Three miles up river swept my moving-van; and from the distance I could hear the half-whisper--which was yet a roar--of Case as he admonished his children. "Mon," he would say to a shirking, shrinking coolie second-story man, "mon, do you t'ink dis the time to sleep? What toughts have you in your bosom, dat you delay de Professor's household?" And then a chanty would rise, the voice of the leader quavering with that wild rhythm which had come down to him, a vocal heritage, through centuries of tom-toms and generations of savages striving for emotional expression. But the words were laughable or pathetic. I was adjured to "Blow de mon down with a bottle of rum, Oh, de mon--mon--blow de mon down." Or the jungle reëchoed the edifying reiteration of "Sardines--and bread--OH! Sardines--and bread, Sardines--and bread--AND! Sardines--and bread." The thrill that a whole-lunged chanty gives is difficult to describe. It arouses some deep emotional response, as surely as a military band, or the reverberating cadence of an organ, or a suddenly remembered theme of opera. As my aquatic van drew up to the sandy landing-beach, I looked at the motley array of paddlers, and my mind went back hundreds of years to the first Spanish crew which landed here, and I wondered whether these pirates of early days had any fewer sins to their credit than Case's convicts--and I doubted it. Across my doorstep a line of leaf-cutting ants was passing, each bearing aloft a huge bit of green leaf, or a long yellow petal, or a halberd of a stamen. A shadow fell over the line, and I looked up to see an anthropomorphic enlargement of the ants,--the convicts winding up the steep bank, each with cot, lamp, table, pitcher, trunk, or aquarium balanced on his head,--all my possessions suspended between earth and sky by the neck-muscles of worthy sinners. The first thing to be brought in was a great war-bag packed to bursting, and Number 214, with eight more years to serve, let it slide down his shoulder with a grunt--the self-same sound that I have heard from a Tibetan woman carrier, and a Mexican peon, and a Japanese porter, all of whom had in past years toted this very bag.