The Talamanca Valley is something quite worth while in itself. Years ago it was inhabited by Spanish refugees who fled back from the bloody attacks of the ravenous Caribbean pirates of the sixteenth century. Their little plantations were not large and the land was not cleared very thoroughly, but they shifted their planting places until much of the present area was covered sooner or later with platanas. The view of this valley from the hillside is surpassingly beautiful. Thirty miles long, ten miles wide, and surrounded by mountains and forests, the whole floor of the valley is one vast, waving, level field of bananas, and there are few things better to look upon than a valley level full of banana tops. From twenty to forty feet high they stand, and their long, shady corridors are like the aisles of some great series of cathedral chapels, waiting for worshipers within. Through the middle of the valley runs the stream of the upper Sexola River with its three tributaries and their bluffs. The Changuanola Railway, which is the name under which the United Fruit Company moved its bananas and its men in this great plantation, runs the length of the valley, and the line of rails is punctuated by the white cabins of the black employees and the houses and offices of the plantation superintendents and foremen. Dominating the whole valley stands old Pico Blanco, or White Top. There is no snow at the summit, but there is nearly always a white cloud cap there, hence the name. This noble mountain is the interest and admiration of all dwellers in the valley. Its top lists eleven thousand feet above the sea. It is not as high as Pike's Peak nor Shasta, but it towers well up toward the level of Fujiyama, and beside it Mount Washington looks like a pigmy and the Adirondacks are mere foothills. Back in the canyons and forests of the mountain range live the curious Talamanca Indians, whose tribal customs indicate a close affinity between their ancestors and those of the famous Indians of Quirigua. The difference between the jungle and the dividend-paying plantation is one of organization, capital, administration, and toil. Add these to the jungle and you have the plantation. Take them away from the plantation and in a very short time the jungle is again supreme. Crowding around the corners, peeping over the edges, and creeping ever onward, the jungle pushes its jealous way behind the footprints of the men who essay to conquer its wild ways. But once defeated, the jungle becomes a slave bearing costly burdens for its master--man. CHAPTER VI LIFE AT THE BOTTOM "Forty years ago I took a bath, and the next day I felt chilly, and then--" "Never mind forty years ago. What is the matter this morning, and why have you come to me for medicine?" chants the seasoned employer of plantation labor. "That is what I was telling you, senor. Forty years ago I took a bath, and the next day I felt chilly, and then I thought that I had made a mistake, and so I went--"