He loved the Indians. He loved their dignity, their pride in the white man’s friendship, their devoted service. It reminded him of his life at school and of the devotion of small boys to their captain. During his convalescence he had had many talks with an Indian prince, whom the seamen called Don Toro. He had learned from this man to speak a little in the Indian tongue, enough to draw from him something of the Isthmus. He wished to clear the Isthmus of its poisonous tangle of forest, so that the shore might become savannah land, as at Panama. He longed to see the jungle go up in a blaze, in a roaring, marching army of fire, that would cut a blackened swath to the hills, leaping over tree-tops, charring the undergrowth, making good pasture for cattle, for the great, pale Campeachy cattle which his ships should bring there from Sisal. He tried to make Don Toro understand his wish, but failed; for Don Toro was a woodland Indian; the forest was his home. That stroke of policy, the bonfire, would have to wait till he could bring the Indians to help him, and till the logwood on the banks of the rivers had all been cut and shipped. But he wished that all those miles of wood were lying in blackened ashes. It was now the bright, dry season, when the woods were pleasant, musical with bell-birds, sweet with blossoms. In a few weeks there would come the rains, the months of rain, the streaming months, when the trees would rise up from a marsh, when the sound of dropping would become a burden, the months of the white-ribbed mosquito and the yellow fever.