Had the Major but known it, there was every prospect of this pursuit carrying him and his party many miles beyond the margin of the lagoon, for the band of ruffians who had so lately attracted his attention, and on the catching of two of which he was now bent, had not confined their thieving attentions to the various settlements along the coast. They had even exploited the peoples of the interior of the unsettled regions lying adjacent to the canal zone. There were wide areas of trackless forest, of jungle, and of swamp, which to this day are unexplored and unknown by the white man. That deadly malarial fever, more than attack by unfriendly natives, has kept the white man at a distance. Only along the immediate line of the coast has trading been done in some of the districts, and even then the results have not been always satisfactory. "It's a queer place," said Phineas Barton, when describing the isthmus to our hero. "Here along the canal zone you have civilization. Uncle Sam has come in with his dollars and his men, and has worked with an energy which, one of these days, when the facts are known, will surprise the world. As I tell you, you've civilization right here. But jest step out of the canal zone, and what do you find? Savages, sir. Wild men, armed with spears and bows and poisoned arrows. Yes, sir, poisoned arrows that will kill a man inside thirty minutes, even if they only happen to have just broken the skin. And they tell me that 'way along in the jungle, where the fever's that bad that a white man don't dare to go, there are gangs of tall natives that won't allow a stranger to put so much as his nose into their territory." It is all true enough, and is, indeed, one of the curious features of the Isthmus of Panama. There, where one of these days, when America has completed her gigantic task, a mighty canal will stretch from coast to coast, bearing the commerce of the nations to and fro between Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, there lie side by side the modern dwellings and the civilization which an enormous undertaking of this description must inevitably produce, and a condition of savagery unchanged since the Middle Ages. Even Spain, with her huge capacity for conquest, failed to penetrate into many of the wide areas of jungle adjacent to Panama and Colon. Doubtless her gallant sons made the attempt; but history records the fact that the fierce tribes within drove them back, murdering those upon whom they could lay their hands, and showing such courage and ferocity that further attempts were not embarked upon. Moreover, the malarial fever, which haunts these jungles in its most virulent form, was deterrent enough, without thought of the natives.