[page number] 484 [end page number] [page heading] Warriors of Great Prowess [end page heading] practising my profession up and down both hemispheres, I had heard it on many occasions and in many lands from frontiersmen and natives. Columbus himself declared that he had seen them. Cortez found a hundred of them imprisoned in Montezuma's palace in Mexico City and venerated as "the children of the sun." Vancouver saw them on Vancouver Island in 1792, and Commander Stiles of our own Navy claimed to have seen the remnants of the same group in 1848. Humboldt saw about a hundred White Indians in Colombia. [crosshead within text] STRANGERS MAY NOT ENTER [end crosshead] BUT, like every one else, I did not really believe in White Indians. I attributed the stories to hallucination, or to the mistaking of albinoes or half-breeds for really white people. But the girls I had seen were not, I was convinced, any of these. I have seen thousands of half-breeds, of many mixtures, and there is an unmistakable something about them that reveals their hybrid origin. These girls gave no such impression. I asked the village chief about them, and he told me they lived in a hut outside his village, with a man of the same appearance. They did not mingle with his people, and he explained that no one would dare molest them, for fear of the vengeance of their tribe. They came, he said, from far inland, up the Chucunaque River, where no Negro or tame Indian dared to go, for the savages there had forbidden it and were warriors of such prowess that their edict was respected. No white man, even, had ever gone into that country and returned. A detachment of the Panamanian army had tried it and had been exterminated. The White Indians were a numerous tribe, he added, and were allies of the savage Wallas, Mortis, and Cunas Bravos. I resolved to call upon the strangers. I followed the path the chief indicated, and in half a mile came on a little clearing, in which was a pole-and-palm hut, with its floor several feet above the ground and its "doorsteps" a log with notches cut in it for a foothold in ascending to the entrance. After much calling in English and Spanish, the three girls appeared; and after many signs of my good intentions, they ventured to the ground and accepted the present of a handful of freshly minted ten-cent pieces. They let me look at their golden locks closely enough for me to be certain they were not dyed, and I was equally sure that the whiteness of their skin was not an artificial calcine. Their eyes were not black, but a light brown, proving that they were not the usual kind of Indian, nor, on the other hand, albinoes either. It was growing dusk, but I managed to get some snapshots of them. They spoke neither English nor Spanish. Returning to the boat, in which I had come from Panama to Yavisa, I told my two comrades of my find, but found them unimpressed. I might think what I pleased, but no White Indians for them. My invitation to join me in a visit to the clearing after dinner, to call on the man of the family, was greeted with emphatic refusal. I might go and get myself killed if I liked. And, indeed, their judgment on that point was better than mine. I went to the hut in the moonlight and called, and the man came out, not to greet me but to rush into the jungle. A little reflection convinced me that he would probably circle behind me and put an arrow in my back, so I lost no time in returning to the boat, no wiser than I had left. [crosshead within text] BEAUTY OF PHYSIQUE [end crosshead] THE next morning we made a one-day journey up the river beyond Yavisa. By noon we had come into a region that promised to disclose just such a valley of rubber lands as I had dreamed was there. I urged my companions to go farther. But they had had enough of jungles, and we turned back. And, then, rounding a bend in the Chucunaque, we came head-on upon the most startling apparition I have ever seen. A canoe came toward us, and in the bow stood a naked savage with a white body, whose yellow hair, falling to his shoulders, was held in order by a gold [page heading] Blond Indians of the Darien Jungle [end page heading][page number 485 [end page number] chaplet two inches wide encircling his head at the brow. He was of medium height, but magnificently developed about the chest and arms; and he stood as erect as a king. Behind him were a girl of ten and a boy of four, and in the stern his wife wielded a steering paddle. Not one of the four gave a start when they came suddenly upon us, and the man and woman did not vary a heart-beat in the rhythm of their strokes as they plied the canoe to pass directly by us. The man eyed us with truly regal pride and disdain, and passed us without troubling to turn his head to see whether or not we intended to follow. His whole manner said more plainly than words: "I am king here; what are you doing in my domain?" This uncanny vision settled any doubts my companions had about exploring further. The tales of the Negroid chief, about the savages upstream, had been given a most startling confirmation. They had seen enough. "We are no jungle rats," they exclaimed, "and we didn't come down here to get ourselves struck in the back with a poisoned arrow. Our business is law and rubber. There's neither here, and we're going home - to-night!" And homeward we headed. It was a bitter disappointment to me to have my Panama rubber lands remain undiscovered, after such an incomplete exploration. And my disappointment was doubled at my inability to follow the trail of the White Indians who, I now felt sure, were no mirage of fanciful pioneers but a scientific fact. I lingered in Panama after my companions had gone on to the States. I told my friends in the Canal Zone Government about my White Indians, and I got the incredulous sympathy usually paid to a respected citizen who has gone a little off his head. They all believed that I honestly thought I had seen them but they thought it was either "a touch o' sun" or that I had seen albinoes or half-