Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/410

 followed, ever alert to strike some drowsy beauty of a fish in the clear water; the source of the stream was generally reached in a day, and never did we make preparations to sleep on some bed of clean, yellow sand washed down by the stream in flood times, but what I had a plump turkey hanging from my belt, and my huléro several fine fish.

Much has been written about the climate of Nicaragua and its effect upon the inhabitants of more northerly countries when exposed to it.

It would seem that the experience of the numerous expeditions sent out by the United States, and the reports of the surgeons attached to those expeditions would have long since settled the matter. To those who cannot understand how there can be such a difference in climate between two localities so slightly removed as Panama and Nicaragua, and the former possessing a notoriously deadly climate, the experience of the recent surveying expedition must be conclusive.

Only five members of that expedition had ever been in tropical climates before, and the rodmen and chainmen of the party were young men just out of college who had never done a day's manual labor, nor slept on the ground a night in their lives. Arriving at Greytown during the rainy season, the first work that they encountered was the transporting of their supplies and camp equipage to the sites of the various camps. This had to be done by means of canoes along streams obstructed with logs and fallen trees. Some parties were a week in reaching their destination, wading and swimming by day, lifting and pushing their canoes along, and at night lying down on the ground to sleep.

One party worked for six months in the swamps and lagoon region directly back of Greytown, and several other parties worked for an equal length of time in the equally disagreeable swamps of the valley of the San Francisco. Several of these officers are down there yet, as fresh as ever. In making tours of inspection of the different sections I have repeatedly, for several days and nights in succession, passed the days traveling in the woods through swamps and rain, and the nights sleeping as best I could, curled up under a blanket in a small canoe, while my men paddled from one camp to the next.

In spite of all this exposure not only were there no deaths in the expedition but there was not a single case of serious illness, and the officers who have returned up to this time, were in better health and weight than when they went away.