched diligently for an hour or more not a single piece of ore could they locate. Both insisted, however, that it was there and had merely been covered with mud by the rains, and at last, alter much digging about, the vein was uncovered.

It was now too late to make an examination, however, and having secured samples we headed back for the nearest village. This place, known as Atalya, was like many of the neighbouring villages of Veraguas, a most quaint and interesting spot. In these tiny, out-of-the-world hamlets time seems to have stood still. As one enters these places one seems to step back four centuries, for the people live exactly as did their ancestors in the days of Pedro Arias and the Conquistadores.

They are strictly patriarchal, and the oldest man of the most prominent family is, to all intents and purposes, the ruler. They hardly recognize the sovereignty of Panama; there are no representatives of the Republic, and the Alcalde, appointed by the governor of the province, is merely a figurehead without authority. As a rule, there are but two or three families in a village—though the population may number four or five hundred—and despite the fact that they have been intermarrying for centuries, they are a splendid, tall, muscular, well-formed lot; pure Castillian in blood, often with light complexions, fair hair, and blue eyes, and are as proud and independent as grandees. They dress exactly as did their ancestors four hundred years ago, in blouses or smocks and short trousers of homespun cotton; their saddles are exact counterparts of those of the old conquerors; they use the brass shoe-shaped stirrups of the mail-clad Dons, or the silver stirrup of the Moors; the ancient "cross" money of the sixteenth century still passes as currency among them; and many still preserve the old arms and swords of their ancestors who carved New Spain from the wilderness.

A WEIRD NIGHT RIDE.

Here, at Atalya, we stopped to rest and feed our horses and ourselves ere starting on the night ride towards Agua Dulce. By the time this was accomplished it was nearly midnight, and directions as to the trail we should follow were very vague. The night was pitch dark; we knew nothing of the innumerable narrow paths that branched and forked and crossed in a perfect maze and which, in the blackness, could hardly be distinguished from the surrounding jungle. It was of no avail to drop the reins and trust to the horses, for unless constantly urged onward they would immediately stop and commence to browse. But somehow or other we managed to keep to a path, and by sheer luck at last saw a light ahead and came to a tiny hut. After a deal of trouble the occupant was routed out and induced to give us directions for reaching the main road. From his sleepy, mumbled sentences we learned we had already passed the spot where we should have turned off, and there was nothing for it but to go back. An hour was spent without finding the branch trail, and once more we retraced our way to the old man's hut and bribed him to go with us. When he showed us the way we no longer wondered that we had missed it, for it was merely a gully, filled with stones, which bore no resemblance to a road, but the old fellow directed us to go straight ahead until we sighted a telegraph line and then to follow that to the right. To sight a telegraph wire in the inky night seemed hopeless, and as the posts used here are merely sticks, and as they usually sprout out and bear leaves, they are indistinguishable from any other trees in the darkness.

At times it seemed as if we must give up. Once Claude's mule stepped in a hole and threw his rider, but fortunately neither Claude nor his mount was injured, and at last, after what seemed an interminable distance, I found the telegraph line by the simple but unpleasant method of running foul of a guy-wire which raked me from my saddle.

Soon afterwards we came out upon the broad, main road, and turning eastward urged our steeds into a trot. For a number of miles the road was fairly good and its light colour could easily be distinguished from the darker surrounding bush; but it soon became full of pools, ruts, and stones, with treacherous holes and cave-ins, caused by the heavy rains; and where it ran across the plains or portreros it was impossible to tell which was road and which grass; the only means of finding our way being to keep constantly on the lookout for the telegraph poles, which on the plains were of iron. Several times our horses shied violently as some prowling animal or snake crossed our path; once a jaguar wailed and screamed from a patch of jungle; silent-winged nightjars flitted like spirits past our faces in a startling manner, while from every side came the incessant croak and whistle and boom of myriads of frogs. Our eyes, strained to see the road and the posts, played us strange pranks and constantly deceived us. At times the grassy portreros appeared like vast lakes and the road seemed dwindling to a thread as though being inundated. At other times the track appeared to be a score of yards in width and we would guide our horses to the side, where it looked smoother, only to find our mounts floundering up to their bellies in mud and water which filled the ditches.

Welcome indeed was the first saffron hue above the distant mountains warning us that daybreak was near, and still more welcome was the sun itself and the warmth it gave to our chilled bodies and limbs, for the nights in Veraguas are really cold, and no one starts out to ride at night unless provided with a thick woollen poncho.

A half-hour stop for coffee at a native hut and we were off again, pounding along the stony, rutty, muddy road, and picking our way carefully over the rotten planks of the bridges that spanned the larger rivers. Had our horses and saddles been good it would not have been so hard, and since that time I have ridden between Santiago and Agua Dulce scores of times without giving a thought to the trip, but our horses were miserable specimens with a hard, jolting, nerve-racking trot as their only gait, and our saddles were fearful. Every wrinkle, scam, and projection had worn through my skin until it bled; every muscle and bone ached, we were tortured for lack of sleep and nearly famished.

Ever since leaving Santiago we had been crossing grassy prairie lands, ideal for grazing and capable of supporting vast numbers of cattle, but nowhere were there more than a few hundred to be seen, and these uncared-for, poorly bred, undersized, and lean from the attacks of ticks, which the native owners never attempt to eradicate.

Constantly we met pack-trains, each horse tied to the tail of the one before him, while the peon drivers plodded doggedly behind. And ever and anon we turned aside for huge-wheeled, lumbering carts, drawn by two or four half-tamed bulls yoked, Spanish fashion, by the horns and goaded on by broad-hatted, sandalled, swarthy drivers whose fierce moustaches and glittering eyes seemed out of keeping with their soft-voiced "Buenas Dias."

Mainly these pack-trains and carts were laden with salt from Agua Dulce, for the salt flats of this town have been famed since the earliest Spanish days, and from far and near the natives come to town to secure their salt supply.

Apart from salt, Agua Dulce has little of interest and still less of attraction, and serves only as the port of entry to the district.

At three in the afternoon we flung our bodies from the saddles at the Agua Dulce hotel, after twenty-nine hours in the saddle with but three hours' rest.

Our first inquiries were for the steamer. Which we found would not sail until 6 p.m. and a good shower-bath and a square meal made us feel quite ourselves again. But imagine our chagrin when the agent informed us that it was quite impossible for us to take the steamer, as it was completely filled! Although she was only licensed for sixty passengers, he told us, he had already sold a hundred and fifty tickets! After all we had undergone, however, we had no intention of giving up now, and we promptly wired the owners in Panama demanding passage. An hour later an answer came to the effect that we could go if we did so at our own risk. This was highly amusing, for anyone who travels on a Panamanian coasting steamer invariably takes his life in his hands and trusts to Providence, and I wondered at whose risk the hundred surplus passengers were travelling.

But we were not yet through with our troubles, for when we endeavoured to secure a coché to take us to the dock—which is two miles from the town—we found that every available vehicle in town was already engaged. At last—less than twenty minutes before sailing time—I secured a condemned, broken-down buggy and an apology for a horse and a diminutive darky for a driver. Bert had already started to walk to the steamer to hold her until my arrival, and Claude and I undertook to harness the horse. Evidently he had never been driven before and, ancient as he was, he remonstrated forcibly when we attempted to put him in the shafts. Then finding his strength failing, he calmly sank to earth and closed his eyes in blissful repose. By dint of prodding, whipping, and a handful of corn held before him he was at last raised to his feet, and before he could collapse a second time we piled into the carriage and urged the equine wreck forward. Apparently, however, we had harnessed him wrong-end first, for each time we touched him with the whip he promptly stopped and commenced to back, while if the whip was not used he remained motionless. Here, indeed, was a deadlock, and the problem appeared insoluble, but at last we discovered that if the small boy ran ahead with the halter rope, while Claude trotted alongside and used the whip, while I remained in the carriage and held the reins, we could make some progress. We had covered nearly half of the distance in this fashion when one of the wheels came off and dumped me and the luggage into the road. By superhuman efforts we righted the trap, made temporary repairs, and proceeded, while the driver of every vehicle returning from the dock shouted the encouraging news that the steamer had left. However, this proved to be mere pleasantry on their part, for we found the steamer still in the stream, and we need not have hurried in the least, as she was hard and fast in the mud, having filled and sunk as far as it was possible. When we at last clambered over her rail I was not surprised, for in addition to the hundred and fifty passengers she was loaded with freight in her hold and with three hundred pigs and over a hundred cattle on her lower deck. For four hours the pumps were kept going, until at last she floated, and then, with a farewell blast of her whistle, she started down-river. It is impossible to describe that trip of sixteen hours from Agua Dulce to Panama. There was not an inch of vacant space on deck; every cabin and room was packed, and what space was not occupied by human beings was piled high with trunks, bags, live fowls, parrots, sacks of coconuts, crates of fruit, saddles, dogs, and miscellaneous luggage. Overhead, hammocks were stretched between every beam and stanchion, and underfoot men, women, and children were curled up in every conceivable spot. I attempted to secure a little sleep with my legs curled around a chicken coop and my bead on a bunch of green coconuts, but every few moments someone would step on me, and the noises and smells made rest impossible. Every time I shut my tired eyes, too, the owner of those confounded nuts would appear and, with profuse apologies, request me to permit him to secure one of them. At last I gave up in despair and spent the rest of the night perched on the rail of a leaky lifeboat swung to the davits.

Fortunately for all of us the sea was calm, but we were mighty thankful when at last we swung around Flamenco Island and headed into the harbour of Panama. And it was none too soon. As we disembarked I noticed that there was a scant six inches of freeboard, although the pumps had been going at full capacity throughout the entire trip.