For the first half-hour after leaving the village on Bertha Lagoon, the way ran across a mangrove swamp of soft mud, interspersed with pools of black-looking water, and studded with the peculiar and aggravating knobs that the roots of the mangrove bush delight to form. It was worth while to note the care with which most of the excursionists began to pick their way; some even evinced a desire not to wet their boots. To keep the nether garments clean was clearly in general considered an object worth trying for. But after a few rapid and involuntary descents from slippery logs, seductively resembling bridges, placed across the most forbidding sloughs, a determination to push on straight and discontinue efforts to circumvent puddles, became universally apparent. When the swamp had been left behind some distance, our carriers, who belonged to a humorous race, kindly informed us, through the interpreters—their faces beaming with delight as the information was imparted—that they could have taken us by a route which would have avoided it altogether. This statement was proved to be true on our return, as some of the party escaped traversing the swamp a second time by taking a path which led to the westward of it, and others descended in canoes the lower part of a river that discharges itself into the lagoon. When asked why they had not let us know of the existence of a more agreeable road, our native friends made the unanswerable reply, that none of our party had suggested to them any wish to avoid the mangroves.