I received a “straight tip” one evening that the fugitive Greek was hiding in a hovel on the Cruces trail.  What part of the Cruces trail, the informant did not hint; but he described the hut in some detail.  So next morning as the thick gray dawn of this tropical land was melting into day, I descended at Bas Obispo, through the canal to Gamboa and struck off into the dense dripping jungle.  The rainy season had greened things up and gone—­ temporarily, of course, for in a day or two it would be on us again in all tropical fury.  In the few days since the first rain the landscape had changed like a theater decoration, a green not even to be imagined in the temperate zone.

It turned out that the ancient village of Cruces was a mere two-mile stroll from the canal, a thatch-roofed native town of some thirty dwellings on the rocky shore of an inner curve of the Chagres, where travelers from Balboa to the last “Forty-niner” disembarked from their thirty-six mile ride up the river and struck on along the ten-mile road through the jungle to Panama—­ the famous Cruces trail.  Except for its associations the village was without interest—­except some personal Greek interest.  Sour looks were chiefly my portion, for the villagers have never taken kindly to Americans.

I soon sought out the trail, here a mere path undulating through rank, wet-hot, locust singing jungle.  Here in the tangled somber mystery of the wilderness grew every tropical thing; countless giant ferns, draping tangles of vines, the mango tree with its rounded dome of leaves like the mosque of Omar done in greenery, the humble pineapple with its unproportionate fruit, everywhere the banana, king of vegetables, clothed in its own immense leaves, the frondy zapote, now and then in a hollow a clump of yellowish-green bamboo, though not numerous or nearly so large as in many another tropical land, above all else the symmetrical Gothic fronds of the palm nodding in a breeze the more humble vegetation could not know.  The constant music of insect life sounded in my ears; everywhere were flowers of brilliant hue, masses of bush blossoms not unlike the lilac in appearance, but like all down on the Isthmus, odorless—­or rather with a pungent scent, like strong catsup.

Four months earlier I should have been chary of diving back into the Panamanian “bush” alone, above all on a criminal hunt.  But it needs only a little time on the Zone to make one laugh at the absurd stories of danger from the bush native that are even yet appearing in many U. S. papers.  They are not over friendly to whites, it is true.  But they were all of that familiar languid Central American type, blinking at me apathetically out of the shade of their huts, crowding to one edge of the trail as I passed, eying me silently, a bit morosely, somewhat frightened because their experience of Americans is of a discourteous creature who shouts at them in a strange tongue and swears at them because they do