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A good sleep during the night had rested me thoroughly; so, while the others sat around, talking or smoking "home-made" cigars, made out of some native tobacco which Matt Gory had secured during his wanderings, I started up the canyon on a short tour of exploration.

"I've heard that there is gold on this island," I laughed, when Tom Dawson asked me where I was bound. "I'm going to strike a bonanza."

"Look out that you don't stir up some wild animal big enough to chew you up," he yelled after me.

The canyon was filled with brushwood and vines, with here and there heavy clusters of tropical flowers, so odoriferous that they were positively sickening. Some of these flowers, I afterward learned, can readily put one to sleep if you sit by them long enough.

I found an easy path to the top of the canyon, at a point where the walls were fifty to sixty feet high and three times as far apart. At the top was a patch of smooth ground, back of which began the upward slope of the mountain.