delicate as ferns, and each as high as a three-story house, and with
fronds so long that those drooping across the trail hid it completely.
To push our way through these we had to use both arms as one lifts the
curtains in a doorway.

[Illustration: I was sure life in Sagua la Grande would always suit
me.]

Aiken himself seemed to feel the awe and beauty of the place, and
called the direction to me in a whisper. Even that murmur was enough
to carry above the rustling of the palms, and startled hundreds of
monkeys into wakefulness. We could hear their barks and cries echoing
from every part of the forest, and as they sprang from one branch to
another the palms bent like trout-rods, and then swept back into place
again with a strange swishing sound, like the rush of a great fish
through water.

After midnight we were too stiff and sore to ride farther, and we
bivouacked on the trail beside a stream. I had no desire for further
sleep, and I sat at the foot of a tree smoking and thinking. I had
often "camped out" as a boy, and at West Point with the battalion, but
I had never before felt so far away from civilization and my own
people. For company I made a little fire and sat before it, going over
in my mind what I had learned since I had set forth on my travels. I
concluded that so far I had gained much and lost much. What I had
experienced of the ocean while on the ship and what little I had seen
of this country delighted me entirely, and I would not have parted
with a single one of my new impressions. But all I had learned of the
cause for which I had come to fight disappointed and disheartened me.
Of course I had left home partly to seek adventure, but not only for