Gaston Blanchet, meantime, had led a surveying party far up the Chagres, to begin work on the first serious maps and surveys. They were the advance guard and they made a striking picture—intent, tanned faces under white sun helmets, pistols at the belt. They chewed on Havana cigars as they squinted into the brass eyepieces of surveying instruments. They slapped at the interminable mosquitoes; they picked scorpions the size of a hand from their boots in the morning. They shot alligators, some twenty feet in length, and brought back the stripped pelts of jaguars. And they were extremely good at
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