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ultimate arrival about 4.30, to the sound of a native band -- then the trip back, thru the Solfete and the winding Rio Dulce, when it seemed time and again that the boat was steering straight into a mountain, tho it always contrived to slip around it on a bend of the stream, and I lay prone on the prow and smoked cigarettes and watched the shadowy cliffs of the banks -- arrival at Barrios about 12.30, and bed -- next day's trip to Amates, and the packing up -- special dispensation by wire from the Jefe permitting our heavy baggage to go on the passenger -- supper at the Hotel (not much to remember) and late bed -- the arrival next morning of Colonel Munzón, his men bearing a mahogany butt four feet long and several great branches [[strikethrough]] with [[/strikethrough]] of the tree, in response to my modest request for leaf specimens made two days before -- the final Spanish formalities of parting, on board the boat and the unmitigated relief at the absence of Yates & Whitford -- since then the unbroken monotony of boat life, and the counting of days until I see you again.

All this is past, and I am glad of it. I have enjoyed it, and it has done me good in every way, but I would no more go thru it again that I would have missed it at the start. The emptiness and crudity of life down there is something that can only be appreciated by experience. The work I went thru would have been quite impossible for you, all questions of physical endurance aside. Pittier & the Major & Mazon were right. Had we been settled at one point, where there was a hotel or something of that sort, such as Quirigua, it would have been different. But by the time you get this I will be home & able to tell you all about things. 
DHB