Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/413

 Of course the men had the best of food that money could obtain and previous experience suggest, and the chiefs of all parties were required to strictly enforce certain sanitary regulations in regard to coffee in the morning, a thorough bath and dose of spirits on returning from work, and mosquito bars and dry sleeping suits at night; yet the climate must be held principally responsible for a sanitary result which I believe could not be excelled in any temperate zone city, with the same number of men, doing the same arduous work under conditions of equal exposure.

The forests everywhere abound in game and every party which included in its personnel a good rifle-shot was sure of a constant supply of wild pig, turkey, quail and grouse, varied by an occasional deer, all obtained in the ordinary work of reconnoissance and surveying. For the men's table there was abundance of monkey, iguana and macaw.

Parties in the lower valleys of the various streams had no trouble in adding two or three varieties of very toothsome fish to their bill of fare, though these fish were rarely caught with the hook, but usually shot, or knifed by an alert native, as they basked in the shallows. These parties also obtained occasionally a danta (tapir) or a manatee.

On the river it was possible to obtain a fine string of fish with hook and line, then there was the huge tarpon to be had for the spearing, and fish pots sunk in suitable places were sure to yield a mess of fresh water lobsters. Ducks were also occasionally shot.

The forms of life are even more numerous in the vegetable than in the animal kingdom. The effect of these wonderful forests is indescribable, and though many writers have essayed a description, I have yet to see one that does the subject justice. Only a simple enumeration of component parts will be attempted here. First comes the grand body of the forest, huge almendro, havilan, guachipilin, cortez, cedar, cottonwood, palo de leche trees, and others rising one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet into the scintillant sunshine. The entire foliage of these trees is at the top and their great trunks reaching up for a hundred feet or more without a branch offer a wonderful variety of studies in types of column. Some rise straight and smooth, and true, others sen dsend [sic] out thin deep buttresses, and others look like the muscle-knotted fore-arm of a Titan, with gnarled fingers griping the ground in their wide grasp.