Death came fast to those in the jungle. The agonies they suffered from starvation, exposure and insect pests baffle description. “Truxton in casting his eyes on the ground saw a toad”, wrote the historian. “Instantly snatching it up, he bit off the head and, spitting it away, devoured the body. Maury looked at him a moment, and then picked up the rejected head, saying, ‘Well, Truxton, you are getting quite particular. Something of an epicure, eh’? With these words he quietly devoured the head himself.” Nine of the twenty-seven men who entered the Darien with Strain died. When the leader returned with the relief party they were found, like Greely at Camp Starvation, unable to move and slowly dying. Those who retained life never fully regained strength. Every condition which brought such frightful disaster upon the Strain party exists in the Darien today. The Indians are as hostile, the trails as faintly outlined, the jungle as dense, the insects as savage. Only along the banks of the rivers has civilization made some little headway, but the richest gold field twenty miles back in the interior is as safe from civilized workings as though it were walled in with steel and guarded by dragons. Every speculative man you meet in Panama will assure you that the gold is there but all agree that conditions must be radically changed before it can be gotten out unless a regiment and a subsistence train shall follow the miners. [Illustration: A RIVER LANDING PLACE] The authorities of Panama estimate that there are about 36,000 tribal Indians, that is to say aborigines, still holding their tribal organizations and acknowledging fealty to no other government now in the Isthmus. The estimate is of course largely guesswork, for few of the wild Indians leave the jungle and fewer still of the census enumerators enter it. Most of these Indians live in the mountains of the provinces of Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui and Veragua, or in the Darien. Their tribes are many and the sources of information concerning them but few. The most accessible and complete record of the various tribes is in a pamphlet issued by the Smithsonian Institution, and now obtainable only through public libraries, as the edition for distribution has been exhausted. The author, Miss Eleanor Yorke Bell, beside studies made at first hand has diligently examined the authorities on the subject and has presented the only considerable treatise on the subject of which I have knowledge. [Illustration: THE FALLS AT CHORRERA] [Illustration: _Photo by Underwood, & Underwood_ ON THE RIO GRANDE] Of life among the more civilized natives she says: