River is at low water. For picture showing it at flood, see page 141] Manuel indeed was the son of the alcalde of his village, and the alcalde is a person of much power and of grandeur proportionate to the number of thatched huts in his domain. The son bore himself as one of high lineage and his face indeed, Caucasian in all save color, showed that Spanish blood predominated over the universal admixture of negro. He saved his money, spending less than $10 a month and investing the rest in horses. [Illustration: A QUIET BEACH ON THE CHAGRES] From Matachin up to Cruces the river is comparatively commonplace, spanned at one point by the Gamboa bridge up at which the voyager looks reflectively from below as he hears that when the spillway is closed and the lake filled up there will be but 15 feet headway above the river’s crest, where at the moment there is more than 60. Higher up are the towers, housing the machinery for recording the river’s rise, one of them a relic of the French régime, while a slender wire spanning the stream carries the pendulous car in which observers will go out at flood time to measure the height of the tide’s crest and the speed of the current. A stream of many moods is the Chagres, sometimes rising 40 feet in 24 hours. Accordingly along its banks and those of its principal tributaries are fluviographic stations whence watchers may telephone to the keepers of the flood gates of the dam warnings of the coming of any sudden freshet. [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT THE RIVER AND VILLAGE OF CHAGRES The little hamlet of rude thatched huts with a frame Catholic church in the middle has seen history in its time. The Spanish fortress of San Lorenzo on the hill was taken by Sir Henry Morgan’s buccaneers and later by the British under Admiral Vernon after hard fighting.]