To Panama and back
Date: 2023-02-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Panama -- Description and travel; Pan-American Medical Congress (4th : 1905 : Panama; Panama)

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Title: To Panama and back

The record of an experience

Author: Henry T. Byford

Release date: February 24, 2023 [eBook #70130]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: W. B. Conkey Company, 1908

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70130

Credits: Alan and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO PANAMA AND BACK ***

TO PANAMA
AND BACK

THE RECORD OF AN EXPERIENCE

BY

HENRY T. BYFORD, M. D.

W. B. CONKEY COMPANY

CHICAGO

Copyright, 1908,
BY
Henry T. Byford, M. D.

DEDICATED
to the
Panama Canal Commissioners,
who invited the President of the United States
to run down and see them dig the Canal
while he waited;
and to the President,
who went to the Canal and found them asleep,
and didn’t wait until it was dug.

MAP OF PANAMA
(click image to enlarge)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I
CHAPTER | TO PANAMA | PAGE
I | Chicago to New Orleans—Principally Chicago | 11
II | Getting Off | 23
III | At Sea | 29
IV | Port Limón | 48
V | Colón and the Panama Railway | 64
VI | Panama | 87
VII | At Gran Hotel Centrál | 100
VIII | For Doctors Only | 125
IX | A Siesta and Such | 136
X | About Town | 151
XI | Town Topics | 169
XII | The Past and the Present Panama | 176
XIII | New Year’s Day and the Sabanas | 184
XIV | The Bull-Fight | 192
PART II
THE FOURTH PAN-AMERICAN MEDICAL CONGRESS
I | The Opening of the Congress | 207
II | Breakfast and Dinner on the Same Day | 220
III | Panama Bay and Paramount Barrett | 230
IV | Congress Redivivus | 241
V | To See Ourselves as Others See Us | 251
PART III
BACK
I | Accommodations at Colón | 265
II | Sunday at Colón | 273
III | After Bananas and Alligators | 292
IV | From Bad to Worse | 309
V | The Didactics of Seasickness | 327
VI | The Last Day at Sea and the First on Land | 335
VII | Traveling North by Way of the South | 356
VIII | Did You Have a Pleasant Trip? | 375

ILLUSTRATIONS

| PAGE
Map of Panama | 4
Panama Flag | 10
Huts on Line of Panama Road | 82
Abandoned Machinery of the French | 84
Along Panama Railroad | 86
In Panama City | 90
The Cathedral of Panama and Corner of the Park | 92
Ocean Front at Panama | 162
Ruins of Santo Domingo Church | 172
Ruined Tower of Old Panama | 178
Club House on the Sabanas | 222
The Congress Waiting for Lunch | 224
Taboga Island | 232
Square in Colón | 266
Washington Hotel, Street Front, Colón | 268

Path Leading Across the Lawn from Washington
Hotel to the Beach

270

Christ Church at Colón, Seen from a Corner of
the Hotel

274

De Lesseps Palace at Christobal | 276
Monument to Columbus, Christobal | 278

Combination Store and Residence at Bocas Del
Toro

288

A Bunch of Bananas | 296
Toucan, or Preacher Bird | 304

FOREWORD

When I made up my mind to go to Panama, I could find no guide book. I had to depend for information upon the advertising matter of the United Fruit Company, and upon the experience of a friend who had spent a few days there on business and who had seen nothing but swamps, rusty machinery, polyglot politicians and gesticulating foreigners. I had no conception of what I was coming to, and had to be content with the reflection that he who has no books must learn by experience. On the other hand, it occurred to me that by recording the main facts and mental impressions of my trip, I might take the reader with me in spirit and impart to him such knowledge as would be of use to him if he went there, and of interest if he stayed at home, for he who has no experience must learn from books.

As a physician attending the Pan-American Medical Congress, I felt that I was not competent to give the accurate general information sometimes found in guide books, and that I should be more concerned with climate and disease than the average writer; but on the other hand I hoped that, since my viewpoint would differ somewhat from that of the general run of writers, my impressions might not be unworthy of record, and might contribute in their way to a better understanding of the country and its customs.

Some readers will think that the book is too full of appetizers and nightcaps, of diet and donnerwetter, and they will be right. But this is so because the narrative is honest and describes what was seen and felt instead of what ought to have been, or might have been, seen and felt. The busy majority care more about what was than what ought to have been. What was is truth; what ought to have been is fiction, and the worst kind.

Many readers will conclude to wait until the United States has finished the reconstruction of the climate and country before going there, and will agree with me in saying that traveling in the tropics, like eating and sleeping, should be done at home. Indeed, the absurdity of the notion that it is necessary to leave home in order to study a guide book, should be taught to our travel-stricken public. Quarantine, yellow fever, yellow jaundice, black water fever, white swelling, elephantiasis, ague, anemia, neurasthenia, berri-berri, leprosy, dengue, dropsy, dysentery, drinking habits, and dozens of other dread diseases and denouements lie in wait in the tropics. The romance of these things does not consist in exposing oneself to them, but in letting others do it, and of reading about it afterward.

PART I

TO PANAMA

PANAMA FLAG

Part I

CHAPTER I

Chicago to New Orleans—Principally Chicago

Chicago as a Starting Point and Business Center for Panama—How Food is Manufactured—Chicago Modesty—Report of the Commercial Club’s Commission—Chicago the Center of Culture—The Illinois Central—Southern Surgical and Gynecological Society at Birmingham, the Mushroom City—The Banquet—Southern Hospitality and Wit—Extracts from Letter Home—Insurance Against Railway Accidents—The North Versus the South—Unveiling of a Statue—The Hahnemann Statue at Washington—New Orleans—Loss of Valuables—Over Charge at Hotel—A Machine-made Clerk—An Original Waiter—Southern Service—Southern Hospitality and Conviviality—The Beer Cure—Old English Standard—Comforting Reflection.

Those who wish to go to Panama should start from Chicago, which is the most direct route to Panama. In order to get there all one has to do is to go south; to return all one has to do is to come north. Chicago is at one end, Panama at the other.

But Chicago is not only the natural starting place for Panama, it is the natural business center of the Panama Canal. Chicago sent a Chicago man to build the canal, another Chicago man to boss it, others to plan it and others to provision it; and when the time comes will be ready with schemes to run it. Chicago believes that the canal must be constructed and conducted on a dual plan, the interoceanic and the alimentary—one for water and one for food. And she not only has the courage of her convictions, but the ability to assert them.

Unjust reflections have been cast upon the food which Chicago kills, cures and puts up in cans for the canal, and a word of explanation is necessary. It has been intimated that packing-house boys and butchers sometimes lose their footing and disappear so quickly that they can not be recovered or recognized, or even indicated on the labels. But these facts lack confirmation and the packers deny them. They are things of the past. Indeed, it was a Chicago man who demonstrated to Congress that the food from all parts of the country was fit neither for us nor for Panama. Thanks to his demonstrativeness, everybody now knows that until then pepper berries were made of tapioca kernels colored with lamp black; that preserved cherries were bleached with acid, colored with poisonous aniline, and used to contaminate the cocktails of our fathers and dye the hair and habits of our mothers; that the honey of our childhood was made of dead bees embalmed in sulphurous glucose; that Arabian coffee came from Brazil, and Italian olive oil from Mississippi cotton fields; that fancy liquors were made of ethyl alcohol and a chemical filler; and that breakfast foods were underweight in the package and overweight in the stomach. We now know that there was neither a sneeze in the peppers nor a stomach ache in the berries, and that the only genuine full weight articles were the tin cans and pasteboard boxes. We have learned that lamp black, mineral acids, sulphite of soda, coal tar and other embalmatives were used in the manufacture of our popular delicatessen, that the manufacturers bought them at forty dollars per ton in five-ton lots, and that the United States supports from five to fifty times as many doctors per capita as other countries do. All this has become history, and a Chicago man made it.

And now that Chicago has built her own canal, she is ready to give Uncle Sam the benefit of her unique experience. She has made water flow uphill once, and is ready to do it again. Chicago is always ready. She was ready with Wallace and Shonts. When Bigelow tried to paint the White House red, she was ready with Stevens. But what was the use? Her ways and the ways of Congress were different. Congress and the people who trust Congress have been bent upon finding fault and raising difficulties. Canal dirt and critical difficulties have been raised in equal quantities, but not with equal facility. Well-meaning foreigners, who work for the future and live in the past, advised a sea-level canal, knowing that Americans are good at making money and dirt fly, and that Chicago could use the dirt to fill up Lake Michigan. Chicago has known better all the time. The obviating of difficulties and doubts is a Chicago idea. But Chicago is not as yet appreciated; she must make herself heard. However, she has the modesty of youth, and can wait. She who talks last, talks best. In the meantime she is deepening her own canal, and will soon have navigable water between Chicago and Panama, and the world is bound to know it. Her motto is, Know Thyself!—and she lives up to it.

The following resume of the report of the Commercial Club’s Panama commission appeared about a year ago in the Chicago Tribune:

“The sanitary condition in the canal belt is perfect. The house sanitation is above criticism.

“The work of building the canal is progressing with rapidity.

“The labor is efficient, loyal and plentiful.

“The esprit de corps of the whole force under Engineer Stevens was characterized as ‘superb.’

“Organization of the working force is without a flaw.

“All the climatic dangers have been eliminated by the work of Dr. Gorgas, the sanitary expert.

“Panama has been transformed into as healthful a place to live as any of the Southern states.

“The equipment for digging the canal is of the highest type.

“The only criticism made by the various members of the commission may be summed up as follows:

“There is need for more schools.

“There is need for more amusement for the working force.

“Too much of the food served to the diggers is canned. Not enough fresh vegetables are served.

“Although these were the only criticisms heard, the members of the commission were not unanimous. Several held the belief that the food supply could not be improved. It was pointed out that the government is erecting schools rapidly and that there is now under construction several Y. M. C. A. buildings, which will afford the needed recreation.”

If that was so under Engineer Stevens, it is too bad he did not stay down there to keep it so. I hope that the Commercial Club commission were not mere optimists; that they did not mistake entertainments for attainments; that the equatorial sun did not dazzle their Northern eyes; that nature is not deceiving us by a temporary show. The canal work needs Chicago eyes.

Chicago is already recognized as the center of culture of the United States. Fredr. P. Fish, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Boston man, said at a banquet in Chicago:

“Chicago is on the culture center ...... For all time the Middle West as represented by Chicago will remain the center. We must graft the Western point of view on our Eastern ideas if we are to progress.” Surely a wise man and a prophet has come out of the East.

As Chicago is “the culture center” of the United States, the part she played at the last meeting of the Pan-American Medical Congress is not without significance. She sent the largest number of delegates of any city or nation and, if we may believe the evidence of their senses, ran the Congress. If she chooses she can organize a Pan-American Medical Congress all by herself that will run itself. She can furnish all of the scientific essays and discussions, the banquets and the banqueters, the reputation and the reverberation and, if necessary, the attendance and the talking.

However, to come back to where we started from, the Illinois Central, it was that Chicago railway which provided the chief engineer who cut the red tape and started a revolution in methods. He cut the Gordian knot by cutting the whole business. The Illinois Central was, of course, the best railway for me to take for my trip to Panama, but as I was to attend the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association on my way, my Chicago modesty suggested the patronage of a Southern railway, which to my surprise gave me as good a ride as the Illinois Central gives. The only fault I found with it was that its express trains were too accommodating.

For Doctors Only.

The association met at the interesting and mushroom-growing, mining and manufacturing center, Birmingham, Ala., the “New City of the New South,” where men and money are said to make each other—doing it by modern methods, and in large quantities. In this Chicago of the South I hoped to get some pointers on medical, surgical and social customs and curatives appropriate to Southern climates, preparatory to trusting myself in the deadly tropics, where water is laden with germs, the air full of infection and meat is spoiled before it is fit to eat.

And I was not disappointed in my expectations, for the profession of Birmingham, in return for the heavy feast of science afforded by the visitors, gave us a banquet which put our Northern idealizations and realizations to shame. It was celebrated in the immense square banquet hall of Hotel Hillman. The tables were placed around the room near the walls, leaving a square space in the center about forty feet in diameter decorated to represent the Vale of Cashmere. This space was adorned with immense prostrate mirrors for water, a profusion of tubs of tropical plants for islands, electric flashlights above for twinkling stars, and the expansive toastmaster’s face at one side to represent the rising full moon. The flowers and lights and reflections in the central space, bordered by the ornate and sumptuously provisioned tables, constituted one of the most beautiful and intoxicating sights and experiences of the kind I had ever seen and partaken of, and led to the most exuberant five hours’ flow of wit and humor of which I have any personal knowledge.

The toastmaster was a physician who had developed into a politician and post-prandial celebrity, and who made witty speeches enough to render the occasion memorable, even if no one had responded to his toasts. He infused his political inversion and irresponsibility of speech into the minds of those upon whom he called, so that the most solemn and scientific of our Northern laboratory plodders and surgical experts mixed the most unexpected and absurd exaggeration into their carefully prepared scientific and soporific remarks. They forgot to be instructive and became entertaining.

Even the Irish were outclassed. Hereafter I shall always speak of our Southern wit and humor as the most spontaneous and exuberant in the world. The North is witty because it is partly Irish, the South is wittier because it is entirely American.

For Women Only.

Extract from Letter Home.

Wednesday, Dec. 13, 1904.

My dear ——:

The scientific exercises have just concluded and before dressing for the banquet I will make use of the few moments between the diurnal reading and the nocturnal eating of articles, to inform you that you have lost five thousand dollars. Whenever I have insured my life before trusting my fate to the reckless railway management which this country cultivates, and which costs from one to two lives a day in demonstrating how two trains can occupy the same space at the same time, I have found that my life has been spared and my estate has lost the six thousand dollars of insurance money for which I had contracted and paid. I have survived so often that I am beginning to have faith in the insuring method as a life preserver. I know of nothing else that has protected me from the ax of those public executioners facetiously called railways. If the government would only give attention to the regulation of railway accidents as it does to the regulation of railway rates, some good might be done. Railway rates are simply ruinous; railway recklessness is simply regretable.

I am well, excepting a stiffness and soreness in my left ankle, which reminds me that I got away just in time from the frozen North, where people eat and freeze too much and get rheumatism and appendicitis, to visit the Sunny South, where people eat and drink too much and get rheumatism and appendicitis. In the North we think that the cold makes us healthy and hardy, while in the south people think that appetizers and night-caps keep them healthy and happy. And I am temporarily inclined to think that the Southerners must be half right, for my ankle is getting better already.

After a most interesting session devoted to the discussion of obscure and difficult scientific facts and fancies, the society adjourned to the public park to unveil the statue of the late Wm. Elias Davis, the eminent Birmingham surgeon who founded the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association. It is the second statue that has been erected to a private individual in Alabama, and is also about the second attempt of the kind by our profession in the United States, the statue of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, at Washington being the first. There is also at Washington a statue of Hahnemann, the originator of the once popular fad, homeopathy, placed there by a few fad fellows before they faded out.

But it is growing dark and the band is playing and the festivities are about to begin. We must eat and drink and get merry, which is the lot of the living.

For Children Only.

Extract from Letter Home.

New Orleans, Saturday, Dec. 17, 1904.

Here I am in “Ne Awleens,” where creoles and crocodiles grow. At least, here is all that is left of me. Umbrella, railroad ticket, handkerchief, necktie fastener, appetite, digestion, etc., were lost on the way. My valise was carried away in my car, which was quietly detached from the train at Montgomery while I was walking about the station hunting for my appetite. However, I inquired and ran about and caught the runaway car and recovered my bag and my appetite, but not my umbrella. An honest umbrella does not exist. Who remembers ever having had a lost one come back, or a found one go back? My return ticket was taken up by the conductor at bedtime but was not returned to me in the morning when I arrived in Birmingham. It was discovered on the floor in the train, and left at the ticket office at New Orleans by a stranger. New Orleans has one more honest man than our other large cities, which are diseased spots on the earth’s surface, where human parasites predominate.

However, the railway officials are not the only absent-minded men in the South. The hotel clerk at Birmingham charged me for four days instead of two. I should merely have considered the hotel a high-priced one had not a friend told me that he had been charged for three days instead of two. But after being corrected, my bill was as much too small as at first it was too large. The clerk was made in Birmingham where everything is done by machinery. To get the best service it was necessary to know how to run him. He was one of those original characters who do everything differently—and indifferently.

When I went to breakfast the morning after the banquet, I ordered nothing but coffee and rolls. The negro waiter, who was another original, evidently had also been up late the night before, for when I gave my order he gaped frightfully, and I dodged. He filled it (not his mouth) correctly, but took it to a fat man at the next table, who had ordered a real American breakfast and who scorned to accept mere coffee and rolls, although he looked as if he needed much less breakfast than I did. I then ordered a glass of water without any ice in it, and this was also taken to the large gentleman, who was an ice drinker and refused it. When I had drunk my coffee, glanced at my rolls and paid my bill, my change also went to the stranger; but it also was not enough for him. If I had ordered a large breakfast and had thus made the waiter work, or if I had carried a pistol within sight, he would probably have brought things to me when he forgot to whom they belonged. He bore me no ill-will, however. He was a good waiter, as are all Southern waiters, if only one knows how to keep them awake and interested, and excuse mistakes. I think we will have to send some of our colored waiters from the North down there.

The Southerners are, however, far ahead of us in hospitality, and it is in keeping with this virtue that they drink too often. I do not think that they drink for the sake of drinking, as often as do many of our Northern indulgers, nor do they often drink to get drunk. They drink to be hospitable and encourage one another and whet their appetite. Whether they are thus socially farther advanced than we, and we will follow them, or whether the comparatively large percentage of abstainers in the North is an advance, and they will follow us, is a conundrum. I suppose that they really drink out of conservatism. To abstain would be too radical a change. If liquor could have been emancipated with the slaves and sent over the border to Canada, where they use it to warm their toes and melt their tongues, it would have been better for the South and for us. Perhaps the increase in the consumption of beer in the United States may become our salvation. It means less alcohol and less drunkenness, more gemütlichkeit and less strenuous conviviality, more hobnob livers and fewer concrete kidneys.

There is hope, however, for Southerner and Northerner and Canadian if we may credit an observation of Sydney Smith, made in England a hundred years ago. While speaking of the improvements he had observed during his lifetime he said:

“I forgot to add ... that even in the best society one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk.”

The following quotation of Edward Eggleston is taken from an editorial in American Medicine, January 27, 1906:

“It was estimated early in the eighteenth century that about one building in every ten in Philadelphia was used in some way for the sale of rum, and in Massachusetts, Governor Belcher was afraid that the colony would ‘be deluged with spirituous liquors.’”

How comforting for us to know that our ancestors, from a temperance standpoint, were worse than we are, and that our children in the natural course of events will be better than we are.

CHAPTER II

Getting Off

The United Fruit Company’s Ships—Delay—Brushing up in Spanish—Getting off—The Musical Engineer—Spilling Soup—Threatened Arson—A Resolve Never to Take Too Much Liquor Again—The Pilot—Four Miles in Two Hours—The Captain’s Wink—Chicago as a Joke—The Jetty—Unexhilarating Speed—The Zigzag Habit.

From New Orleans the United Fruit Company sends a steamer every week to Colón and Bocas del Toro, in Panama, and one to Port Limón, in Costa Rica. Most of the boats are small and better adapted to the accommodation and comfort of bananas than of human beings. However, those who are poor sailors can, by arranging dates and taking one of the large (?) ships, get to Panama almost as comfortably as from New York, and in a little over half the time. If one is a good equilibrist and loves solitude, there is even an advantage in taking one of the smaller fruit boats, for they ordinarily have so few passengers that one has almost the whole boat to oneself—and needs it. Mr. M. J. Dempsey, the traffic manager at New Orleans of the United Fruit Company, was very accommodating and painstaking, both in corresponding with me and in placing me after I arrived at New Orleans. The company is better than its boats.

Having missed the Friday boat for Colón, I made the best of my misfortune by feasting on fresh oysters, French café-au-lait and French water-rolls. In fact, I was benefited by the short delay, as the S. S. Limón, the newest and largest in the service, sailed on Monday morning directly for Port Limón, offering me an opportunity of visiting San José, the capital of Costa Rica, the so-called Paris of Central America, and of avoiding the crowd of doctors who were going later. In this case I was particularly anxious to avoid the otherwise congenial crowd, because I wanted to get away from English-speaking people during the four or five days on the water. Thus I would have a chance to brush up my Spanish by being forced to speak it to the Central American passengers, the officers, steward, sailors, etc. I would then be better prepared to converse with the South American doctors. But when I went aboard I found that the S. S. Limón was an old Glasgow ship with a new name, and had a Canadian captain and Jamaican crew. The passengers were all Americans and English, and I was the only one on board who could speak, or cared to speak, a word of Spanish. I was, therefore, obliged to brush up my Spanish without a brush.

We got off at 11 A. M. There were several passengers standing about on deck gazing listlessly at the negroes on the dock,—but not a friend of any of us could be seen, not a smile or wave of hand or flutter of handkerchief. It seemed quite doleful not even to see a friend or relative of some one else.

The only incident that varied the monotony came near being an accident. It was the arrival of one of the engineers, who was a man of unusually refined features for one in his station of life, but who was in such a happy state of mind that had it not been for the assistance of his peers he would have walked off the gangplank into the water, for he took two steps and stoops sideways to every one forward. He was softly singing, “For to-night we’ll merry, merry be; to-morrow we’ll be shober.” I felt relieved when I saw that he was safely aboard where liquor was not sold, and I realized for the first time what a great blessing ships were to sailors. As soon as he was safely over the gangplank he straightened up and said, “I’m the besht eng’neer aboard. I can run an engine better’n I can walk a plank. I’ve been drinking like the —— but I’m not drunk. I’m a Christian scientist, I am. I only think I’m drunk (hic).”

About an hour afterward as I was wandering about exploring the ship, I came across him balancing himself along on his way from the kitchen to the mess room, carrying a big iron pot of greasy soup and spilling it liberally. Upon seeing me, he smiled blandly and said:

“Good shoup this, ain’t it?”

“Yes, I see it is. If you can eat that you’re all right.”

“Oh, I’m aw right (hic)!” he said, as he allowed about a pint of the soup to spill upon the deck. “It’s the shoup that’s gone wrong. It’s half seas over awready.”

After a moment’s pause he began again: “Is this your firsht trip to the tropics?”

“Yes, I want to see them before I die.”

“Better wait till you die. It’s a —ll of a place for a live man. I’m going to set the ship on fire at five o’clock. I’ve been drinking, but I’m as shober as blue blazes now, and I’m going to shelebrate—she-(hic)elebrate.”

Seeing my chance to do some missionary work, I asked him why he didn’t join a temperance club, and thus relieve himself of all temptation to drink.

“No club for me, sir. Had enough clubbing when I’s a boy. Rather be hit by a cocktail. W’iskey’s the life of temper’nce clubs. Keeps ’em going (hic). W’iskey causes more good resolutions than bad ones—makes people wish to be better. An’ what’s better’n that?”

He stopped talking and stood grinning at me as I moved slowly away and faintly returned his smile. I then and there resolved never to take too much liquor again in any form. All men should sign the pledge before they die, as I expect to do. But as it was, I feared I might never have a chance to drink anything but Mississippi River water after five o’clock, when the ship was to burn. However, I calculated that since we would not be out of the river and away from land until six or seven o’clock, which would be from one to two hours after the fire, we could all save ourselves with life-preservers. So I went to my stateroom and finding that my life-preservers had real cork in them, instead of old-fashioned pig-iron, tied one to my valise and two to my trunk. Then I went back on deck and, being prepared for the danger, soon forgot all about it.

After speeding around many river-bends for two hours we went down to lunch, and the pilot, who ate with us, told us among other things that we were just four miles from New Orleans, across country. I told him not to hurry so, but to remember that “the more haste the less speed;” that on the Chicago River we would have traveled many miles in two hours, and that in Chicago we could walk faster than this boat ran; we could walk four miles in one hour. The pilot thought that I was in earnest and winked at the captain, who was of English descent and knew that a wink meant a joke. So he winked at both of us, and asked no questions. I afterward learned that the mention of Chicago was the joke they meant.

Although it was the third week of December, the shores were green and the scenery was interesting all the way, and the weather was warm enough to enable us to enjoy it. The delta presented the appearance of numerous small lakes with strips of meadow land between them, instead of branching streams as marked on the maps. We saw some fine plantations and a fine herd of cattle. Indeed, the district appeared to be an ideal one for raising cattle, as grass and water were plentiful, shelter unnecessary and fences superfluous.

Soon after six o’clock we came to the outlet which was indicated by a jetty on our left and the open sea ahead. The jetty was a pier built where the current could strike it and hollow out its own channel, the same as it does all along the river when it strikes the banks at the bends. A lighthouse and searchlight were, of course, on the end of the pier, which was a much smaller and simpler structure than I had considered necessary. The simple device was, as usual, the successful one.

The pilot got off here, but stopped and shook hands with me, and asked if I had enjoyed the ride. He told me that we had made one of the quickest runs to the mouth of the river on record for a fruit boat. I said: “As far as I’ve got I can’t conscientiously say that I am exhilarated by the speed. Bananas that want to ripen while they ride can’t complain, however. The river takes two dips sideways to every one forward like the best engineer who came aboard half seas over, and I can’t comprehend how a man as sober and steady as you seem to be can keep the ship going that way without forgetting himself at times and letting it take a straight and proper step or two occasionally and run into the shore.”

“Well, it’s this way,” he answered. “We become so accustomed to the zigzag course that zigzagging becomes a habit, and we find it hard to keep straight.”

“Yes,” I said, “and the engineers are acquiring the zigzag habit, too.”

As I did not bring in Chicago he didn’t see any joke.

CHAPTER III

At Sea

The Weather—Packing the Stomach—A Diatribe on Cooks and Cooking—Uncooked Food as a Diet—Survival of the Fittest—New England Diet—First Impressions and Facts—The Passengers—The Englishman—A Phantom Laugh—The Stewardess—Beef Tea—A Recreation Famine—The Universal Enjoyment—An Old English Table d’Hôte—White Ducks and Rain—Highballs and High Life—Bad Effects of Water—A Temperate Captain and Crew—Scenery and Poetry—How People Get What They Want—The Southern Cross and Others—Advice.

From Diary.

Tuesday, December 20th.—Smooth sea. Weather cool but pleasant. The temperature at New Orleans was about twenty degrees Fahrenheit warmer than at Chicago, and this afternoon is nearly ten degrees warmer than it was at New Orleans yesterday. We are headed almost due south and expect soon to breathe the balmy air of the Caribbean Sea. It is so far a pleasant winter experience to wake up each morning and find the air about ten degrees warmer than on the day before.

What a change from busy Chicago life it is to have nothing to do all day long but read novels and talk small talk, and linger leisurely over one’s meals with strangers gathered together from various parts of Anglo-Saxondom. We lingered over the food to-day until we had eaten enough for two dinners. It was not that we felt the need of a double dinner, but largely out of a subconscious imitation of each other. When among eaters do as eaters do, is the philosophy of it. There is no place where people enjoy and understand the packing and filling up of their adjustable and dilatable stomachs better than on shipboard. When they pack their trunks and bags they do not overload them, for they know that there is danger of straining or bursting them, and they do not wet and soak things down in their trunks in order to make them pack tighter, as they do in their stomachs. They know that the stomach, which was not made by hands, will not burst.

But eating can not unfortunately be made to fill in the whole of our time, even on shipboard and with saltwater appetites. If we had four stomachs, like a cow, and could devote all of our time either to eating, or the chewing of cuds, how simple life would become for many of us. Idle men would be kept from mischief and idle women from worry. Our enjoyment would be simple and continual, sanitary and convivial. However, our mode of living and the economy of our functions are such that we can not utilize much bulky nourishment, as do our bovine models, whose heads and limbs are mere appendages to their stomachs; and our methods of preparing food are such that we do not have to do the work with our teeth. We thus lose much of the benefit as well as harmless pleasure that animals derive from the preparation of their own meals. Our lips are shrinking and our jaws degenerating for want of work.

There is much to be said in favor of doing your cooking in your own mouth. Mouths are often the most unclean of cavities, yet who would not rather trust his own mouth than the methods of the average kitchen blunderer with her germ-laden, all-invading hands, tasting spoons, wandering hairs, dusty dishes, coughs, colds, salt rheums, etc. No one has seen the cook drinking out of the water bottle, tasting the food, and handling the salt, the dough, the waste-pail, the dish cloth, the berries and the bread with fingers that are licked instead of being washed every time she handles these things and her hair, but would wish to possess the jaw and juices of an animal to enable him to save the wages, waste and culinary wantonness of a cook; and avoid the appendicitis, gastric ulcer, fermentation, diabetes, Bright’s disease, entero-colitis and acid fermentation that have developed with the development of the art of eating. Modern cooking is a bold and unscrupulous attempt to create, by means of variously flavored, complicated mixtures, a desire for artificial food, instead of depending upon a natural appetite for a few simple articles, such as exists throughout the animal kingdom where irresponsible cooks have not interfered.

It is an open question whether the human system is not adapted to the consumption of much more uncooked food than is at present allowed, and whether the cooking in many instances does not destroy ferments that aid digestion, and does not thus render the digestion of foods more difficult or imperfect. Fresh raw milk is more nourishing and more easily digested by normal digestive organs than cooked milk, and this is true of eggs, oysters, beef, cheese, tomatoes, butter, etc. Celery, radishes, cucumbers, cresses, parsley, asparagus, onions, honey, fresh and dried fruits, nuts, aromatics, ripe olives, olive oil, smoked and dried meats, besides many other herbs and fruits that are habitually eaten raw in warm and tropical countries, ought to enter more extensively into our diet and be made to greatly reduce the amount of kitchen mixtures that now tempts us toward an overfed anemia, dyspeptic insomnia, toxic obesity and premature death. The above mentioned foods constitute an ample dietary for the average individual. By cooking we aim to facilitate and quicken the digestion of food, and render it more complete, forgetting that a larger amount of undigested debris might maintain a more normal action of the intestines.

Food kept for consumption in the winter time in cold climates, or in arid districts far away from its production, would in part require cooking, but that made of grains could be prepared at laboratories in a dry, unchangeable, sterile form, while some of the animal and fatty foods could be partly predigested and preserved for invalids. In fact, a diet could be planned that would render the kitchen unnecessary except as a place to make ready a hot drink or to warm food already prepared and preserved according to the dictates of science instead of by the art of uneducated, uncultured, unclean, bad-tempered, hap-hazard cooks.

The political crime of 1890 was the putting of sugar on the free list. It was a covert attack upon the women and children of the country by rendering it easier for them to slowly poison themselves i. e., to sweeten themselves to death. A relish for sweets has been given man to lead him to eat fruits and to chew his starchy food until it develops that sweet taste which indicates beginning digestion. It is this relish for sweet that leads herbivorous animals to chew their food so thoroughly. That a taste for sweets is not intended to lead people to eat artificial sweets is evident from the fact that, excepting honey, which is meant for bees, there is no such concentrated sweet as sugar to be found in nature. But man began to extract the sugar from the sugar cane, the beet and the grape and eat it in large quantities in its concentrated, unnatural form, and to put it in food that, without it, would not be relished, and which, therefore, should not be eaten until hunger gave its relish. As a consequence he has become the victim of salt rheums, pimples, hives and other agonies of itching and ugliness.

Sugar is the devil conjured by man to entertain his sweetheart or wife, and keep his children quiet. Sugar is the serpent of a civilized Eden. He corrupts the human body before it is developed, and after. He squanders the pocket money and perverts the appetite of the fairer half of humanity, until it thinks that it would starve without his support, and refuses to nourish itself without his aid. Let him be banished from the public view and be locked up again in the cane and the beet where he can be enjoyed only in harmless attenuations and in digestible quantities. A little of the devil goes a great way. Too much of him breeds disease and doctors to condemn and conduct us to the grave.

But the self-denial of such a return to nature and abandonment of the pleasure of eating a variety of complicated, fancifully flavored and abnormally tempting food mixtures is hardly to be expected of a gastronomically perverted humanity. Humanity knows enough to tempt itself, and it will do so. The rapidly multiplying wealthy class has the means of over-indulging itself, and will make use of them, and the common lot will follow suit. Deterioration, degeneration and individual extinction will be the logical result. Survival of the fittest thus becomes a matter of appetite. To kill oneself by degrees within the three-score-and-ten is becoming the easiest and most agreeable of occupations; much easier and more enjoyable than slowly dieting oneself to death, as Luigi Cornaro did at the age of 103 years. He ate but little here below, but ate that little long.

There are many who believe that what is generally adopted as a custom by the mass of the people must be right, and that since we have been eating as we now do for a long time, and are longer lived than formerly, we should continue doing so. Apropos of this I will quote from the writings of Volney, a Frenchman who traveled in the United States seventy years ago:

“I will venture to say that if a prize were proposed for the scheme of a regimen most calculated to injure the stomach, the teeth and the health in general, no better could be invented than that of Americans. In the morning at breakfast, they deluge their stomach with a quart of hot water, impregnated with tea, or slightly so with coffee, that is mere colored water; and they swallow, almost without chewing, hot bread, half-baked toast soaked in butter, cheese of the fattest kind, slices of salt or hung beef, ham, etc., all of which are nearly insoluble. At dinner, they have boiled pastes under the name of puddings, and the fattest are esteemed the most delicious; all their sauces, even for roasted beef, are melted butter; their turnips and potatoes swim in lard, butter, or fat; under the name of pumpkin pie their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste, never sufficiently baked; to digest these substances they take tea almost instantly after dinner, making it so strong that it is absolutely bitter to the taste, in which state it affects the nerves so powerfully that even the English find it brings on more obstinate restlessness than coffee. Supper again introduces salt meats or oysters. As Chastelux says, the whole day passes in heaping indigestions on one another; and to give tone to the poor, relaxed and wearied stomach, they drink Madeira rum, French brandy, gin or malt spirits, which complete the ruin of the nervous system.”

Man seems to be the only animal that doesn’t know how to eat. But as we have apparently eaten without knowing how, and have been dyspeptic for the seventy years since Volney wrote, and probably for seventy years before that, why not eat in this way and remain dyspeptic for the next seventy years? We have been dyspeptic so long that proper food and normal function might prove a disastrous change of environment to our stomachs. Innovations are apt to prove dangerous. Let us be conservative, and do right with caution. This precocious, overgrown, youthful country needs above all to be conservative, and above all wants conserves.

But since the agreeable gustatory occupation of doing the cooking in nature’s individual kitchen is denied us, we passengers are at the mercy of the ship’s cook. I wonder how clean he and his materials are. And as the process of swallowing and washing down his mixtures can not be made to occupy all of our waking hours, we will have to sandwich in a few games of cards, a few cotillions, cigars, siestas and, at appropriate times, a few turns of mal-de-mer.

Wednesday, December 21st.—How different strangers often are from the first impression they make upon us. If we revealed ourselves upon first sight just as we really are in this democratic country, in which the poor are rich and the rich poor, according to the mutations of the markets, and where we can not always distinguish a Brahmin from a blowhard, we would be quickly divided into social castes, and would find new levels. Even in traditional monarchies a large proportion of the nobility are Brahmins by birth only. The fabric of society is woven out of lies, for lies are not words pronounced but impressions produced. In fact, all the world’s a lie, and men and women play their parts therein. The word falsehood is merely the name for a feminine fabric which conceals the hair that nature made to conceal the head. Our customs encourage false hoods, false hair, false teeth and false modesty, for who would marry a person without hood, hair, teeth or modesty? Better dead than without them. Better to have lived and lied than not to have lied at all.

All of the passengers of the S. S. Limón are first-class liars, I mean first-impression liars, like the rest of the world. I have constructed two descriptive columns to show the impression they produced upon me at the first meal and the facts as I have since learned them.

First Impression. | Facts.
Captain is an Englishman. | Captain is a Canadian.

An Englishman and his
wife traveling for
pleasure, probably on
their honeymoon.

Englishman with wife
returning to Costa
Rica, where he is in
business. Married many years.

American army captain
going to some post in
the tropics with his
wife.

Insurance agent and captain
of militia going to
Costa Rica to look after
mining interests. Is
president and organizer
of the company.

Emaciated young man
traveling for his health.
Either a dyspeptic or
consumptive.

Relative of insurance
agent and secretary of
mining company.
Starved from overeating.

A Spaniard going to his
tropical home with his
daughter, a dark young
lady.

An engineer with a Scotch
brogue, superintending
a new ice plant just put
in the ship. No relation
to dark young lady,
who is the lady’s maid
of the wife of the
Englishman.

We also have at the table a young American who is a clerk in the offices of the United Fruit Company at Port Limón, the second mate and the purser. The English couple and the insurance agent have been in the tropics before and have learned not to drink ship water or Central American water, and keep the two waiters busy bringing beer, wine, highballs, Apollinaris water and ginger ale, somewhat to the inconvenience of the rest of us who have to await the return of the waiters with these articles before we can be served with our food.

The Englishman sits in a corner of the smoking-room and smokes a pipe after each meal. While smoking these three pipefuls, which seem to be his daily allowance, he studies American history out of Winston Churchill’s novel, “The Crossing.” He is one of those practical Englishmen who believe that he who laughs last laughs best. He asked me this morning why the United States did not keep Cuba when she first had her; and I could not convince him that it was neither expedient nor honorable to annex the island at that time. In fact, before we got through with our discussion I felt like apologizing to him for our honorable action in the matter, for doing our duty as we saw it. The English believe in our duty as they see it. He considered our dealings with Cuba as a huge American joke, a subject for the pen of a Mark Twain or a W. W. Jacobs, and that a keener sense of humor would have saved us from the mistake.

Thursday, December 22nd.—We have three flesh and blood visible ladies aboard, and a stewardess. A stewardess usually passes for flesh and blood also. This one, however, is a sort of phantom lady who is always heard, but seldom seen. Until this morning she was nothing but a laugh. She had not, to my personal knowledge, been seen on deck. She, however, had frequently made herself known by her laugh which every once in a while would ring out, or rather up, from below like a chime of tiny bells started by the wind, and making melody because they couldn’t help it. When we feel well we are stirred up by the laugh and feel like joining in, but when the waves are swinging our heads around, it sounds unnatural and phantom-like, and strikes an unsympathetic chord in our pneumogastric nerve fibers. I had heard the laugh many times and had enjoyed it until this morning, when I was lying back in my steamer chair practicing Christian Science without any comfort. Every few moments the ship would give a lurch, and so nearly turn over that it seemed as if it could not right up, and the ladies would say o-oh! and the phantom laugh would be heard coming up from below. I took to shutting my dizzy eyes and saying mentally: “Go over, if you wish, old banana box! If only my stomach will keep right side out until we go down and I become unconscious!—Laugh on, young lady! It’s all right for an invisible stewardess who hasn’t any nerves in her stomach (if she has one) and nothing but haw-haws in her brain (if she has one) to laugh, for I can’t help it. But even Solomon said that there was a time to laugh and a time not to laugh.”

While I was thus moralizing the laugh suddenly appeared on deck in coiffe and corset, smiling and balancing airily while the ship tried to dump it overboard. It was a white-aproned, pink-skinned, flaxen-haired, pleb-featured apparition, as plump and un-phantom-like as flesh and blood with a cockney accent could be. It was searching for sick women, and immediately spied me. It stopped and said:

“’Ave you ’ad any breakfast, sir?”

“Yes,” I said, “I have had breakfast all of my life, thank you.”

“Won’t you ’ave a cup of beef tea, sir? It works like a charm.”

“No, thank you. I don’t want anything that will work. You give us plenty to eat, but you don’t keep it down. Dieting is the best thing for ship food. I was told to diet several years ago, and I wish I’d done it. The opportunity has come now.”

It smiled at me as if I was a spoiled child, and balanced about among the ladies in a way that made my head swim, until finally it disappeared.

In a little while it sent up a cup of beef tea by the shuffling, cross-eyed, colorless, albino-haired, cockney steward. The stuff looked good, however, and I braced up and drank the health of the flower of the English meadows that had blossomed on the beautiful land and now bloomed on the blooming sea, and felt better. The beef tea suffered no harm, and I no longer wished to be thrown overboard. In fact, within two hours afterward I went down to the dining-room and ate leather and doepaste, and drank luke-warm mud-decoction with a favorable termination.

Friday, December 23rd.—We arrive at Port Limón to-morrow morning, and so far no Spanish lessons, no cotillions, no cake-walks, no negro minstrels, no shuffle-board, no music, not even poker or pools on the daily run; nothing doing but the moonlight tête-a-têtes of the United Fruit Company’s clerk from Limón and the lady’s maid from London. He evidently regards her as edible. Watching them with parental interest and sympathetic reminiscence is the only recreation we have had except eating at odd meals when Neptune happened to be napping. Perhaps it is youth rather than opportunity that we lack, for as people grow older they lose the cleverness and skill as well as the illusions necessary for the enjoyment of the recreations of their youth, except in eating. The enjoyment of eating, illusions and all, belongs to all ages and all animals. It constitutes the first evidence of our animal intelligence and the last senile flourish of our physical nature. When all other incentives to enjoyment and hilarity are gone forever, people can laugh and joke over their food like children. Having consumed the spirits of youth they resort to the spirits of wine, and the result is a brilliant flicker.

It is interesting to watch a small party of English people of uncertain age and social station at a Continental table d’hote dinner, as I once had the pleasure of doing:—

At soup a fortified and funereal quiet and, to the young and frivolous table-d’hoters about them, an apparently reproachful demeanor, a social asceticism. Such dignity and decorum as is found only among the English, whose recreations and social functions are formal duties.

Over the fish, occasional premeditated remarks such as courtesy demands, and a solemn sipping of wine at appropriate intervals.

Over the third course, slight relaxation of features and small bits of conversation, interspersed with more frequent and informal sipping of wine.

Over the fourth course, much less modulation of voice and considerable talking, with an occasional easily comprehended joke followed by generous applause. General emptying of bottles and drinking of toasts. A touch of nature makes the whole room grin.

Over dessert, frequent flashing of fire-cracker jokes extinguished in laughter. A leaning over cordiality and unrestrained communicativeness regardless of appearances. An astonishing climax of gayety. The tables are turned. Foreigners grow silent and look on with wonder.

Disappearance of ladies and retirement of the men to the smoking-room or porches for a congenial exchange of confidences and a forgetfulness of cares and responsibilities. Social mellowness slowly hardening back into desiccated conversation.

The elders have had their daily round of recreation, the only kind they still excel at, and are again models of dignity and decorum for the younger generation to respect, but not to emulate.

Such an insular touch of nature I have not, of course, observed on our boat. The above was merely one of those observations of former times that come to my mind during the long hours of sitting and gazing at the tireless sea. Continental table-d’hoters become demonstrative over their wine, but do not taper on and taper off like the English. One expects foreigners to gesticulate and be undignified from first to last.

We are in the Caribbean Sea “alright,” with trade winds to tame us, choppy seas to chafe us, and sudden showers to shift us. The officers and the militia captain are parading in dazzling white duck suits, in which they are obliged to run under cover every little while from the rain. A mist appears over the horizon and in a few minutes overtakes us in the form of a drenching rain, causing the officers on duty to put on their raincoats, and those off duty to come in and be treated to highballs. This is their high life, and makes them accept with thankfulness and thanks whatever and whichever comes. Water is man’s greatest enemy as well as friend in the Caribbean. It drives through the canvas awnings, steals into the staterooms, rusts steel buttons and umbrella frames, ruins clothing, spoils cigars and gives men a taste for liquor.

The captain, however, is temperate and has none of the sailors’ vices, as no man who lives with the bottom of the sea constantly under his feet should have. This nautical peculiarity of the captain has a good effect upon the crew, and is a recommendation to the United Fruit Company. It enables him to drink with impunity when alone with the passengers. He believes that only temperance men should be allowed to drink. He believes that, being temperate, drink does him no harm, and that he who thinks like a gentleman will drink like a gentleman. The “besht” engineer is also temperate, for the captain sees to it that drink does not harm him either. The poor fellow has had nothing alcoholic since we left New Orleans. But he will get his bottle of beer with his Christmas dinner to remind him of the cause of all the happiness he has ever had. Our captain is so opposed to intemperance that he will not keep a man in the crew who is addicted to drink. The fate of the best engineer is therefore settled, and he is taking his last voyage on the S. S. Limón. But he has not had his last good time off the S. S. Limón by any means.

We have beautiful sunsets and sunrises, although they are not very different from those in Illinois except that the colors are more crude and garish. The softened, hazy, fumigated, terra cotta hues of the Chicago sunsets are unknown here. It is necessary to go to Chicago to see them. On bright and clear days the Caribbean sky and water have an intense blue color that we seldom see in Northern latitudes, but when the wind blows and the sky is overcast, the water is of a bright, seasick green color, known to poets although not to poetry.

We have moonlight nights that are worth taking a five-day boat ride to see. At times the sky and sea are bathed in silver sheens and shimmers that equal those in some of the paintings and poems, and which are worthy the pen of a Scott or Shelley. At other times the firmament is caverned with jasper clouds, and the water mottled with mysterious isles of shadow. As Shelley says:

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled—but
Growing and moving upward in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue

Which the keen evening star is shining through.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear
Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven’s ebon vault

Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,

Seems like a canopy that love has spread

To curtain her sleeping world.

This is about as I would have written except that I should also have put the Fruit Company’s clerk and the English lady’s maid in the scene to emphasize the moonlight and add that human interest which the lines do not express. The difference between Shelley’s lines and mine would have been that Shelley’s contain more poetry than truth, while mine would have contained more truth than poetry. Truth is better than poetry.

I have given Shelley’s description because people are seldom satisfied with the naked truth. They prefer something in costume, and labeled with a name. For instance, when they ask for medicine they get something with a name; when they want Christian Science they get nothing, with a name; when they want lies they get the real thing. Those who can no longer be deceived are ready for another world, but not for a better one.

Every one who visits the torrid zone takes a look at the Southern Cross. So did I. On the Caribbean it arises very late at night, and comes out about the time civilized banqueters are going home. I had to get up after midnight to obtain a view of it. There were several crosses visible and I looked at them all, and thus saw the Southern one. But I was unable to say which one was the one, for I had no compass. However, that did not matter, since I could say I had seen it. The one that travelers see and talk about is a crooked one. It does not stand straight in the heavens, and has its beams warped. I would not advise any one to travel down here in a banana boat, that becomes inebriated and intolerable every time a zephyr blows, in order to stay awake to see a little, crooked, imperfect cross that wouldn’t be looked at in Chicago. One can stay at home and hunt up a better and bigger one before midnight, not to mention our glorious Orion, our beautiful Milky Way and many other interesting and historic constellations. In fact, how many Northern people who know of and have seen, and have acted silly about, the Southern Cross, know of all and have seen all and have acted silly about all of our Northern constellations? We should know something about our own heaven before we devote our attention to that of others.

CHAPTER IV

Port Limón

Christmas Eve—Heat as a Stimulant—Essentials to a Good Sleeper—Sheltering Reefs—Flying-Fish—Port Limón—View of the Island and Town from the Ship—A Sailing Vessel—The Piers—Fruits—Sharks—Christmas Festivities of San José—The Great Flood—Accidents on the Railway—The Graveyard Washout—Two Weeks of Travel to go a Hundred Miles—Ashore—Almost an Accident—Difficult Landing—A Negro with an Irish Brogue—Other Negroes—A Cockney Accent—U. S. Accent—Sun Baths and Shower Baths—The Rainy Season—No Thunder—An Earthquake—Its Wasted Energy—Population of Limón—-The Fruit Company—The Stores and Business Houses—San Joséans Caught at Limón by the Washout—Boarding the Boat—Freight-ship Luxury—Arrival of the Italian Ship—Christmas Dinner on Board—Government Piers—The Warehouse of the United Fruit Company—Other Houses—Clean Streets—The Colored Inhabitants—The Race Problem—Vultures—The Cockpit—The Cock Fight—A Used-up Victor—The Market—Tough Meat—Saloons—The Hotel and Garden—A Cockatoo—Highballs—Dear S. S. Limón—Escape from Malaria, Mosquitoes and Yellow Fever.

Extracts From Letters.

Off Port Limón, on S. S. Limón.
10:30 A. M. Saturday, Dec. 24, 1904.

This is Christmas eve, or will be when it is. It required quite a little will power for me to come into the smoking-room where there is no breeze, in order to write and swelter, and swelter and write, and thus do two things at the same time on the same day. I feel like one bird being killed by two stones.

You, of course, can have no conception of the effect of this tropical heat upon the nervous energies, for heat is a stimulant, and therefore not in your line. I formerly imagined that it was a pleasant experience to be under the influence of a stimulant, but now know that it is not. It does not make it a bit easier to do what you do not wish to do. I wonder if science is really correct in calling heat a stimulant, or if the idea is merely an opinion of scientists who, like women, are forever changing their minds, and who have but little experience or sympathy with stimulants?

By night my head is weary from thinking about how happy people are who live on land, so I promptly fall asleep and stay asleep for seven or eight hours. The three essentials to a good sleeper are present, viz., a relaxed mind, a comfortable stomach and warm feet. The combination is not to be had at home where the brain, stomach and feet can not get together.

We were all day Monday from 10:30 A. M. to 6 P. M. in getting out of the Mississippi River (120 miles or thereabouts) and had smooth sailing on Tuesday, giving every one a chance to eat three times. On Wednesday we all dieted three times, being tossed by a troublesome trade-wind which was to last a week. But it is the unexpected that is always happening. By noon we ran behind some sheltering reefs off Yucatan and were suffering only from hunger—which is more easily cured than seasickness.

The sun was shining and innumerable flying-fish were sporting about the boat. Instead of sailing through the air as I had seen them represented in books, they seemed to keep their winglike fins in a constant flutter, like the wings of hummingbirds, and shone brightly in the sunlight as they sped over the waves for forty or fifty feet. When they shot up out of the water they reached a height of two or three feet, went ahead for a short distance, and gradually sank nearer and nearer to the water until buried in a rising wave. After gaining the height acquired by the first impulse as they emerged, they did not seem able to rise any higher, but occasionally one would strike the crest of a wave at the end of its flight and give itself an upward turn, and would thus get a fresh start and take another flight, somewhat shorter than the first. The large number of them, and their liveliness and apparently intense enjoyment of the air and sun bath, produced a decidedly exhilarating effect upon us and added to the joy of not being seasick. But alas! Great happiness never lasts. The next morning, Thursday, we were in the open sea again among the swells.

And the swells still continue on the sea as well as in Port Limón, where we have been anchored since yesterday afternoon. The coast line is straight and there are no breakwaters for the protection of ships, except an island by the name of Uvita, which is situated about a quarter of a mile from the shore. Our ship, two freight steamers and a sailing vessel are anchored behind it. The island appears oval in shape and has, I should say, a surface of about six acres. There are reefs at either end upon which foamy breakers are constantly curling and which, with the dense tropical forest that covers it, constitute an animated and pleasing picture. From the ship the town also looks beautiful, nestling among the cocoa palms and other trees that line the shore, and forming a pretty fringe to the densely wooded, rising background.

The sailing vessel, which is a large schooner, came in shortly after we did, and it was an interesting experience to see her handled by three or four men. She came toward us riding at full speed before the wind with all sails set. She let down some of them as she came near us, swung slowly around our stern, let down more sail, pointed up toward the wind, then let down all sail and dropped anchor just as she got into position beside us at a conveniently safe distance. The quickness with which so few men executed these numerous details at the right moment, and the accuracy with which the ship was maneuvered, with nothing but the wind as a motor, caused me to realize that there was as much nicety in managing a ship as in removing an appendix.

If there is no bay at Limón there are at least fine piers. The ships remain at anchor until the sea is calm, then move up beside the piers and take on their loads. Coffee and bananas seem to be the principal exports, although about all kinds of tropical fruits are, or can be, raised in Costa Rica. Oranges and pineapples are plentiful, but our Northern apple, which has almost as great a variety of flavors as all of the tropical fruits put together, is an exotic and a luxury.

We saw a shark foraging about the ship this morning. Usually nothing but the back fin came in sight as he swam along the surface, although occasionally he would show his nose. The sailors are fishing for him, but so far have not had a bite, and I am deprived of an exciting description. But few in my place would allow the opportunity to pass, bite or no bite. The captain says that the popular notion that sharks turn on the back or side when they bite or take anything into the mouth is a mistaken one. He and others have seen them grab things without turning. They do not always take time to turn on the side. Like other animals they bite at things in any old way. But if a shark wishes to seize a large object that is floating on the surface, he may, if in no hurry, turn sidewise in order not to have to lift his head out of water over the object. Or if he wishes to bite a man’s leg he must turn sidewise in order not to bump his nose against the leg and thus prevent the mouth, which is quite a distance behind the nose, getting here. But that he habitually turns on his back or side, like a playful kitten, in order to eat or commit murder is one of those romantic notions that people who like to be deceived like to believe. Information that is novel or absurd attracts attention and spreads widely, and is slow to be corrected by reason and accurate observation. Natural science still has many entertaining absurdities to eliminate from its teachings.

But now that I am within sight and touch of the land of promise, the beautiful Costa Rica, I find myself in a sad plight. I can not get in. I sailed from New Orleans a week earlier than the other delegates in order to spend the holiday week at San José, the capital of Costa Rica and the Paris of Central America, and practice my Spanish and participate in the revelry. The beautiful city is located up in the highlands nearly 4,000 feet above the sea level and has a mean yearly temperature of 68 degrees F., the extremes being 50 and 80 degrees. Although it has neither a good troupe of actors nor of singers, it has the finest theater on the continent. It therefore imports an operatic company from Spain every year for the Christmas holidays, and has a season of operatic and theatrical performances, mimic bull-fights, genuine cock-fights, noisy merry-go-rounds, harmless football and all sorts of Spanish celebrations. All business is suspended and the people give themselves up to a season of carnival such as Latin nations delight in. But the wind blew, the rain came, the earth quaked and the mountains started down toward the sea, carrying away and burying miles of the only railroad track that led from the Caribbean sea to the capital. This occurred four days ago, and two feet of water is still running over the great railroad bridge, which is 620 feet long and 220 feet above the bed of the well-named Reventazon River (Big Buster River). The wind and rain did about the same thing last year and, finding that it was easy, repeated its performance this year, only in a more thorough manner.

The last train that came down from San José had to run through water that reached almost to the firebox of the engine, and stop occasionally to chop up huge tree trunks that overlay the track. A train taking up the imported actors and singers engaged for the Christmas festivities at San José has not been heard from, and as all telegraphic communication between the port and the capital is interrupted, it is not known whether the players are now acting for a living or swimming for their lives. A trainful of workmen, sent up to see what could be done to clear the track, was caught in a land slide and buried, engine, men and all.

Nine inches of rain fell at Limón night before last and carried the muddy water of the river out into the sea for five miles, coloring it a light yellow. As we came here we entered this yellow sea before we sighted Limón, and were in it fully an hour before we arrived in port. Trees, bunches of bananas and other debris are floating about, and although the stream that empties into the sea at Limón was a small one, they say that it is now large enough to float a ship. A portion of the graveyard here was also washed out, the flood carrying tombstones from one grave to another and mixing up the bones. However, as far as the living are concerned this is not a calamity, but a blessing, for the town has received the washing it needed to prevent the development of pestilence. The buried negroes don’t know the difference, nor do the living care. The dead are having a good drying off down below and the living expect to get one.

My fellow passengers, all of whom are bound for San José, will have to wait for a passing ship to take them to Colón, then cross the isthmus by rail to the city of Panama, and wait there for a steamship to take them up the west coast to Punto Arenas where they can wait for a train to San José. Whether they will have to stay there very long or not, depends upon the amount of washing out there has been on the Pacific side. As the steamers make many stops on the Pacific coast and do not run very often, the passengers will be on the way between one and two weeks, according to their luck in catching a boat and a train, instead of making the overland trip of 103 miles in a few hours by rail, as they had expected to do.

As for me I will lose the fine Christmas weather in the mountains and the round of novel entertainments in the Paris of Central America, and be obliged to spend two weeks instead of one in the hot city of Panama, which is at sea level, within eight degrees of the equator, and within two or three degrees of blood heat.

3:30 P. M., Dec. 24, 1904.

We have been ashore. The United Fruit Company sent out a row boat in which we climbed over the swells for about a quarter of a mile as the falcon flies, but over half a mile as the row boat climbed up and coasted down. Getting from the lowered stairway of the ship into the small boat was a test of good jumping, good judgment and good luck. The waves as seen from the deck of the ship did not appear over three feet high from trough to crest, yet the little boat beside the ship sank at least five feet from the step platform and rose up to it again.

The insurance agent had an excess of confidence in himself, as all successful insurance agents must have, and went down the steps first, to show us how. But for once his judgment of risks was poor. As he jumped at the boat, it sank out of reach and moved from under him. Luckily he had a business education, which teaches men never to give up what they have once laid their hands on, and he kept hold of the railing of the stairway. But his big body had acquired momentum and had to go, and he swung suspended by his hands over the water, with his umbrella sticking to him and his coat tails flying, until the boat rose up beside him and he was pulled into it. A man with less physical strength and presence of mind would have splashed down into the waves to frighten sharks and spoil our excursion to Limón. The insurance agent, however, did not even lose his umbrella, which was not insured and which he held up in triumph and exultation as soon as the danger was over. The ladies saw the performance and could not be persuaded to leave the ship, as their lives were not insured. Some one spoke of sharks, and they shuddered.

Upon arriving at the pier we were rowed to the landing place, where again good judgment and gymnastics were required in order to jump on the lower platform before the boat would sink away, and where good luck and agility were necessary to enable one to get up on the pier before the next wave broke over the steps leading up to it.

The first dock hand we saw was a coal-black negro with an Irish brogue which he used freely. It was a precious combination and gave me a new sensation. I was sorry that I could not take the combination with me as a curio. Nearly all of the negroes about the pier were Jamaicans and had a quaint accent and inflection of voice that was musical and pleasant to listen to. One of them had acquired a cockney accent and shocked and instructed us by calling a dollar a “crony” (corona), a highball “a eyeball” and a baked potato “a biked potighto.” I never realized before how characterless and commonplace our United States pronunciation really is. It lacks the bizarrerie of the native London article which has been called by Don G. Seitz “a queer jargon of misplaced aspirates and vowels interspersed with drawls and growls.” We have to invent Americanisms and rhetorical barbarities in order to outdo them.

While ashore we had hot baths in our own perspiration followed by cool shower baths in the rain, the frequent repetition of which finally drove us back to the ship. The rainy season is supposed by the calendar to last from May to November, but the calendar is a theorist, for we have been having rain from one to five or six times a day, varying from brief sun-showers to copious rainfalls. On the Caribbean side it rains both in the rainy and dry seasons, there being only about two months in the year of dry weather. The rain, however, cools the atmosphere and the earth, and renders the lowlands near the coast quite comfortable compared with the Pacific side, where the seasons are more sharply differentiated, and there is more dry weather. Although I have seen many showers I have heard no thunder on the Caribbean. The showers come and go with such rapidity that apparently they have no time to thunder. Possibly the hot air over such warm water is so uniformly laden with moisture that electricity does not easily concentrate except at great heights and is only heard on great occasions. But it is just as well not to hear it, for it is Southern in temperament and revolutionary in its methods, and is apt to radically change the existing order of things.

Limón had an earthquake five days ago at midnight. It frightened everybody and sent people skipping around in their muddy back yards clad in flowing white raiment like angels errant, but it did them no harm. The following lines are copied from the local newspaper: “At midnight on Monday the entire city was thrown into a state of alarm by a severe shock of earthquake, the like of which had never been experienced in Port Limón by the oldest inhabitants. Several private houses and shops suffered, etc.” At present earthquakes are useless generators of energy, but if they could be stored up and used to shake school boys and servant girls out of bed on cold mornings they would become popular.

Limón has about 3,000 inhabitants, largely negroes from Jamaica, and is the only Costa Rican port of entry on the Atlantic side. It is practically a North American town, however, being supported by the banana business of the United Fruit Company. Near the wharves is the main building of the company containing the offices and stores. Here merchandise of all kinds can be bought, from that which is put into the stomach to that which is worn on the back. The greater part of the goods, however, come from the United States and, as the Costa Rican duties are high, one pays about double our retail price at home. The town has a good-sized hotel, a bank, a well-stocked drug store, two or three steamboat agencies, a few small stores for the negroes, and numerous saloons of high and low degree. The large stores and agencies, as well as all things that pertain to politics, are conducted by Costa Ricans, many of whom live at San José and come down to Limón frequently to look after their interests. Several San Joséans came down just before the washout to attend to business for a day or two, and will now be obliged to wait here two or three months or make the trip down to Panama and up the Pacific coast with some of our S. S. Limón passengers—a just punishment for neglecting the holidays for business.

If I had arrived several days earlier and had gone to San José before the washout, I should have had to return by way of the Pacific coast, missing the Medical Congress and arriving home about two weeks after the end of my journey. Thus the storm saved me, and was a fortunate occurrence after all.

It is also fortunate that the floods have almost stopped the moving of bananas from the plantations down to the shore, and that the sea is too rough for the ships to take on their loads. The S. S. Limón will thus be obliged to remain at anchor behind the island for a day or two, and the captain will be able to keep us as boarders until Monday when a big Italian passenger ship arrives. We have hitherto been longing for dry land, but now that we are liable to be put on it to live in the town where the nights are hot, muggy and mosquito-ry, where there is a complete ice famine, much malaria and a few cases of yellow fever, we are content to remain on the steamer. The captain says that the sea is the only place to live on, and from the tropical, semi-infernal standpoint his view is the right one. Freight-ship accommodations have become a luxury, which proves that luxury is merely a point of view. Everything is luxury to some, nothing is luxury to others.

7 A. M., Dec. 26, 1904.

The Italian steamship, our friend in need that is to take us to Colón, has arrived and will depart this afternoon.

Yesterday we had an enjoyable Christmas dinner which was seasoned by the fact that we had gone through the hollowing out process of getting into the tropics by sea, and by the fear that we had more emptiness to endure before another opportunity for indulgence would present itself. I often think that the well-known and often-sought sea-appetite is largely due to a making up for missed and lost meals. We had barley soup, fish, roast turkey, cold meats, canned peas, canned corn, sliced tomatoes, strawberry preserves, plum pudding, Washington pie, cheese, fancy cake, oranges, apples, nuts, raisins, grapes and champagne. After we had filled the available space in our bodies with this conventional conglomeration, to whose noxious influence the custom of ages has rendered the human family more or less immune, the captain took the insurance agent and myself on shore to see the Christmas festivities.

While climbing the waves in the row boat on the way to the landing I noticed how well the government piers were built, the posts being protected by copper sheeting and the edge of the platform surrounded by heavy iron girders. These iron girders were, however, a sad trial to the ship captains, for in bad weather they injured the sides of the ships, and made it almost necessary to wait for a calm sea in order to move up for a load. The Costa Ricans, of course, put these girders on their piers to make them last longer and, having a monopoly of the business, found it profitable to accommodate themselves instead of their customers.

The warehouse of the United Fruit Company, which stands near the shore, is a handsome two-story rectangular building composed of windows and verandas, the upper story being fitted up as lodgings and lounging quarters for the employees. The principal streets have been filled in and macadamized, and were washed entirely free of loose dirt and gravel by the recent rains, with the result that the surface looks like rough concrete, and is as clean as if it had been scrubbed with scrubbing brushes by a corps of housemaids. All of the houses except two or three of the five or six business buildings are one and two-story frame skeletons, and are thus practically earthquake proof. They could be rocked like dry-goods boxes without being harmed or rendered more dilapidated; and if they were rocked over they and their inhabitants could be replaced at but little expense.

The negroes here are much blacker than those in the United States, many of them having skin as black and lusterless as soot. Their complexions are seldom spoiled by white blood. They are the real thing. They are better natured, more manageable and more interesting than our mulattos, who are neither one thing nor the other, although in the United States they claim that they are both things and have in them the best blood of both races. Slavery was the crime of the South, but it was perhaps a pardonable one in all except one feature, viz., the mixing of the races. That act was the sin, and the result is our race problem—a curse. The white blood of the mulatto longs for its own, and the black blood of the genuine negro is taught to long for what is not its own.

Vultures hopped about the back yards and perched upon the housetops ready to eat up the garbage as fast as thrown out. Stagnant water and dirt abounded, but it seemed to agree as well with the natives as with the big birds. The sun’s heat reminded us of the heat of some of our Northern steam-heated houses, and our handkerchiefs were kept busy drying our faces and necks. So when we found a score of negroes gathered in the shade about a cockpit we went into the shade to cool off.

The cockpit was a round space about ten feet in diameter surrounded by six slender wooden posts supporting the roof and forming a part of a low wall about three feet high—high enough to keep the fighting cocks within, but not to obstruct the view of the sports. The surrounding space was shaded by large trees but not enclosed, being merely a back yard to which a wide passage between two houses led. There was no admission fee, the spectators or “betters” standing around the pit betting on their favorites.

In the fight we saw a medium-sized Spanish rooster, belonging to the establishment, disable a large one of the same breed with the second stroke, and kill it with the third. The entertainment was short, but not sweet. A lance about two and one-half inches long had been fastened to one of the legs of each bird, the lances being about as wide and long as the small blade of a large penknife, slightly curved and acutely pointed. At the second jump the lance of the small rooster pierced the body of the larger one, who immediately turned sidewise and sank down. The victor seemed to understand the action of the wounded bird and was inclined to leave it alone, but the owners set them at it again. The wounded bird made another great effort, but his abdomen was this time pierced by the penetrating lance of the victor, which stuck fast and held him down beside his prostrate victim. The owner pulled them apart, upon which the wounded bird jerked his leg and wing convulsively two or three times and expired.

I think that it was an easy death for a fighting cock, although not as easy as having his neck wrung. He certainly had a much easier time than the victor of the previous fight, in which artificial spurs had not been used. The hero stood on a pile of boards nearby without a feather on his head, neck and thighs, and with his bared skin swollen and as red as raw beef. He had conquered in a long fight, but in the process had undoubtedly had a half hour of the most severe and exhausting punishment. Yet he stood up and looked proudly about him, like a fighting cock still, unconscious of his loss of beauty and of usefulness—too naked to fight and too tough to be eaten.

Having seen enough to satisfy our barbarous instincts, and cool off our enthusiasm but not our bodies, we continued our walk and soon came to a large centrally located market such as exists in nearly all Southern towns. Here we saw negroes carrying in freshly killed beef to be sold the next morning at daybreak, for, on account of the scarcity of ice, the butchers have to sell their meat almost as soon as killed. This probably accounts for the unseasoned toughness which is the chief distinguishing characteristic of tropical beef, although tough beef is sometimes found in the temperate zones. We afterwards passed several saloons in which the white young men of the town were playing cards, and stopped in one of them and drank nauseating luke-warm orangeades. Even the saloons and the hospitals were out of ice. Our last stop was at the hotel, a good-sized frame building that backed up to the seashore and was delightfully cooled by the sea breeze. The front garden of about three acres was the most beautiful mass of foliage I have ever seen. Excepting the wide paths, it was almost a solid mass of loaded orange trees, towering royal palms, foliage plants eight feet high, flowering trees, and other plants of the richest green, yellow, orange and variegated coloring.

We passed through the hall into the back yard, which bordered on the seashore, and sat for a while on the wide porch enjoying the sea breeze and watching a tame cockatoo; a red, yellow, orange, green, black and blue parrot, fully a yard in length from the tip of his yellow beak to the end of his blue and cardinal colored tail. I often wonder if we Americans are not descendants of the beautiful and loquacious parrot instead of the gibbering monkey, for our women are so ornamental, and swearing comes so natural to our men.

While sitting and chatting we had to do the appropriate thing and take a couple of highballs, for we were joined by some real Costa Ricans, who take whiskey and White Rock at stated intervals for their health, particularly when they come down to visit these hot lower regions. When the time came to go we drank another highball. I left out the whiskey, for I knew that I had to climb into the boat; but the others, including the temperate captain, took the universal poison as the Scotch dispense it. They had the advantage of long practise and experience. My book knowledge did not help me in practice.

After exercising a great deal of sober good judgment and juvenile agility, we got safely in and out of the row boat and finally on board our dear S. S. Limón. We were glad to be again on the boat, which was clean, cool and provided with ice and icebox meat, and were fortunate in not being obliged to spend the night in the old dilapidated worm-eaten hotel, which was full of mosquitoes and hot air, and had undoubtedly sheltered and shrouded many a case of yellow fever in the past.

CHAPTER V

Colón and the Panama Railway

Getting Aboard the Italian Steamship—A Life on the Ocean Wave—W. J. Bryan’s Opinion—The Steerage—A Many-tongued Englishman and Champagne Cider—The S. S. Limonians and Dinner—A Polyglot Conversation—Steamer Chairs for Beds—Night Sounds and Nauseous Smells—Fresh Air a Magic Remedy—Colón—The Formalities of Landing in the Canal Zone—Passed Through by the Linguistic Englishman—Circular No. 13—Hotel Washington and Its Discomforts—Attractive Grounds—Impossible Lodgings—Sudden Departure—Paying Double—Expensive Transportation—Aristocratic Beer—Getting Something for Nothing—Suffocated by Handbaggage—The Champagne-Cider-Englishman Again—Across the Isthmus by Railroad—Buried Treasures—U. S. Marines—Rhine Scenery—Cutting a Mountain Ridge in Two—Arrival at Panama—Farewell to S. S. Limonians—Parting without Sorrow—Traveling Friendship—Wise Cab-men and Cheap Transportation—Two and a half Cab Rides for a Glass of Beer—Doing as the Wild Beasts do.

The Italian steamship, which shall be nameless, was a large, fine-looking one when compared with banana boats, and was to arrive and depart on Sunday. It did so on Monday, and thus was keeping excellent time for Central American sea travel. It had done it mañana, and every one was full of passive praise.[*]

[*] Please see Transcriber’s note.

In order to avoid having our luggage examined, and being taxed by the thrifty Costa Rican custom officers, we arranged to have it put aboard the Italian steamer without being landed. This was easy for us but difficult for the sailors. They took it to the seaward side of the ship in a large row boat which held off about six feet and bobbed up and down like a cork. At an apparent risk of being thrown into the sea by each rising wave, the sailors made a noose in a heavy, stiff rope and placed it around half a dozen trunks and bags at a time. Then the derrick swung the things out over the side of the small boat and up on the ship in a way that frightened us, for it seemed almost a miracle that the loosely bound trunks and bags did not slip out and drop into the deep water. The sailors, however, seemed quite as cool and unconcerned about the chances of the trunks as about their own.

But how to transfer the ladies was a more difficult problem for us. It was proposed that they be sent the same way as the luggage, but the gallant captain vetoed the proposition and swore that we should have to get them in and out of the row boats, and put them ashore, where they could board the steamship as became their sex. And, in fact, after many an “oh” and “no” and “I can’t,” and plenty of shoving and pulling and catching, we finally got them safely on mother earth. The promenade from one pier to the other, including a walk through the gorgeous garden of the gangrenous hotel, and the final boarding of the ship, which lay alongside the pier, brought our task however to a most agreeable ending.

As a large number of the San Joséans who had been trapped in Limón by the washout were going with us, the steamship was quite crowded. It had come from Italian and Spanish ports and was making a tour of the Caribbean Sea, stopping at Limón, Colón and several South American ports, and had all kinds and conditions of men, women, children and animals on board. Sounds of many languages, English, Spanish, Italian, French, canine and gallinine, chased one another through the air in lively competition. We were a sort of Tower of Babel crowd. The European passengers looked the worse for wear, and their appearance, actions and words convinced me that “A Life on the Ocean Wave” was a poetical expression for Englishmen and Americans only. The song has never been translated that I know of, hence other nations know nothing of the poetry of such a life; and I had the proof of it right there before me and all about me. Wm. J. Bryan is said to be responsible for the following sentence:[1] “There is rest in an ocean voyage. The receding shores shut out the hum of the busy world; the expanse of water soothes the eye by its vastness; the breaking of the waves is music to the ear and there is medicine for the nerves in the salt sea breezes that invite to sleep.” How eloquent must be the man who can talk or write like that on shipboard.

[1] Chicago Daily News, Jan. 13, 1906.

The steerage was crammed with men, women, children, dogs and chickens; the dogs and chickens in coops and the humans huddled quite as closely together on their deck space. The latter were much worse off because they had a little more intelligence than the chickens, and realized their situation and sufferings more fully. Some of the men stood up and some sat on boxes, bundles, sky-lights and parts of the rigging, staring blankly and stupidly about them; others loitered about the narrow gangways, or reclined on the dirty deck, playing cards. Women and girls sat in out-of-the-way places with plates of unbuttered bread and dry boiled potatoes in their laps, eating with ravenous content and looking and acting as if they had not eaten before for a fortnight. As the voyage had been a long and stormy one, the appearances probably were not at great variance with the facts.

When finally we steamed out into the open sea the big boat, which sat high out of the water, rocked almost if not quite as badly as had the S. S. Limón. Many of the saloon (so-called first-class) passengers amused themselves watching and criticising the sea-weary crowd on the steerage deck below them, and laughed loudly whenever one of the sufferers would give way to a paroxysm of sickness. But some of those heartless laugh-promoters got their deserts, for the night turned out to be quite stormy and they themselves did what seemed so amusing when others did it.

The Port Limón passengers were quite gay for people who were traveling over a thousand miles by sea, and over a hundred by land, in order to get to a place that had been only a hundred miles distant before the great flood of the Reventazon or Big Buster River. I was particularly interested in an English resident of San José who had traveled extensively in Europe and Central America and spoke French, Italian, Spanish and English quite fluently and frequently. He spoke to every one in his own language and was “hail-fellow-well-met” with all. Before the ship left the pier he treated and was treated by the Limonians who came to see him off, and after we got off he did the same to his friends on board. In order to save his head he drank a great deal of champagne cider, a temperance drink which limits its ravages mainly to the stomach. We put out to sea at four-thirty, and by five-thirty his stomach weighed a ton and had to be lightened by throwing a part of its cargo overboard. By dinner time he was a changed man and acted as small as before he had acted big. When he sat down at the table he put on a brave and cheerful look. But I could see that his bravura and cheerfulness were only skin deep, for there was no confirmatory luster in his eyes and no pleasant word on his tongue. While the soup was being eaten he began to look at us with that unmistakable, conquered expression of a seasick man. He stared at us as if asking us if we noticed his plight, and when the second course came on he had to capitulate. He suddenly stood up and said meekly, “I think I must go,” and left the table, quickening his step as he neared the door.

The dinner was quite elaborate, but the foods were mostly Italian mixtures and so greasy that although the motion of the boat did not affect me, my stomach felt, after I had finished, as if it had done something wrong. Grease and sauce blend the flavors of food mixtures into a greasy and saucy harmony and, since the taste of fat is agreeable to the hungry stomach, often make the mess taste good. This is one of the secrets of economical cooking, which is so extensively cultivated abroad. The mixtures, although not attractive to the pampered American palate, are much more healthful than mince and pumpkin pie, doughnuts, baked beans, gingerbread, boiled corn beef and cabbage, devil cake and other devil dishes of Yankee invention. Our Pilgrim Fathers renounced the devil in all but eating. But the secret of the enjoyment of our dinner was the fact that we S. S. Limonians, who had become good friends and good sailors during the mutual and varied experiences of our voyage, all sat at the same table and took pleasure in each other’s company—the more so because all around us were strangers with whom we had nothing in common either social or ancestral. They were gesticulating and talking incessantly, rolling their R’s like ratchets and becoming more noisy, if possible, with every glass of wine they swallowed. The ship provided, gratis, plenty of cheap red and white wine, quite enough to inebriate all of us if we had been able to drink enough of it. Our Englishman and our insurance agent tasted it and promptly ordered some good wine at their own expense. But about the time we were half through eating and the passengers had drunk about all they wanted, some excellent wine was brought in and served free. It was better than what either of our men had ordered and drunk, but came too late for them to enjoy it. Not having indulged in any before, I took a little and relished it. It seemed to affiliate with the grease that was growling inside of me, and made it feel more contented to remain where it was. If our New England had only provided an antidote or palliative for the sweet and sodden mixtures with which she tempts us! But she finishes the destruction of digestion by slaking and cementing them in the stomach with hard cider.

After dinner I made the acquaintance of the Italian ship doctor, who spoke Italian and French; and Doctor Echeverría from Limón, who spoke Spanish, French and English; and a physician from Austria, who spoke Italian, Spanish, French, English and German. And as I attempted to palm off on them a kind of English, German, Spanish, Italian and French confusion, we had a dizzy and delightful time together. Sometimes two languages were spoken at once. But even when the conversation became general among us the language was apt to be changed with each speaker, who often could express himself better in a language other than that of the previous speaker. The comforting part of it was that even when the language changed with each speaker, most of us could understand what was said, and only became a little bit dazed and stuttery when we got to gesticulating and talking too fast. It was delightful, but it was strenuous. It would have been more congruous to have adopted French, the only language which we all spoke, as a common medium, but as none of us was French no one volunteered.

After our polyglot jugglery had exhausted our energies and our interest we separated, and I lay down on a bench and rested my brain. I remained there until quite late, for down among the staterooms there was so much noise and bad air and so many roaches, that the cool quiet fresh air on deck was not to be exchanged for that below except for the purpose of obtaining the needed sleep.

When I finally concluded that it was necessary to go to bed, I noticed some passengers preparing to spend the night in their steamer chairs. I did not wonder at their choice of lodgings, but wondered how many shower baths they would get before morning. To have no place to sleep more comfortable than a reclining chair with wobbly wooden legs and arms, is one of those sidelights of travel that books seldom tell about and tourists never look forward to. Down below I found the portholes on my side of the ship closed in order to keep the waves and fresh air outside where they belonged. I sighed and climbed up into the upper berth near the ceiling, for the lower one was occupied by dingy sheets and pillow cases. The person who had a right to sleep there had given it up, and was probably outside on a steamer chair where he could breathe better.

The walls or partitions between the staterooms reached only to within a foot of the ceiling, which was a provision for diffusing the bad air and odors equally and impartially among the passengers. I did no eavesdropping nor had I any desire to pry into my neighbors’ private affairs, nevertheless I heard doleful groans and desperate whoops that were intended to be kept secret. The genial English linguist who had kept sober on champagne cider was in the room next to mine doing penance. Even after the general noises had subsided he occasionally broke the silence and started desultory responses and imitations down the corridor. Finally the forced contemplation of misery became monotonous and wearisome and I fell asleep and slept until the morning noises and noisomeness began to come over the partitions and awake my ears and nostrils to a renewed sense of the situation.

I descended from my elevated couch, hurried into my clothes and went on deck to let the close air out of my air passages. The effect of the fresh air was hypnotic, and purgatory was forgotten. In a short time life became worth living, and I descended to the dining room where the odors were agreeable, and fortified myself with a water roll and two cups of café-au-lait. It seemed to me that the half of seasickness consisted in being stowed away in poorly ventilated and malodorous covey holes.

We arrived at Colón between eight and nine o’clock. The town has a good but exposed harbor with large covered piers. Only two or three other steamships were at the piers, and during the time I was in the town I never saw more than four there at a time. Although quite a number of ships stopped, but few stayed long, which was possibly due in part to the fact that the harbor afforded but little protection from the terrible “Northers” that occasionally visited it.

As we moved up to the pier, its edge was crowded with gesticulating negroes asking in Spanish and broken English to carry our baggage but who, when we finally called to them, told us to wait. This useless calling made the crowded landing place seem lively and busy, although nothing was being done but waiting. The health officer came aboard and vaccinated a few obstinate steerage passengers who had resisted the efforts of the ship surgeon, but now had to be vaccinated or be sent back home. He then ordered the cabin passengers all into the dining-room, glanced at us and talked with the ship surgeon. Then the custom officer called us into the parlor and made us sign a declaration of our baggage. Finally, after about an hour of fruitless formality they allowed us to step on the pier, but held us there to have our baggage rummaged. At the opportune moment the linguistic San José Englishman who the day before had drunk champagne cider to everybody’s health but his own, and to whom the habit not only of talking to everybody in his or her native language but of giving assistance and information to everybody, either was an inherited instinct or had become second nature by cultivation and habit, appeared suddenly, as if by magic and from nowhere, and made the custom officer ashamed to examine my trunk. He was not acquainted with the young officer, but he was as expert with strangers as an insurance agent, and had an extra traveling experience as well as a compelling touch of nature. One became his friend at the second word he uttered. His mouth was so full of words that they came out spontaneously and seemed to enjoy themselves on their way out. Although he had never heard of me elsewhere, he introduced me as a delegate to the Medical Congress and guest of the Republic of Panama, and made me out so important and distinguished that the officer touched his hat apologetically and hastily closed and marked my trunk.

Sanitary circular No. 13 was handed to every one who landed at Colón. It contained instructions as to the best way of avoiding malaria and yellow fever. I have preserved mine, but it has become so badly torn and soiled and wrinkled from much handling and stuffing away in a crowded steamer trunk that it is almost illegible. For the benefit of those who stay at home, but wish to know how to avoid these maladies, I reproduce it here. I was unable to smooth out the wrinkles, however, and think that it must have become slightly altered by my typewriter.

WAR DEPORTMENT.

ISTHMAN CANAL COMMOTION.

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF SAN TOY OFFICER.

Ann Cone, Isthman Canal Zoo,
November 28th, 1904.

Circular No. 13.

This circular is handed to each new rival upon the Isthmuss for the purpose of instruction as to how to void the disease most prevalent in Panama and the Canal Zoo—MALE-ARIA. Its cause is now well-known and each one with a little care can do a great deal toward keeping few from the disease.

It has been proven that male-aria is only given to man by the bite of a female musk-eater of a certain species (Anna Pholes). This female musk-eater must always bite some man-being who is suffering from male-aria and, in the blood thus drawn, she takes in the male-arian parachute. Within a few days, this parachute infects the musk-eater herself, and when she next bites a well parson she injects her hospital into the beating place. In this hospital the male-arian parachute is injected, and thus the wealthy parson contracts the disease.

Now if every man would use a musk-eater-bar, so arranged that the musk-eaters could not get into the bar-room at night, much protection would be procured from the disease, for while it may be contracted during the day time, it is not lovely to be. Probably nine tenths of the male-arian cusses contract the disease during sleep, because the male-arian musk-eater is a night biter, and the parson is quiet at this time.

Absolute protection from musk-eater bites is impossible, but it is known that Queen-Anne is a deadly person to the male-arial parachute after she gets into the blood of a humming bee. If therefore every drone would shake three grins at Queen-Anne once a day, any male-arial parachute that has been introduced to him during the day would almost certainly be heeled. The best time probably to shake Queen-Anne is before going to bed at night.

W. C. Gorgas,
Colonel, Medical Cops, U. S. A.
Chief San Toy Officer.

Colonel Gorgas is said to be a clear-headed, responsible man, but after reading his circular as restored I will not consider him responsible.

I had heard so much about Hotel Washington and its delightful situation on the cool tradewindy side of the town that my first endeavor upon landing was to get there and secure comfortable quarters. As there were no carriages, omnibuses, horse cars, dog carts or elevated trains visible on the streets (only steam engines and freight trains), and as the hotel was only a five-minute walk from the wharf, I walked the distance and hired a negro boy to carry my trunk. It was only ten o’clock in the morning but the heat was such that when I arrived I was perspiring most healthfully, and so was the negro boy with my trunk on his shoulder. I asked him to allow me to help him carry the trunk, or hire a helper, but he refused saying that it kept the sun off of his back.

The hotel had an aged and careworn look and seemed to be more in need of the mild climate and salubrious surroundings than any of the guests who were lounging in its shadows. It was two stories high, and consisted of a long row of rooms, below and above, which extended in single file parallel with the beach and about a hundred feet from it on one side, and along a back street on the other side. Which was the front side, I could not tell. Wide verandas bordered each floor in front and rear, the rear (or front) ones serving as outdoor sitting-rooms and the front (or rear) ones as passageways from the rooms to the stairway outside. Thus each room had a back (or front) door and window facing the sea and a front (or back) door and window facing the town. At the end of the building on the right there was a large bath-house with several cold rain-water shower baths but no tubs. From the bath-house a wing extended toward the sea, forming with the main building an L-shaped structure. In the wing the rooms did not extend through from veranda to veranda and therefore possessed a door and windows on one side only; a poor arrangement for tropical dormitories, in which through and through draughts of air are necessary for health and comfort.

The grounds consisted of a well-kept lawn in the rear (or front) bounded, near the water’s edge, by a shell road and a fine row of lofty cocoa palms, the conventional ornaments of inhabited tropical shores. On the back (or front) verandas one could sit and contemplate the ever youthful charms of nature, enjoying the constant fanning of the cool sea breeze and forgetting the hollow-eyed and unattractive, double faced appearance of the building. The only indoor lounging place was a small combination sitting-room and barroom; but as there ought to be no indoors in the tropics except for protection from night-biting insects and beasts, this defect was apparent only.

I found the manager busy at his desk in a little office about ten feet square, that opened on one side into the hotel barroom and on the other into his grocery and provision store, from which he bought provisions of himself for his hotel. After finishing his business with the clerk, who had the right-of-way, he greeted me passively, and informed me that there was not an empty room in the house, but that by night he might be able to put me in a room with another occupant or two. In the meantime he had my trunk and bag put in a room in the wing of the house. The room contained three single iron beds, two old water-worn wooden washstands, worth $2.00 each, if any one could be found willing to buy them, a center table two by three feet in diameter, worth $1.50, and two chairs worth nothing. It had neither a closet nor a wardrobe, and the two windows and the door were on the same side, and that side was not toward the sea. For three to sleep under mosquito bars in one room without an opportunity for a breeze to blow through it, would have been existing but not living. I did not then know that in the tropics people sleep with doors as well as windows wide open, utterly indifferent to the presence or proximity of others, and that they subordinate all other comforts and callings to that of keeping cool. Seclusion is, according to tropical standards, an over-refinement of our Northern modesty. In the tropics strangers eat, talk and sleep in common and in public in spite of the tedium of small talk all day and the annoyance of snoring and snorting all night; in the North we eat, think, sleep and weep as privately as possible, annoying our friends and relatives only. But I was not born in the tropics nor for the tropics, and longed for the comforts and privacy I had endured on the S. S. Limón. I wished I was on my way back to the States. Freezing and its accessories were not so bad after all and I would in the future cultivate them, and try to see their bright side. I was completely discouraged, and could not reconcile myself to a communistic life of this kind; so I resolved to keep on the move until I found a place where I could live in a civilized manner even if I did not stop moving until I arrived home.

I asked about trains and was told that the morning train had gone and no other would go until afternoon. But I went to the railroad station and learned that a special train would leave in about an hour. It was organized to take the passengers of our Italian boat across the isthmus to catch a Pacific Mail S. S. I therefore returned to the hotel and hired a negro to take my trunk back to the station. This negro produced a tiny dray-cart, drawn by a tiny four-legged skeleton of a tropical horse and offered to haul both myself and my trunk. If an able-bodied man had been harnessed to it, I should have accepted; but I had pity on the skeleton and walked to the station, allowing the trunk to ride. I was soon booked and baggaged for Panama, and was happy again at having escaped the annoyance and discomforts of rooming with strangers in a strange land, and at having the certainty of arriving in three hours at my long journey’s end—at Panama, the oldest city on the continent. Quaint old, cute old, historic old Panama! where picturesque revolutionists were as plentiful as commonplace millionaires in New York. Panama meant rest, clean clothes, baths, sight-seeing and siestas; and it could not be much hotter than Colón. I felt like one of the world’s elect, for although many go to a hotter place, but few get to Panama.

I had paid each of the negroes who had carried my trunk the fifty cents which they demanded. But I learned afterward that they meant Central American silver, which is worth only half as much as gold. Hence I paid each of them the equivalent of a dollar in their money, or double the amount they asked. However, I would recommend this double method of paying tropical negroes, as it secures good service and doesn’t bankrupt anybody. My second negro was very attentive and had my baggage weighed for me, and thus enabled me to pay $2.50 for it without any trouble. When, however, I had finally settled at the rate of three cents a pound for my baggage and about that much a rod for my fare, I discovered that the delegates to the Medical Congress were entitled to free transportation for themselves and baggage. The negro had thus cost me $11.50 more than I should have paid. He was literally a born blackleg and I was a natural born greenhorn, but we were both innocent, and doing the best we knew how, and no harm had been done.

After my great disappointment with the hotel and all of the activity involved, I felt faint, for I had breakfasted at break of day on the conventional nothing, viz., a dry roll and coffee. So I stepped into a combination saloon and restaurant to get an appetizer to prepare me for a real breakfast, for in Central America, as in France, they rightly call their first meal coffee and their second meal breakfast. When I had drunk my beer the bar-tender asked fifty cents for it. “This is too much,” I thought. “If they charge fifty cents for beer, they must charge about a dollar and a half for a highball and five dollars for a beefsteak. I had better get back home where I can afford to eat and drink.” I handed the bartender a silver half dollar and to my surprise he handed me a silver half dollar back. Thinking that he had made a mistake, I gave it back to him. He took the coin, looked at it and again returned it to me. Then I also looked at it and saw that it was a Columbian half dollar, equal to our quarter dollar. I felt greatly relieved—my glass of beer had only cost a quarter. So I drank another and made him keep the money, and he apologized for having tried to make me take the money instead of another beer. I learned that beer was one of the most expensive drinks on the isthmus. It was an exotic from Milwaukee. It had to be brought a great distance in bottles, and instead of costing two thirds as much as a highball it cost nearly twice as much. The regular price for ordinary drinks at the bar, excepting beer, was only fifteen cents in U. S. money, which was consoling. I should be able to drink even if I could not afford to eat.

After getting some real breakfast at half price I felt better as well as wiser, and went to the station and found the officials still weighing baggage. The extra train was proving profitable and would probably be crowded. Hence I hurried into the cars to secure a seat, and was glad I had done so, for pretty soon they were filled until there was hardly breathing space. It was not that the passengers were too numerous, but they had brought countless bags, bundles, blankets and other unperfumed traveling furniture all done up in hand packages, and had piled them up on and between the seats. They could take them thus without paying for them. We had first-class tickets, but were transported like emigrants and were nearly two hours late in getting off. But I did not mind that, for the other S. S. Limonians were there, and we were enjoying each other’s company and the privilege of commenting freely upon our strange surroundings.

We were hardly out of the station, when the genial champagne-cider-Englishman from San José, who had telegraphed to the Pacific Mail S. S. Company to hold their boat for his party, and who had been mainly instrumental in getting the extra train put on, came down the aisle with a bottle of that most wine-like whiskey, called “Scotch,” and our S. S. Limonian Englishman produced three bottles of that most wine-like water called “White Rock” out of one of his dozen traveling bags. So we had a Scotch treat. Pretty soon nearly every person in the car had reverted to his atavistic emigrant nature, and was eating out of his hand and drinking out of his bottle. It was quite an enjoyable picknicky experience, only I could not eat. I had taken a hearty meat breakfast before starting, instead of waiting for this sociable lunch.

HUTS ON LINE OF PANAMA ROAD

The journey of two hours was a delightful transformation from our long siege of Caribbean discomfort. The cars had no glass in the windows, and the breeze caused by our motion kept us comfortably cool without bringing in any dust. The inhabitants we saw along the road were as black and curious looking as imps, and the foliage so dense in places as to appear almost solid; and the frequent views of portions of the incomplete canal and of the picturesque rivers that intersected and mirrored the tangled foliage, lent a fascinating wildness and weirdness to the landscape, that reminded us of oriental tales and occult apparitions.

But all is not gold that glitters, nor passion that paints, nor poetry that poses. Commerce and greed, poverty and death, profit and loss, had left their trails. In places we saw ruined machinery sticking out of the underbrush. Indeed, whole workshops were covered and all but concealed by the rank growth of vegetation. At Bas Matachin a machine shop with an equipment worth at least a quarter of a million of dollars and covering six acres was overgrown; and near it several acres of car wheels and steel rails had already been dug out. After being put in order the shop was going to develop a capacity for turning out fifteen locomotives and 115 cars per month. Other warehouses contained a million dollars’ worth of pumps, dredges and machine tools. Hundreds of superfluous letter presses and six tons of rusty steel pens were found among them. At Culebra they were repairing 1,000 cars, thirty locomotives and seven excavators, besides many antiquated steam shovels, all of which were to be utilized to keep men busy until more modern machinery could be imported. Costly chicken-coops, a horse bath-tub 15x75 feet in area, and a pig pen 100x200 feet (the latter made of concrete with iron supports and a galvanized roof, and capable of holding 200 hogs) were discovered in the jungle. Surely Panama until just recently contained the greatest amount of accessible buried treasures of any country in the world. In the basement of the administration building at Panama are French printing presses and lithographic presses, and a carload of drawing sheets, which is, according to the investigation of Frank C. Carpenter, from whose writings the above astonishing items of information are taken, thousands of dollars’ worth more than can be used in all of the work of the canal.

During the last half hour of the journey across the isthmus the scenery was hilly, and the view less impeded by crowding vegetation. The barracks of the U. S. marines at Empire, nestling in the foliage on the side of the mountain, made a romantic picture as seen from the train, something like Rhine scenery without the Rhine. And I think that the luxuriance of the tropical foliage in the valley made an acceptable substitute for the Rhine at that point. Better to have Rhine scenery without the Rhine than the Rhine without any scenery, since we can’t have everything in Panama. It is easier to imagine a river than to imagine the scenery. But when the canal is finished we will also have to imagine the scenery, for the present railroad and many of the villages we were looking at will be at the bottom of a lake, and ships will be passing over them.

ABANDONED MACHINERY OF THE FRENCH

We rode through the Culebra cut, where they are cutting through a mountain ridge 300 feet high. Three hundred feet high seems pretty low for a mountain ridge until one attempts to dig through it and carry the rocky debris twenty-three miles up the Atlantic coast whence it can not be borne back by the torrents of the rainy season. Its accomplishment would make a fit subject for an Arabian Night story. But Uncle Sam finds it easy. He is going to build the canal over the mountain, and make his cement out of the debris.

Suddenly, long before I expected or even desired it, we stopped at the city of Panama, the Mecca of my pilgrimage. I bade farewell to the S. S. Limonians, who were taken by the train to the mouth of the canal where the pier was located and where the Pacific Mail steamer was waiting for them, and started for Hotel Centrál. One of the most agreeable features about steamship friends is that there is no pain at parting. We enjoy them, and leave them rejoicing, and readily find substitutes wherever we go. If we meet them again soon, we greet them as vociferously as if they were old cronies; if we never meet them again we forget them as if they had been changes in the weather.

I found cabmen in abundance, all native negroes. They were unlike any other cabmen I had ever met. In a way they were saints, gentlemen and business men, and didn’t “let on.” Instead of taking advantage of the facts that the weather at Panama was always either hot or rainy, the distance too great to be walked, and that there were no street cars, to charge a dollar for the long ride to the hotel at the other end of the town, they charged ten cents. Pah! In Chicago the cabfare from the railway stations to my house is two dollars and a half. But by keeping their price down to ten cents the Panama cabmen not only have killed street car competition, but they get more jobs without doing any more work. Their horses do the work while they merely take rides, and are kept cool by the motion and entertained by their customers. It is a wonder that with such successful and moral business models so near them, the Colón negroes can be so mercenary and shortsighted.

I like a cheap ride, but when it is as cheap as that it seems like something not worth having. One can take two and a half rides for their price of a glass of beer. It is preposterous. While in Panama I did refuse to ride once, and walked to the station from the hotel—but only once. The ride was worth the price of two and a half schooners of beer. The distance was composed of cobblestones and animated by heat, and grew upon acquaintance. Walking at night in the tropics is pleasurable and healthy, but by day it is impossible. In the tropics one should do as the wild beasts do, viz., keep out of the sun and let beer alone.

ALONG PANAMA RAILROAD

CHAPTER VI

Panama

Origin of the Name Panama—Suggestions for Change of Name—Enlightening a Cab Driver—Scalping in the United States—A Cure for Obesity—Shirking—Description of Road from the Railroad Station to the Hotel Centrál—Plaza Centrál—Tips—The Negro in the North and South—Dr. Frank’s Opinion—How the Tropical Negro’s Wants Are Satisfied—Opportunities for Negroes and Mulattoes in the Tropics—Solution of the Race Problem.

We are told that Panama is the Indian name for good fishing place, or place abounding in fish. Judging from the hotel fare this might be so, for when we did not have canned fish, we had fresh. But this explanation is regarded by archæologists as a fish story and lacks anthropologic evidence. As to etymology, the name sounds and looks more like Greek, Latin or Spanish than Indian. Panamahaha would sound more like an Indian name and would express more.

One enthusiastic writer says the name Panama was given to the city because it is the oldest city on the continent, the Pa and Ma of American cities. The simplicity of the explanation gives it weight. Simplicity and truth are twins, and simplicity was born first.

A Spanish scientist asserts that the original name was Panima from Pa ni Ma, which means neither father nor mother. He claims that as the first city of America, it had neither father nor mother. This is simpler still.

A Scandinavian historian thinks that the original name was Panamerica, which is Swedish. Eric was cut out later, and Panama was left.

A celebrated English captain, whose name has been forgotten, thinks that the real name was Panamaniac, because the inhabitants were unlike the English, and refers to the capture of Panama by Morgan the pirate as proof. The inhabitants who went forth to fight insanely allowed themselves to be scattered and driven back by their own horses and cows. He says that the English do not fear these animals.

Sportsmen say that the name is Indian and that it refers to the method of fishing formerly in vogue by the natives. The fisherman leans over the water and agitates it with his beard and lips, whereupon the fish, who can not distinguish a dark colored face above the surface of the water from a tree trunk, takes the agitation of the water for that made by bugs, darts at the place and lands between the Indian’s teeth, and is caught.

I myself am inclined to cut the Gordian knot by proposing a new name. With a temperature of 90 to 100 degrees F. in the shade on Christmas and New Year’s days, the town should be called Infero in Esperanto, Inferno in Italian, Enfer in French, Hoelle in German, Lugar Endiablado in Spanish and Vamick in Volapuk. I suggested this explanation to our Englishman of the S. S. Limón as we were parting at the Panama railroad station, and he said, “Go to Panama.”

I chartered a ten-cent cab at the station and entered into conversation with the driver, who, with his vast fund of knowledge concerning Spanish words and Panama city geography, taught me many things. He was one of the few Panama cabmen who spoke English.

In order to give him some information in return, I told him that I came from one of the youngest and largest cities in the United States, a city in which we had a river whose water ran backward toward its source, that the city had also built a canal that carried the waters from Lake Michigan uphill on its way down to the Gulf of Mexico, and had constructed a pump that would have pumped the Niagara Falls into the Mississippi River had not the rest of the country objected and interfered. I told him that some of us remembered when Chicago was the center of the greatest Indian scalping district of the world.

He stared at me with the whites of his eyes while I was talking, and then wanted to know if I had ever seen any one scalped. I told him that I had myself been scalped five times and was now growing my sixth head of hair; that the hair of many of our women turned golden yellow instead of gray as they grew older; that hairgrowing was one of our industries, and our horticulturists made it grow on wax figures faster than it grows on babies’ heads, just as our builders put roofs on houses before building the walls, and in his hot country would leave off the walls altogether.

“Do they ever begin at the roof and build downward?” he asked, dryly.

“Not as a rule, but we often begin the new building before the old one is torn down, and put in the new foundation and supports while the old building is still inhabited.”

He did not seem to know that I was telling the truth, for he began to lose interest and whipped up his emaciated horse to keep it from falling down, and apart. So I changed the subject.

“Your horse seems to be getting very thin from your efforts. Or perhaps it is from its own efforts. It is tired carrying its age, which, of course, is growing greater and heavier every day. It ought to be wired and connected with a power-house. In my country we put up better frameworks and run them by gasoline vapor. How do you feed it?”

“I don’t feed him.”

“I beg pardon. I meant to ask how you diet him?”

“He works and fasts until six in the evening, when I then turn him loose and let him nibble. I lay off once a week to spend my week’s earnings, and turn him out to grass for the day, when he fills up.”

“I have it at last,” I exclaimed so suddenly that he gave a little start. “I have been seeking a cure for obesity for years, and you have found it and demonstrated it. I’ll make my fat patients fast and work all day, let them nibble after 6 P. M. and once a week turn them out to golf, which includes both the grass and the filling up.”

“What a queer country yours is,” he said, “I should think that people would make fun of each other all of the time.”

“They do. Scheming for each other’s money and then making fun of the losers, keep them busy and happy. But why do you tire yourself beating your horse?”

“I’m working, or being worked, I hardly know which.”

“And what is the horse doing? If he could only take the whip!”

“He’s shirking, sir. I’m giving him the whip.”

“Well, it’s about time for him to shirk. He probably wants to do it once more, and has no time to lose. If the poor brute could only talk, as we do.”

“That’s one bad quality he doesn’t share with us, sir.”

IN PANAMA CITY
Store and Residence of the Poorer Quarter

After we had thus driven about a mile, the houses, which near the station were dilapidated one and two-story frame structures, teeming with Chinese and negroes, began to improve in quality, and we came to the Plaza and Church of Santa Ana. Here we found ourselves to all appearances in an old Spanish town, as full of medieval inconveniences as New York or Chicago of modern improvements. Spanish houses, churches, streets, plazas and people—everything quaint, curious and comfortless—dirty, diseased and dead. We passed many hotels, but the buildings were small, old, dingy and uninviting in appearance. They looked more like homes for microbes and macrobes rather than doñas and hidalgos.

The next half or three-quarter mile was through the best business part of the city where whites predominated. The houses were Spanish in style, two or three stories high, nearly all having stores on the ground floor and living apartments above. They formed a solid front of masonry, slightly varied, and were built in little blocks that measured about 100 by 200 feet. The cross streets were too narrow for two persons to walk abreast, so that the only way for pedestrians to pass one another was to step off into the street, and the only way for vehicles to pass one another was to make use of the sidewalks. However, that didn’t matter. Vehicles did not frequent the side streets, although plenty of cabs were rattling back and forth on the main thoroughfare which led us from the railroad station to Plaza Centrál, the principal public square and park of the town. It was square in shape and about 250 feet in diameter, and was occupied by the Parque de la Catedrál (Cathedral Park), all except a twenty-foot strip of street extending around the outer edges. The street was also paved with those sounding cobble-stones for carriages and horses to rattle upon and murder sleep. The foliage in the park was thick but, as the dry season had already set in, it had not the luxuriance and brilliancy of that on the other side of the isthmus. The garden of the hotel at Limón, Costa Rica, was still the most gorgeous bit of vegetation I had seen.

THE CATHEDRAL OF PANAMA AND CORNER OF
THE PARK

On the west side of the square stood the Cathedral. Its high square Spanish towers were crusted over with pearly shells, and adorned with delicate, tree-like shrubs which grew upon their venerable walls. On the same side of the square was a small department store. On the north side were, besides the business houses, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and the Panama Lottery, the latter being the lower floor of the bishop’s house. On the south side was a book store and the United States government official building. On the east side flourished a German saloon, a money changer, two business houses and Hotel Centrál. In the hotel building, and flanking the main entrance or corridor on either side, were an immense barroom and a small barber shop, each apparently doing a rushing business. Next to the hotel on the second floor, over a store, was a Spanish club where cards were played after dark and before dawn.

I tipped the cabman with a nickel, equal to fifty per cent. of his pay for the ride, and received a polite bow and “Gracias, Señor.”

I was told afterward that the tipping of cabmen was not customary. The cabmen of Panama are so honest and disinterested that a pleasant word is as good as a tip. If only our American negroes, who believe that one good tip deserves another, would all go to Panama and do as the Panama negroes do, they would learn to be tolerant of the whites, who wish only to be served and left alone.

I do not suppose that all of my Northern readers take enough interest in their negro brothers to study the race question. Some think they do not have to. For the enlightenment of such as do not study, I will quote from a recent popular novel that was being printed in this country while I was in Panama, and has since been dramatized. The quotation represents a Southern physician, Doctor Cameron, telling a statesman named Stoneman how the negroes maltreated the whites in South Carolina after having voted themselves into complete political control of the state.

“‘The negro is the master of our state, county, city and town governments. Every school, college, hospital, asylum and poorhouse is his prey. What you have seen is but a sample. Negro insolence grows beyond endurance. Their women are taught to insult their old mistresses and mock their poverty as they pass in their old, faded dresses. Yesterday a black driver struck a white child of six with his whip, and when the mother protested, she was arrested by a negro policeman, taken before a negro magistrate, and fined ten dollars for ”insulting a freedman.’”

“Stoneman frowned: ‘Such things must be very exceptional.’

“‘They are everyday occurrences and cease to excite comment.... Our school commissioner is a negro who can neither read nor write. The black grand jury last week discharged a negro for stealing cattle and indicted the owner for false imprisonment. No such rate of taxation was ever imposed on a civilized people. A tithe of it cost Great Britain her colonies. There are 5,000 homes in this country—2,900 of them are advertised for sale by the sheriff to meet his tax bills.... Congress, in addition to the desolation of the war and the ruin of black rule, has wrung from the cotton farmers of the South a tax of $67,000,000. Every dollar of this money bears the stain of the blood of starving people. They are ready to give up, or to spring some desperate scheme of resistance——’

“The old man lifted his massive head and his great jaws came together with a snap:

“‘Resistance to the authority of the national government?’

“‘No; resistance to the travesty of government and the mockery of civilization under which we are being throttled! The bayonet is now in the hands of a brutal negro militia. The tyranny of military martinets was child’s play to this.... Eighty thousand armed negro troops, answerable to no authority save the savage instincts of their officers, terrorize the state. Every white company has been disbanded and disarmed by our scalawag governor. I tell you, sir, we are walking on the crust of a volcano!... Black hordes of former slaves, with the intelligence of children and the instincts of savages, armed with modern rifles, parade daily in front of their unarmed former masters. A white man has no right a negro need respect. The children of the breed of men who speak the tongue of Burns and Shakespeare, Drake and Raleigh, have been disarmed and made subject to the black spawn of an African jungle! Can human flesh endure it? When Goth and Vandal barbarians overran Rome, the negro was the slave of the Roman empire. The savages of the North blew out the light of ancient civilization, but in all the dark ages which followed they never dreamed the leprous infamy of raising a black slave to rule over his former master! No people in the history of the world have ever before been so basely betrayed, so wantonly humiliated and degraded!’

“Stoneman lifted his head in amazement at the burst of passionate intensity with which the Southerner poured out his protest.

“‘For a Russian to rule a Pole,’ he went on, ‘a Turk to rule a Greek, or an Austrian to dominate an Italian, is hard enough, but for a thick-lipped, flat-nosed, spindle-shanked negro, exuding his nauseating animal odor, to shout in derision over the hearths and homes of white men and women is an atrocity too monstrous for belief. Our people are yet dazed by its horror. My God! when they realize its meaning, whose arm will be strong enough to hold them?’

“‘I should think the South was sufficiently amused with resistance to authority,’ interrupted Stoneman.

“‘Even so. Yet there is a moral force at the bottom of every living race of men. The sense of right, the feeling of racial destiny—these are unconquered and unconquerable forces. Every man in South Carolina to-day is glad that slavery is dead. The war was not too great a price for us to pay for the lifting of its curse. And now to ask a Southerner to be the slave of a slave——’”

That such a terrible description should be taken seriously, even in frenzied fiction, is an indication that the ambitious negro is out of place in the United States, where he is as a man without a country. In the North he can not compete with the whites; in the South he is a dissatisfied servant. He is too ambitious for his opportunities here. Let him go to the tropics where the whites can not compete with him.

On our way home from Panama, Doctor Frank, who had been seasick during the whole of the voyage down, said:

“They can say what they please about the tropics, I am never going there again. Zur Hoelle with the tropics! They were made for negroes; let the negroes have them. I have said it.”

I confess that for the time being I agreed with him. The full-blooded negro improves and thrives and finds his wants satisfied in the tropics, and will never thrive elsewhere. When the tropical negro wants a rest he takes a siesta, and is rested. When he wants food he plucks a banana, a pineapple or a mango, and is nourished. When he is thirsty he climbs a tree, cuts open a cocoanut, drinks the juice, and is refreshed. When he craves riches he stays away from work to spend a week’s earnings, and is rich. When he wishes to rise in the social scale, he marries above him, and is stuck-up. When he needs an education he learns to come in out of the sun, and is wise. He does not hanker after social and literary distinction, and is satisfied. He does not seek office, and is not disappointed. He does not ask for tips, and they are not thrust upon him, except by the Yankee-errant. When he comes to die he gets sick or is killed and is restored to the impartial dust of his Mother Earth and, having accumulated neither wealth nor cultivated tastes that he cannot take with him, remains forever after contented. His life is a bit of time, his death a bite of dust. The world has been benefited, but not disturbed by him. He has been true to his race and has accomplished his destiny; he has peopled the tropics.

Look at Doctor Cameron’s picture and then at mine. Who would not choose mine for the negro? If he can not solve his race problem in the United States, he can go to the tropics, and the tropics will solve him. The Romans told each other to see Naples and die. The negroes have not Naples, but they have the equator. It is theirs. Sooner or later they will have possession.

As to the mulatto, he is more sinned against than sinning. He is the product of man’s interference with the divine will as evidenced in God’s work. Extremes, whether of race or rhetoric, do not blend; they antagonize and distress. This new race mixture is neither white nor negro. God made the negro, man made the mulatto. As the blonde race thrives best in the north temperate climate and the negro in the tropical, the mulatto would thrive best in the semi-tropical. In Cuba the lighter colored ones would find an appropriate climate and congenial surroundings. In Cuba there is no color line or race prejudice. The mulattoes could mingle with the whites until in time they would form a part of a dusky white, intelligent mixed race. They would be dissolved and their problem solved. But they must hurry up or the race problem will get there first.

The darker mulattoes might go to Hayti and make use of their intelligence in reforming society and running the government, and thus render a real service to mankind. It would be a missionary service in which the missionaries would save themselves also. This would be easier than to win high station and respect in a white man’s country. In Hayti they would in time become assimilated with the native black race and become a part of a lighter colored, more intelligent race than exists there to-day. Nothing could be more simple.

If our negro will not do this (and who said he would?) he must be diluted or spread out, for the white man must rule in a white man’s country. His only hope for toleration and assistance is by being in the minority. If white immigration will accomplish this in the Southern states then the negro will be saved; if not he must save himself by spreading himself.

CHAPTER VII

At Gran Hotel Centrál

El Gran Hotel Centrál—Its Plan—Prices—Two in a Room—Church Ruins as Boarding-houses—The Hotel Furniture—Advantage of Two in a Room—Primitive Service—The Plumbing—How to Break up Luxurious Habits—The Temperature—A Walk in the Sun—Baths—Doctor Echeverría’s Appetizer—Effects of Liquor—His Character—The Hotel Food—The Venezuelan Minister—The Custom of Treating—Cigaret Smoking, a Solitary Vice—A Visit to the Home of Señor Arango—Clothing an Injury—Panama Ladies—A Linguistic Defeat—Spanish American Education—Influence of United States upon Central American Customs—Language of the Lower Classes—A Visit to the Southern Club—Cola by the Pint—Beer—Alcohol Versus Syrup—To Bed in the Dark—The Light Habit Broken up—A Definition of Happiness—A Miraculous Dawn and an Awakening Town—The Sun Makes a High Jump—Southern Activity and Northern Indolence—A Delightful Sponge Bath and an Hour of Exercise—Coffee and Rolls—Delayed Eggs and Drastic Americans—A Revolution for an Egg—Reasons for the Light Early Breakfast—Burnt Coffee as a Delicacy.

Gran Hotel Centrál was the only second-class hotel in Panama—there was no first-class one. It is a four-story stone house built around a square patio, or court, about fifty feet in diameter, and is situated on a corner of one of the streets that enter the Plaza Centrál. Around the patio on the three upper floors run verandas upon which all inside rooms open. The two sides of the house that front on the plaza and street have an outer row of front rooms on each floor parallel with a row of inner ones from which they are separated by a corridor. The outer rooms are long and narrow with the window at one end, overlooking the street, and the door at the other end opening into the corridor. The inner rooms have no windows, but have doors at each end, single ones opening into the corridor and folding doors on the veranda in the patio. Fresh air can enter through the doors only. The stairway is out-of-doors in the patio, and the landings on the verandas.

DIAGRAM OF MY ROOM AND THE INSIDE ROOM ACROSS THE CORRIDOR

Each room contained two beds, and the price was four dollars a day in gold for a bed and six dollars if one person engaged the whole room. However, as two guests were not put in one room until there was one in each, it was safe to pay for one bed only, except upon unusual occasions when there was a great crowd of visitors in town. But the best way to travel on the isthmus is to have a traveling companion to occupy the other bed. One’s wife would do, only the isthmus traveling would probably not do for her. The Tivoli, which has since been erected on Ancón hill, may do for ladies but it is American and therefore uninteresting. Hotel Centrál had a sort of monopoly of the business, since the others were either tenth class or unclassible, and there were no good furnished apartments to let in town. I heard of one boarding-house, but that was already full of permanent boarders. In looking for rooms I found but one real estate agent, an American, and I could not understand how he made a living without having anything for rent or sale except church ruins.

When I arrived, all second and third-story outside rooms had at least one occupant, and as I refused to occupy one of those inside windowless rooms in which I would have to sleep with the doors open, I was lodged three flights up, under the mansard roof. It was up near the sun, but commanded a good view over the trees of the park and caught the breeze when there was one. It was well that I had already seen the best hotel in Colón, or I should have been shocked by the rooms of Gran Hotel Centrál, and my visit to Panama would have been spoiled. The furniture consisted of two single iron bedsteads with dirt-stained mattresses of certain age; a small, worn-out, dingy washstand, such as are sold at auction after having been discarded from the servants’ bedrooms of Chicago boarding houses; a plain wooden bureau of the same character, and a small, square, rough table which served both as a center table and writing desk. There were neither closets nor wardrobes, nor hooks for the disposal of clothes. The second bed might have served as a prostrate clothes-press if the mattress had looked less infected, or if its stains had been covered and concealed. The floor was of plain, unpolished, foot-worn wood. In front of each bed was a network of dirt held together by a small piece of antique ingrain carpet. However, I was finally settled and satisfied, for I had the chamber boy nail to the wall a board frame holding five or six small hooks to serve as closet and wardrobe. A candle was also furnished, but no provision made for a light in the corridor. And as there was no bell to call for service, the only way of procuring help if one were taken sick in the night, was to grope along the dark corridor and go down the three flights of starlit steps in the courtyard to the office. Hence I began to think that there might be an advantage in having to share a double room with a stranger; for if either one were taken sick the other could go down to the office and wake up the hotel clerk. One’s valuables might not be as safe with a stranger but one’s life would be safer, and who would not prefer to lose his valuables rather than his life?

In the daytime, there was a quick way of communicating with the office, which had survived the centuries. A bell boy, who was also the chamber boy, messenger boy, etc., was on each floor listening for the sound of a gong in the court. When the office wanted to communicate with one of the floors, the clerk stepped to the corner of the court, or patio, and sounded the gong once, twice or three times, according to the floor he was calling, and shouted up the message or information to the boy. In the same way the boy could call the clerk and shout a message down to him. In busy times the gong sounded frequently, and as it was loud enough for the combination bell boy, chamber boy and man-of-all-work of each floor to hear, wherever he might be, it must have proved a great annoyance to occupants of the inside rooms who wished to take a midday siesta or retire early. But Napoleon slept soundly on battlefields, which, I suppose, were more noisy than this patio.

The plumbing was all in one corner of the building and fortunately could be reached only by a walk along the open air veranda around the court. It consisted of two toilet and two bath-rooms on each floor, one of the bath-rooms with a tub and the other with a shower. The plumbing system was old and imperfect, and would have been condemned in any real American city.

I have given all of this detail out of kindness to the landlord, that the guests may know beforehand what to expect and not give him the trouble I saw a lady guest give him before she accepted the inevitable.

But I was at my journey’s end, had recovered from the shock caused by the accommodations offered me at the Washington Hotel at Colón, and had resolved to enjoy a rest. And this resolve was the key to the situation, for after I had ceased to expect anything better I learned that I could perform the functions of eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, exercising, sight-seeing and faultfinding with about the same satisfaction as if in the most luxurious apartment. When one has nothing to do but lounge, luxuriate, find fault and get sick, then sumptuous apartments help to make life endurable. But as I was busy much of the time, I easily dispensed with modern luxuries, which are bad habits.

The temperature was 95 degrees F. in the shade at 1 P. M. and any pickaninny would have known enough to come in out of the sun. But I had experienced that temperature in the less humid and more bracing atmosphere of Chicago, and so I did as people do in Chicago during temporary hot spells, viz., went about actively and courted sunstroke and general tissue disorganization instead of taking a siesta. I took a walk on the Bóvedas, which is a promenade on the sea wall about a quarter of a mile long. Here it is quite cool in the evening and early morning, but as there are no trees it is scorching hot at midday. I also wandered about among the quaint old buildings and church ruins, and should have enjoyed it but for the extreme depression caused by the heat and humidity.

When I returned to the hotel I asked for a bath and found that they only had salt baths. As I wanted a good cleaning instead of an unclean salting, I gave it up and resolved to hunt a bath-house in the city, although so far I had not seen a house, excepting a few private ones, that looked clean enough for a bath.

I met Doctor Echeverría before dinner time, and we agreed to eat together during the week of waiting for the arrival of the medical congresistas. Doctor Echeverría was a Costa Rican and had been called from San José by the United Fruit Company to organize and develop their hospital and cemetery at Limón, and superintend all medical and mortuary matters pertaining to that port, which was the principal shipping place of the company.

The doctor, who had not heard from home since the washout at Colón, although he had sent a daily cablegram to his wife, invited me to take an appetizer and go to the cable office before having dinner—and I could not well refuse. While we were sipping our poison at one of the dozen or more tables of the spacious barroom, he told me that after coming down to Port Limón, whose lowland climate was tropical, from San José, whose highland climate was temperate, he at first drank no wine or liquor. But he soon found it more and more difficult to do his work; and after a time became depressed and morbid. His friends advised him to take a drink of liquor a short time before the eleven o’clock breakfast and another before dinner. He did so and his depression passed off, and he was again able to work with comfort. I do not know what effect it would have had on me not to take an appetizer before each meal while at Panama, for I had no negative experience. Either he and I, or some one else and I, were always lounging about before meals, and it was either my turn or that of the other one to treat.

In Doctor Echeverría’s case I suspect that he had become anemic and nervous from hard work, a common occurrence in the tropical lowlands, and the alcohol had produced a feeling of comfort in his mind and diminished his nervous tension, and had thus acted as medicine. A man who has a great deal of active physical work to do in the tropics, and gets up early and does a large part of it before eating anything except a roll and coffee, is apt to feel exhausted if he keeps on working during the heat of the forenoon, and to actually lose strength. The coffee and roll breakfast is for those whose work is not physically very active or prolonged, or is done later in the day. I am the more inclined to think the liquor relieved him by its anesthetic influence upon his nerves rather than by any curative action, because I have tried it faithfully on several occasions for indigestion, for loss of flesh, for insomnia and for debility, and have never experienced any beneficial results. In England I drank a bottle of Bass’ ale at my six o’clock dinner and another at bedtime for four months without deriving benefit, either by a recovery of the flesh I had lost or by rapid improvement of the debility of my overtaxed nervous system. I think that, with the rest I enjoyed, I would have recovered my usual health more quickly if I had not tasted the ale. In France I drank a pint bottle of claret at the noon and evening meals for several months, and perceived no benefit either in feelings or in appearance. In Panama I tried similar tactics, and when I arrived home was in a poorer condition in every way than when I left. Perhaps if I had eaten less, and drunk no liquor, I might have experienced benefit from my trip, but it would have meant social segregation. So I feel that I have now done my duty by alcoholic beverages. I have made a failure, but my conscience is clear. I can not make myself over again and must give them up, let come what may.

As an anesthetic, and therefore as a medicine in certain irritable conditions of the nerves, I have found it of temporary benefit, but not curative. My experience with sherry on the voyage back from Colón to Panama was good, but it did not prevent the seasickness from returning whenever the ship took a lively turn. Hence I would advise those who have no definite ideas about alcohol to consider it as a medicine to be prescribed by a first-class doctor; or a powerful poison to be taken as a means of dissipation while health lasts, but not as a salutary stimulant or a tonic. Liquors stimulate the stomach but also favor gastric fermentation and a tendency to inflammation; they bloat and fatten people sometimes, but do so temporarily by interfering with the destruction and excretion of the waste material of the body; they make people permanently rosy, but do so by dilating and weakening the superficial blood-vessels, and they betray the cause of the rosiness by producing a characteristic mottled marking of the cheeks and crimson rotundity of the nose, to say nothing of whiskey pimples. If taken in small quantities during active exercise alcohol may be burned up in the body for immediate use, but if taken at other times it burns the tissues and permanently injures them. Inflammation of the stomach, hobnail liver, Bright’s disease, heart-degeneration, dropsy, apoplexy and premature death from some acute diseases that would not prove fatal in a healthy being, are ordinary fates of those who have tried to improve on nature by the use of alcohol as a tonic or stimulant. Impaired brain power and transmission of such defect to the offspring, and thus the breeding of degenerates, is perhaps the worst result.

Doctor Echeverría was about forty years old, had received his medical education at New York, had practiced several years at San José and, after being called down to Port Limón by the United Fruit Company, had been sent by them to London to study tropical diseases. How much his student life in the United States and his sojourn in England had affected his character I do not know, but he had that gentleness of speech and quietness of demeanor which had always seemed to me to be found only in the Anglo-Saxon countries. And he had also that Spanish courtesy which we seldom see among Anglo-Saxons in its best form. Altogether he was one of the most perfect gentlemen I had met, and it was a great treat to sit tête-à-tête at table with him twice daily. He greatly admired our government, and thought that the faith it had kept with Cuba was a sign of true greatness. We are the only nation whose government lives up to the requirements of a Christian nation.

I was agreeably surprised at the hotel dinners, for I had been told that I should not like the hotel. I suspect that this somewhat prevalent bad impression had been made by the fact that when great crowds visit Panama, the hotel becomes crowded and the service is for the time insufficient. The provisions then become scanty, and canned salmon and canned vegetables intrude themselves disagreeably and perhaps unpardonably, although good food canned is better than poor food that has not been canned.

After dinner we met Señor McGill, who was the political representative and local “chip-bearer” of Venezuela, that intrepid and warlike South American republic that is not afraid of anybody, and would rather take a thrashing than refuse to fight; and which by means of its pugnacity and pertinacity has won the respect of the world. However, Señor McGill was everything but what I expected to see. He did not inspire me with terror. He was a slender, soft-voiced, mild-mannered, agreeable young bachelor whose bulging hip-pocket contained nothing but cigarets, who liked soft drinks and who seemed to be seeking anything rather than a quarrel. And I suspect that President Castro is not as black as he has been painted, and that during the recent political crises all he desired of the great powers was to be let alone. From his patronym, I should infer that Señor McGill was a descendant of one of those scions of Highland or Hibernian nobility who, in earlier days, either with or without letters of marque from the English government, ravaged the Spanish main, plundered Spaniards by preference and others without reference, and finally settled down as Venezuelan nabobs. But he was not that kind of a murderer; he was only a lady-killer. It seemed strange to see a McGill who could not speak English or Gaelic or Hibernian. Yet, he did speak English—not that fluent, eloquent, consonant crowded variation that we in the United States are accustomed to hear from Macs and Mc’s, nor the rough-and-ready dissonance of the naturalized Kaiser-Wilhelmite; but the soft disarticulation of the Spaniard who knows English until he begins to talk it, when the difficulties and duplicities of its pronunciation and his Iberic infirmity in sounding consonants bring to naught all of his knowledge of its phonology and construction.

After we had conversed awhile in a sort of crazy-quilted, downy mixture of Anglo-Spanish, he put the polished chip on his shoulder and invited us to knock it off, or take something. So we took something. It was the tyrannic custom of the country, to be fighting to kill your enemy or “taking something” to kill yourself. Taking something was about the only entertainment (?) available in the evening except cigaret smoking, which was mostly a solitary vice in Panama, and exempt from the sociable treating habit; for every man carried his own package of favorite cigarets and was smoking them, or supposed to be smoking them, all of the time. Games of cards were of course popular at the clubs, but were an expensive entertainment for people of ordinary financial resources who cared to have money for use in other ways.

Doctor Echeverría had several acquaintances in the city and offered to introduce me to some of them. Accordingly after an hour of conversation with Señor McGill, we left him to his cigarets and “treating” friends, and walked and mopped foreheads for three blocks down the street to call upon Señor Arango, a prominent young engineer of the place. The heat had forced the señor, who, like myself, looked as if his fat had already been melted and run off, to remove his coat, vest and collar. He, of course, put them on when we arrived and was thus prepared to liquefy with us. I sympathized with him for having to live in a country where, all the year around, collars, vests and coats were physical encumbrances yet social necessities. Clothing is supposed to protect and comfort the body, not to punish and injure it. The negroes have an advantage over the whites in this respect, for they adapt their clothing to the climate rather than to convention. But we cannot all be negroes, and there are drawbacks to being either white or black.

We were very pleasantly and cordially entertained. The ladies were animated and interesting, but unfortunately they did not converse in English. In the North my Spanish seemed good enough, but when exposed in the warm climate of Panama, and served to ladies, it became mushy and flavorless. It was cold storage stuff. The Panamanians speak so fast that even Doctor Echeverría, a native of Costa Rica, often found it difficult to understand them. But when it came to catching the meaning of the animated, fast talking ladies, and then framing animated, quick answers appropriate to the fairness of their sex and commensurate with the chivalric euphemism of the language, I was glad to talk plain English with Señor Arango. Having studied in the United States, he spoke our language fluently and with a soft, Southern accent that was charming.

Many Central Americans obtain a part of their education in the States and thus learn to speak English, and the building of the canal by Americans will cause many more of them to study it. Indeed, I think that in time the Panamanians, as well as the Cubans and Porto Ricans, will become North Americanized in their customs and habits, except in so far as they will be prevented by the enervating climatic conditions. South American young men more often go to France or Spain to complete their academic education, or take post graduate courses, and thus not only cultivate the French language, but are influenced largely by French customs and ideas. But the Panamanian ladies, who, of course, do not travel extensively, will now have a chance to learn and practice English at home, and perhaps lose thereby a portion of their charm. The Spanish spoken by the educated class of women is quite melodious, but that of lower class, native women, as we heard it on the streets, is anything but agreeable to listen to. They articulate rapidly and in a high pitch of voice, reminding one of the cackle of a hen who has just laid an egg, but with less accentuation. The cackle goes on until the breath is all out, and begins again with the next breath.

When we arose to go, Señor Arango insisted on walking and perspiring with us, keeping on his clothes for the purpose, and led us to the Southern Club in a three-story building near the plaza. As in nearly all buildings in Panama, the street floor was occupied by a store, which left the two upper ones for the use of the club. He took us to the second floor, where we found a bar and a bar-tender, but no one else—not even a mouse. What a lively club, I thought, with nobody but a bar-tender in it. No mischief going on. I did not know then, as I learned afterward when introduced to the club by Doctor Cook of Panama, that the reading and card rooms were on the third floor, and that it was lively up there where the seats and sitters were not all empty.

After the heat of our walk we were glad to seat ourselves on the little Spanish balcony at one of the windows and take the customary “treatment,” viz., a fresco. Señor Arango, who must have been younger than he looked, said that cola was very nice, so we ordered it. It was pop flavored with that name. Doctor Echeverría, who was inclined to be fleshy and had perspired freely, enjoyed it as any hot and thirsty man enjoys cool drinks, and he ordered more. Our host proposed a third round, but I discouraged it. It is no wonder that Central Americans take only an orange and coffee for their early breakfast, when they drink animated syrups in this way of evenings. Yet, after all, there is but little harm in spoiling a breakfast that consists of nothing to eat. Preliminary to separating for the night we sauntered over to the hotel and had another treat. My companions wanted more cola, but I grew desperate and impolite, and said that my stomach couldn’t stand any more cola or nectar; they were too sweet for my temperament, which preferred something bitter. The two pints I had already consumed were working like syrup in the sun, and I preferred to die for a sheep rather than a lamb, and would take a pint of Milwaukee beer to hurry up and complete the fermentation so that I might perhaps get a little convalescent sleep toward morning. Morally speaking, it was wicked for me to take any more alcoholic stimulant after having had the usual liberal Panama allowance during the day, but physically considered the end justified the means. The stomach as a vital organ had as much right to consideration as the head, and the head should share the evils of social customs with the stomach. Alcohol has always done me much less harm than sugar, and when I unfortunately have to choose between two devils I tackle the least. The two gentlemen gave no evidence of their surprise at my unceremonious declaration of honest opinion about their favorite fresco, for they were gentlemen. I was among gentlemen, and could say what I pleased without danger of open reproof. One can not always do so in Chicago and the Great West.

After they had consumed and complimented the Milwaukee beverage just as if it had been their favorite one, we parted, Señor Arango proposing a visit to his summer home on the sabanas (prairies) on the following Sunday.

I climbed up to my sublunar habitation, and as the electric lights on the plaza cast nearly as much light about my bed as the candle would have given, I did not light up. I concluded that candlelight would be of more service to malarious mosquitoes than to me. In Chicago I should have suffered great inconvenience at having no light in my bedroom, but having accepted the situation in Panama and having broken up the light habit, I was quite as happy without it. Happiness did not consist in having private illumination to enable me to see myself go to bed, but in being able to do without it. Unhappiness consists mainly of imaginary wants.

There were no window-panes in the hotel, and when the heavy shutters were opened up widely the cool night air came in freely and the mosquitoes remained outside under the electric lights, enabling me to settle myself to sleep with comparative peace and contentment. My experience on shipboard had rendered my sleep proof against noises, and had thoroughly broken in and hardened me to mattresses that were made to be cool but not to be comfortable.

After what seemed to be a short sleep I awoke, and noticed that the room was much darker than when I had retired. In a few minutes the cathedral clock across the square struck one and I raised myself in bed and looked toward it. But the electric light that had illumined the dial was out, as were, in fact, all of the street lights, and I could hardly see where the clock was. I inferred that the one stroke was for one o’clock and lights out, and wondered that I should wake up so early. I turned over to go to sleep again, but while turning over I thought that the room seemed a little lighter. I immediately turned back again and saw that it was really lighter. I raised upon my elbow, looked out and saw quite plainly by the clock, which could hardly be seen before I had turned over in bed, that the time was twenty-five minutes to six. Within five minutes of profound darkness it had become light enough for me to see the time of day by the clock. By twenty minutes of six it was daylight, and by a quarter to six it was almost as bright as at noonday. For a Chicagoan who had never been told or taught of such a dawn, and why it was so, to have gone to Panama, and then to have waked up early for the first time after leaving Chicago, such a sudden daybreak would have seemed a new miracle worthy of being compared with the standing still of the sun in Joshua’s time—only this time the sun had changed his tactics, and had taken a sudden leap over the horizon.

A couple of carts rattled over the cobblestones at six o’clock, whereupon I got up, looked out and saw workmen beginning work on a new building a short distance from the plaza. Men appeared on the street and the town seemed astir almost in a moment. Clerks were opening doors and window shutters, and one fellow was sprinkling the street in front of his store with a two-gallon sprinkling can such as are used for flowerbeds. It seemed strange to see full daylight develop in fifteen minutes and a sleeping city assume full activity in a half hour. In the North we consider Southerners indolent because they rest two hours in the middle of the day. But it is a wonder that they do not accuse us of indolence because our city workers sleep two or three hours after daylight in the summer mornings, and go to work at eight or nine o’clock when it is hot, instead of at six when it is cool.

My room was cool and pleasant at six-thirty, and I got out my clean clothes, consisting of gauze underwear, a negligee shirt, duck trousers and a skeleton coat. I felt, however, that I ought not to contaminate them by getting into them until I had taken a bath. I had perspired tubfuls of water since leaving New Orleans, ten days previously, but had not had a convincing, conscience-quieting, fresh-water, hot bath; only cold salt ones. Perspiration and dust, rain and disease had all been at me and about me. In the streets and in the barber shop I had seen skin diseases and hairless patches on heads, faces and necks, and felt sure that, like tobacco smoke (which is visible and scentable), some of the dust, or germs from diseased individuals, must have been wafted about me and into my hair, clothes and skin although I could not see them. There was only one way out of the difficulty and that was by means of baths, frequent, and uncompromising, soapy and scrubby. Plenty of soap and water outside, and alcohol and pop inside, seemed to be the only way to live out one’s shortened life in Panama.

Not having a magic ring or an oriental lamp to rub, I scratched my head while I wished for a bath-tub—and immediately found a small wash-basin. I wished for fresh water, and found a large pitcherful. I wished for a portable shower bath, and found my hands, two of them. I preferred a pitcherful of cold fresh water and a wash-basin to a bath-tub full of cold brine. I also reflected that a cold sponge bath with plenty of soap could be made more cleansing than a shower or tub bath with cold water, because the sponge bath could be kept up indefinitely, or until one was clean; whereas the cold shower or tub bath was a chilling affair, and must necessarily be of brief duration and not very soapy. In order not to injure the ceiling of the room below, I spread newspapers on the floor before the washstand, poured the washbowl two thirds full of water and stood for a moment shivering before it, for the cool night air still lingered in the room. It was a delightful sensation to feel chilly within eight degrees of the equator and only a few hours after the all-day boiling spell of the day before.

I rapidly washed my face, neck and shoulders, then wet my head and lathered it thoroughly with soap. In order to get the soap and dirt all out of my hair without irritating or infecting my eyes, I stood on my head in the washbasin (as far as my head and shoulders were concerned) and soaked and washed out the soap. I then changed water, and stood my head and neck and shoulders up side down again in the basin to rinse them. After wiping them I began to feel warm and in a mood for more work. I soaped my left chest and arm, then put my left elbow in the bath-tub, leaned my body over it and splashed and soaked off the soap, using my hand as a movable shower bath. I then did the same to the other side. Not being a woman, I had neither washrag nor powder rag to wash and dry myself, but had two heavy bath towels. The towel was a great success as a washrag in holding water and soaking off the soap; the ordinary little feminine washrag is a miserable makeshift and does not deserve the favor it enjoys. After a long period of cold splashing with my washrag and another of dry scrubbing with my powder rag, I transferred my bath-tub to the floor and stood in it right side up, and was able to complete the bath to my joy and satisfaction with the bowl and water that had originally been intended for face and hands only. As a schoolboy I had been an amateur contortionist, and was not disabled like most of my friends by the fear of bursting a bloodvessel or straining my heart. But what pleased me most of all was that I had had an hour of active exercise, and felt strengthened and refreshed by it. I had found an antidote to the sun’s deadly rays, a life-saving remedy. After getting my light tropical clothes on, I felt as if I wanted something more than the cup-of-coffee-and-half-a-roll-early-breakfast of the natives, and hurried down to the dining-room.

Early breakfast, called “coffee,” was served from six to eight o’clock on a long table in a small dining-room. Near each end of the table were a dish of oranges and a large platter upon which were piled round water rolls, similar to our round Vienna rolls. Two waiters stood at a sideboard, each with a long-handled tin pot of coffee in one hand and a corresponding pot of hot, unskimmed, fresh milk in the other, ready to serve a mixture of strong coffee and hot milk in any proportion asked for.

I found three men at the table, a young, slender, dark-skinned Panamanian and two elderly, dignified-looking, gray-haired and gray-eyed Americans about sixty years of age. The Panamanian was sipping a cup of coffee, smoking his cigaret and reading a newspaper that lay beside the coffee cup. By the time his cigaret was half smoked the coffee cup was emptied, and he left the room—one of those fellows who can eat anything but food, and drink anything but water. I was sure that he had not had an appetizing sponge bath that morning, or he would not have breakfasted on a few whiffs of smoke. However, he had the advantage of me in being able to satisfy his appetite with other whiffs if he became hungry before noon. Perhaps he was a club man and had worked his head and stomach hard all night. While I was helping myself to an orange, the large, portly, dignified-looking American at the head of the table suddenly called out in a loud American voice:

“Where is that head waiter? Why doesn’t he bring my eggs?”

The two waiters immediately rushed out of the room and back, and tried to say in broken English that the head waiter was not there. Since nothing but coffee, rolls and oranges belonged to the first breakfast, it was necessary to order the eggs and pay extra for them, and if one came down pretty early (as heavy-eating, light sleepers usually do), there was apt to be some delay in getting them. Hot fires and head waiters were not usually going at so early an hour.

The old man glared at the waiters fiercely and they stared at him stupidly, not daring to drop their eyes. After a few moments he again broke out:

“Hasn’t that head waiter been found yet? Where is the second head waiter—or the third head waiter? Telegraph to Spain for a live one. This is great service for eight dollars a day. Not even anything to eat when you pay extra for it. If you want an egg you’ve got to fight for it—nothing short of a revolution will make a hen lay, or an egg cook in this country.”

Just then a waiter, rendered nervous by the, to him, unintelligible thunder, allowed a roll to drop on the floor as he was passing them around, and the other waiter quickly picked it up and put it back among the rolls on the table. The second old man who was also waiting for eggs, exchanged glances with me, and I expected him also to speak his mind about the eggs and rolls and waiters; but he did not, for he undoubtedly felt that the efforts of the first speaker would bring his eggs also, and that all of the rolls had been in dirty hands and baskets, and on dusty tables and floors long ago. By way of relieving the tension I said to the one who had been complaining:

“These waiters are native Panamanians and do not understand United States, and how to wait on Americans.”

“They are Panamaniacs,” he growled, “and don’t know how to do anything but wait. They’d wait until a man starved. If these Panamaniacs would stir around and do more working and less waiting they would have an appetite themselves for breakfast, and learn the use of food.”

“I’ll speak to them in Spanish. Perhaps it will start them up,” I said. So I called to one of them in a loud voice:

“Camerero! Busqueme un toreador.” (Waiter! Bring me a bull-fighter.)

“Toreador?” (Bull-fighter) he exclaimed with a look of amazement.

“Si, toreador,” I said. “Por qué no? Es para tener este naranja.” (Yes; bull-fighter. Why not? He is to hold this orange.)

“Pardone, Señor, creo que Vd. quiere un tenedor.” (I beg your pardon, sir, I think you want a fork.)

“Como Vd. quiere” (As you like), I answered, as if I had made no mistake. “Es lo mismo. Quiero enseñar á estos Norte Americanos como se come una naranja. Ellos no saben nada, absolutamente nada. No saben ni comer ni hablar.” (It’s the same thing. I wish to teach these North Americans how to eat an orange. They know nothing, absolutely nothing. They neither know how to eat nor talk.)

The waiter seemed much relieved by this information and said in Spanish that waiters had to be smart men, but travelers who paid for the privilege, had the right to be fools; and went out smiling with polite rage. A moment later the eggs were brought in and the two old gentlemen were soon busy and better natured. The milder one who had allowed the other to do the talking said to me:

“I see that your Spanish did some good.”

“Yes,” chimed in the fiery one, “when you talk to a horse you must talk horse.”

As the result of my long sponge bath, I felt that I myself could enjoy three or four boiled eggs, but I remembered the old adage: “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” As we were to have a hearty meal at eleven o’clock, eggs eaten now would spoil that meal, or if they did not, then the hearty meal eaten so soon after eggs would spoil them. In fact, the fat old gentleman was just recovering from an attack of rheumatism, probably brought on by eating and sitting too much. Accordingly I drank two cups of half coffee and half milk and ate two oranges and two rolls, and left the table feeling quite comfortable inwardly. The Central American takes his café-au-lait with merely enough nourishment to prevent a feeling of emptiness or weakness during the forenoon, but not enough to prevent an appetite for a hearty meal at eleven o’clock, which is usually only three or four hours later.

The Central American coffee is not only made quite strong, but it has a bitter, resinous taste which is developed by roasting it until burnt, and then by boiling it. At first I did not relish it, but after learning to dilute it with an equal quantity of the hot, unskimmed milk, I became very fond of it. Its heavy flavor seemed to give it something of the taste of food as well as being a drink.

CHAPTER VIII

For Doctors Only

Barber Shops and Disease—Chance for a Trust and a Public Benefaction—Tropical Hotel Clerk from Canada—A Visit to the Hospital at Ancón—Beautiful Location—Housekeeping under Difficulties—Genial and Gentlemanly Doctors—The Buildings Left by the French—Details—Prevalence of Malaria—Drinking Water—Why the People of Panama Ought to be Dead—The Spoiled Child—Why the Eleven O’clock Breakfast is Enjoyable at Ancón—A Specimen Hotel Breakfast.

Doctor Echeverría did not appear for a half hour after I had finished my coffee and rolls. While waiting for him I had my hair trimmed, and experienced the pleasure of sitting in the chair next to a dirty-looking man with a skin disease which had caused his hair to fall out in patches, and which caused mine to stand up all over, as the barber’s assistant began using comb and shears on him and making the hair and dust fly in my direction. If this man had come an hour earlier he might, without my knowledge, have been shorn on the same chair that I occupied, and with the same comb, scissors and unwashed hands that were used on my head. I felt like resolving never to go into a barber shop again, but knew that I could not live up to the resolution. I would have to step up and take my share of dirt and microbes and have them rubbed in at least once a month or two, for I could not trim my own hair. I could not help repeating that good old saying, “God made Barbarians and seeing that they were no good, called them Barbers.”

The proprietor of the shop was a gentle old German, too good natured and old to learn the technic or meaning of cleanliness. He had cut hair and beards in Germany, the United States and Cuba, and knew all about his business except cleanliness. Cleanliness in barbers is like biblical honesty in business. While having my hair trimmed and my scalp infected by the old fellow, I asked him if he did a better business in Panama than he had done in the United States. He said:

“Ogh, yes. In the Unidet States I did a goot pisness, yet not such a pig pisness ass here. Dere I wass only a boor barbeer, but here I make much money and am a pig man.”—He was.

The want of cleanliness of the barbers, and the custom of using public combs and brushes at hotels, clubs and entertainments accounts for nine tenths of the baldness in the world. Barbers’ brushes bear the germs of baldness and badness from scalp to scalp, and their infected fingers rub it in. One should always go home and wash his head with soap and water, or with alcohol, as soon as possible after a barber has had his comb and black-bristled brush on it. One should also furnish his own comb and brush, razor and mug, and insist that the barber wash his hands thoroughly before touching them. Under no circumstances should he be allowed to give the head a “dry rub.”

There is a chance to make millions of dollars and benefit millions of people in the barber business. A trust that would teach its employees an appropriate antiseptic technic; would provide combs, brushes and all kinds of barbers’ instruments adapted to sterilization by strong antiseptics or by heat each time they were used; and would provide aseptic shaving, hair cutting, epillation, electric vibration, facial massage, baths and hairdressing, as well as clean furniture, floors, hands and men, would drive the old dirt-men out of the business in a short time. It would at least force them to wash their hands between customers. Such a trust would, of course, raise, or try to raise, prices, and thus “scalp” the community, and be censured for it. But it is better to be scalped than bald-headed, to be expensively clean than economically dirty. It would constitute a great reform, which should be an aim of all trusts.

How a cleanly man can go and await his turn in a barber shop to be shaved two or three times weekly by dirty hands, and be combed by dirty combs and brushes, and have his head dry-rubbed by hands that have been dry-rubbing other heads without being washed, when he can do the same himself at home with clean hands and implements and without waste of time, is almost incomprehensible. To gaze into a barber shop is bad enough. Flashy mirrors and massive furniture cannot compensate for dirty methods. Barbers dare not use brushes with white bristles, for they would look frightful before night. They would have to be washed.

The hotel clerk was a polyglot French Canadian who, like the barber, the barber’s assistant and a large proportion of the other trained employees about town, had traveled considerably before coming to Panama, and would probably travel again in search of more congenial climes and more remunerative work as soon as rivals should come and conditions improve. He spoke French well and Spanish and English indifferently, and was willing to talk to any one until some one else claimed his attention. He fitted in his place very nicely, for he possessed that complicated lack of system that forms an essential part of tropical hotel management. He was unfailingly obliging and affably irritable, as forgetful and unreliable men are apt to be. In giving him orders, it was always well to wait and see them carried out. If one wanted anything sent to one’s room, or brought down, it was well to wait until the gong sounded, the boy called down, the clerk called up, and the message was correctly delivered and intelligently understood; otherwise it was liable to be given wrong, be misunderstood or be forgotten. When time hung heavily on one’s hands this supervision of the clerk and bell boy served to help the hot half hours move on.

Doctor Echeverría appeared at last, full of half a roll and an orange and ready for the morning’s work. He had sent his daily cablegram to his wife before taking coffee, but had not yet heard from her. As he was the official head of medical affairs at Limón, he wished to be prompt in paying his respects to the chief sanitary officer of the Canal Zone, Dr. Wm. G. Gorgas, and the chief of the Marine Hospital service, Dr. H. R. M. Carter, and the chief of the Quarantine department, Maj. L. A. LaGarde. He could not rest until he had done his duty as a public health officer, a brother physician and a courteous gentleman. He did not realize that the social and ceremonial conscience of the Anglo-American race was not as sensitive as that of the Latin-American. While these chiefs would have been glad to see him, they were bound up in their work and would not have taken notice of a little delay on his part. So we drove to Ancón Hill, which was a short distance beyond the railroad station, and arrived there about nine o’clock. Leaving the cab we slowly walked up the beautiful avenue that led along the hillside through the grounds.

The location of the hospital on the slope of Ancón Hill was certainly well chosen, for the ground was high and the view unobstructed. The driveway was shaded by palm trees and bordered with well-kept, sloping lawns upon which neat-looking frame houses were scattered. It seemed to me almost preferable to be sick up there than well in the dingy, dusty, sun-baked city below. The medical officers certainly had the choice place of residence on the isthmus, for here were fresh breezes, clean, well-drained grounds, quiet surroundings and a charming outlook upon semi-mountainous, tropical scenery. The Tivoli has since been built here and its construction must certainly have given the “black eye” to Gran Hotel Centrál. But to those who wish to know what Panama really is Gran Centrál is the place. Those who go to Tivoli read guide books and forget; those who go to Gran Centrál need no guide books, and never forget.

We did not find any of the chiefs at their homes on the hillside; they were down town at their offices in the government building in Plaza Centrál, from which we had started. We had gone from them instead of to them. These men get up at daybreak, take a cup of coffee, and presumably half a roll, and go down to their offices and transact a good day’s office work by eleven o’clock. Then they drive back home, eat a hearty breakfast and remain in their garden of paradise with their families until the midday heat begins to be tempered by the regular afternoon breeze, when they go to work again.

But we had a pleasant chat with Mrs. LaGarde, the wife of Doctor LaGarde. She gave us all sorts of information from a woman’s standpoint, and proved to us that although the exteriors were beautiful and perhaps enjoyable at Ancón, and the hospital a charming place to get sick and get well in, the comforts of housekeeping and living constituted, according to United States habits and standards, a sort of seamy side of life for these hard-working semi-exiles. The houses had not the places to put things in, nor the conveniences for cooking and other details of housekeeping that are considered essential in the North. Closet room is a Yankee luxury. Clothes would not dry except in the sun and wind, and if put away would get wet again. Insects were annoying and screens had not yet been provided. Alterations about the house had to be made, and makeshifts adopted. There was neither running water nor drainage. But Mrs. LaGarde was cheerful and even breezy in her talk, just as if she not only enjoyed giving the information but also overcoming the difficulties. With the assistance of the United States she has, I believe, overcome some of them since.

Doctor Carter’s son hunted up the young resident doctors. They were engaged peeping into microscopes, but they cheerfully gave up the private matinee they were having over their germs and, after having given us a peep at malarial high life, showed us through the hospital buildings. We found Mr. Carter and the young doctors exceedingly painstaking and courteous, and we afterward also found Doctor Gorgas, Doctor Carter and Doctor LaGarde even more so. A more genial and gentlemanly set of men in a quiet American way I have scarcely met. They seemed to have become imbued with the spirit of Spanish courtesy without having lost their American frankness and sincerity, and bore their great and unusual responsibilities with cheerfulness and modesty.

There were about twenty hospital wards, in separated one-story frame buildings, arranged in three curved tiers on the beautifully terraced slope of the hill. In fact, the ornamental grounds were so large and elaborate that the expense of keeping them up was quite an item. But the French had plenty of money, while they had it, and spent it artistically and generously, while they spent it. And there is no doubt but they built well, since the majority of the houses were found in a good state of preservation, and have been repaired at small expense.

Ancón Hospital had at the time less than a hundred patients, two thirds of whom were negroes, and over half of whom were employees of the canal commission. To be laid up in those clean, well-kept wards and be waited upon by those tidy, cheerful nurses must have been a great luxury to the poor black devils. To die there would be enjoying themselves to death, no matter where they finally went to.

Superficial swamps all along the Zone were being drained or filled, in hopes of exterminating the malaria breeding mosquitoes. About the Ancón hospital, malaria had already practically disappeared. The extent of malaria in the Canal Zone had been demonstrated by blood analyses. At Bohio the blood of forty-four school children had been examined and the malarial organism found in twenty-nine cases. After they had taken twelve grains of quinine daily for ten days the organism was only found in five. It was also found that seventy per cent. of the 12,000 inhabitants of twelve villages along the Zone had the malarial organism in the blood. This is largely the cause of the prevalent anemia.

Colonel Gorgas had been appointed health officer of the city of Panama and of Colón by the Panama government, and health departments were being organized in both cities. A systematic cleaning of dirty places (a Herculean task) and a rigid enforcement of modern sanitary laws and regulations had already been begun. The Zone commission was at work constructing the new reservoir, about twelve miles from the canal, out of which Panama and the whole Zone have since been supplied with healthy water. The people of Panama were using rain-water collected in cisterns for drinking and washing. In the rainy season the streets flowed with it and the cisterns overflowed; but in the dry season many of the reservoirs were empty, and there was practically a water famine up to the time of my visit. Those who could afford it, drank imported waters, such as White Rock, Apollinaris, Vichy, etc.

Why the people of Panama are not all dead long ago is past finding out. The animal kingdom from the mosquito up has preyed upon them, and the elements have conspired against them, drenching them for six months of the year and burning them and devitalizing them during the other six. They have also conspired against themselves, having had a civil war on an average of almost once a year. The country has been ravaged by adventurers and pirates in past centuries and beggared by Colombia in the present one. They have scarcely any developed resources. But now they have run under the wing of the United States, who will kill the mosquitoes for them, provide hospitals to take them in out of the sun and rain, make fresh ice-water to keep them cool, arbitrate for them to keep their peace, build a canal for them to increase their business, and will keep out the foreign foe when they are threatened. If such a sudden change from prostration to prosperity does not spoil the child then it deserves all it gets, and is fit to survive. The French spoiled the Panamanians somewhat, and made them dependent and parasitic, but it is to be hoped that our influence will be to encourage the development and financial independence of the country.

We were cordially invited to remain at Ancón and breakfast with the officers and their families at eleven o’clock. The breakfast seemed to be looked forward to with great pleasure and was made quite a social event by them. And I do not wonder that they enjoyed it after doing a good day’s work while fasting. Their aim was never to put off until after breakfast what could be done before. They must have been ravenous by eleven o’clock. But as our blood was heated and our collars wilting, we thought it better to get back to the hotel before the day became hotter.

After our customary appetizer, to keep away Doctor Echeverría’s melancholy and fulfill my vow to do as the Panamanians did, we went to our rooms and refreshed ourselves with cold water and fresh linen (both externally), and were prepared to appreciate a substantial breakfast. They brought us first a large dish of tiny clams (coquillos) cooked in their shells. These varied from the size of a small split pea to that of a lima bean, and were as finely flavored and delicious as their delicate physique indicated. We then had some very hot shirred eggs and made them hotter with a little Worcestershire sauce, which gave them a fine, tropical flavor. Then came Italian spaghetti daintily served, a medium-tough nicely cooked beefsteak, some juicy pineapple, too sweet to bear any sugar, and a small cup of deliciously bitter coffee which I subdued by the addition of a little evaporated cream.

I was glad that I had not spoiled my breakfast by eating eggs at eight o’clock, for I was very hungry when we sat down to it, and enjoyed it so much that I think it really must have been good.

CHAPTER IX

A Siesta and Such

Preparations for a Panama Siesta—Barricading the Door—Interruption—Waiting for the End—Obliged to Get up—Opening the Box of Water—A Fatal Tip—An Imitation College Yell—Its Effectiveness—Horseback Riding—The High-toned Boarding Stable—Effect of Work upon Men and Animals in the Tropics—The Tramp and the Rich Man—Shopping—Tickets for the Bull-fight—Cigaret Smoking and the Habit—The Dusky Maiden—No Fool like an Old Fool—Biased Opinions—The War-cry—Town Gossip—A prescription for a Bottle of Beer—After-dinner Amusements—Ubi Tres Medici—Temperance of the Doctors—Mosquitoes and Poetry—The Night Watchman.

It was about noon when we finished our Spanish breakfast, and we agreed to take a siesta and meet again at half-past three. First, however, we stepped into a provision store in the next building and bought a case of fifty bottles of mineral water for use in our rooms. My American ancestors had drunk water for so many years that I had inherited the habit, and could not give it up, as many foreigners do, and we did not wish to be obliged to go to the bar every time we wanted a drink of water, for the bar-tender invariably put something in it.

I then went to my room to try the siesta and learn just what it was like. By the time I had climbed to the top of the house I was in a profuse perspiration so that clothes became insufferable and a draft of air indispensable. Hence, after opening the door about six inches and putting my trunk against it, I pulled the bed in front of the window to enable it to catch the drafts and breezes, and hung the upper bed cover over the foot to shield me from the sight of any one who might peep around the edge of the barricaded door. After having tucked the edges of the life-saving mosquito bar carefully under the mattress all around, I lay down with some of my clothes on. But the drafts and breezes were imperceptible and perspiration was active, and I soon had to work one of the edges of the mosquito bar loose, crawl out of bed and divest myself of more clothes. By keeping perfectly quiet I now perspired freely only where I was in contact with the mattress, which would have been considered a hard and cool one for any place but Panama, where it was a hard one only.

I began reading a Spanish novel to make me sleepy, as I had frequently done before. I read until my eyes and arms grew tired, when the book dropped and I began to doze off. Just then I was aroused with a start by a sudden loud knocking, and upon raising up and looking over the foot of the bed saw the swarthy mestizo bell boy’s curly head projecting into the room. He was smiling like a satyr as he triumphantly announced that the mineral water had come. I did not return the smile, but again dug my way out under the edges of the mosquito bar, slipped on an extra garment, pulled away the trunk and admitted him. After depositing the box he lingered as if he expected to open it for me; but by using considerable patience and many forcible expressions I finally got him out, undressed again, crawled under the edge of the bar, tucked it in laboriously and lay down to dry, and finish my siesta in peace. But neither sleep nor soothing thoughts nor alleviating breezes would come. So I tried to read myself to sleep again, but the book would not functionate. I wanted to get up and stand behind the door ready to hit the bell boy’s head with a chair the next time he peeked in; but that would have made me drip. Besides it would have done him no good, for he would never have known what struck him. So I lay still....

After a long time the cathedral clock struck two and I felt thankful that the siesta was half over. After a still longer time I began to think that the middle-aged clock had run down. But it had not, for it finally struck half past. After another long interval of weary waiting, I began to grow sleepy again, when the clock struck three, and my siesta ended just when it was going to begin. A faint breeze had begun to stir, and I had forgiven the bell boy and could have taken a peaceful nap, but had to keep my appointment with Doctor Echeverría. Encouraged by the faint breeze, I hoped, by moving about slowly and systematizing the work, to be able to slip into my clothes without saturating them with perspiration.

I became thirsty and wanted the bell boy to bring a hammer and open the box of mineral water. But there was no way of calling him, not even a gas pipe to pound on. So I put on my overcoat, stole across the hall, through the empty room opposite and found him lounging on the veranda ready to halloa whenever the gong sounded. I gave him my message, returned to my room and waited, pitying the poor Spanish people for not knowing better than to select for the siesta the only two hours in the day during which it is impossible to sleep.

In about fifteen minutes the boy appeared with an old shoe and broke open the box with it. I felt toward him as the Spanish banqueters felt toward Columbus when he stood the egg on an end. I could have done it myself if I had known how it was going to be done. I now made the mistake of my trip to the tropics, for I gave the boy a fee, a harmless-looking Colombian twenty-cent piece. I had felt like murdering him for doing his duty an hour before, and wished to do the right thing now by myself. He promptly accepted the money but did not go away. He asked what else he could do for me. Could he not clean the room, fill the water pitcher, open another bottle, etc. He was as persistent as an insurance agent to whom you have rashly given your age. I said “no” after each question, and after the last one said as loudly and emphatically as possible that I did not want anything, not even him. He stood and looked blankly at me with that powerful silence which is the safe refuge of empty intellects. He was not an insurance agent. The insurance agent does not understand the value of silence. But to use strong terms in Spanish does not come natural to a student of the language, for the books and teachers only teach mild and proper words, and the Spaniards one meets and practices upon use only polite phrases. So I found it difficult to convince the fellow that I was furious. I could only be furiously polite. Yet to give a person a piece of your mind is, after all, to give away a portion of your own without adding anything to his, or getting anything in return. Hence I gave up trying to explain anything and shouted:

“No, no! Nada, nada! Vayase, vayase! Aburr-r!” (No, no! Nothing, nothing! Begone, begone! Adieu!)

Then a ray of intelligence illumined his countenance, and he said in a low, matter-of-fact tone of voice, “Me voy” (I go), and slowly walked out.

But this was only the beginning of the troubles brought upon me by the silverpiece. A goldpiece could not have done worse. Every time I went upstairs either the male, or else the female, chambermaid would follow me into my room to tidy it or ask to do some errand. Or, if I was not followed, he or she was sure to open the door about the time I was in demi toilette, for they always tried the door before knocking. In my disgust and haste to get them out I would mix up my Spanish metaphors and polite phrases and stutter helplessly, particularly if it was the female chambermaid with her mature although maidenly smile. As there was but one key, I began leaving it in the door during my absence so that they could bring as many pitcherfuls of water and clean up the room as often as it pleased them, and thus earn their twenty cents without my help. Upon entering I invariably locked the door and at the first knock called out, “No, no! Nada, nada! Vayase, vayase! Aburr-r!” imitating as closely as possible the manner of students giving their college yell. Finally they came to understand, and would start away as soon as I commenced. I had conquered them. But I had learned that the conqueror’s lot is not a happy one. Let others go through the strenuous process of conquering. Passive peace is good enough for me.

Finally I became so habituated to answering the knocking on the door with my imitation college yell that I gave it one day when Doctor Echeverría knocked, and thus frightened him away. He asked me afterward with whom I was having words—he had never heard one of our college yells. So I told him the whole story, and asked him the best course to pursue with mestizo boys and musty old maids. He told me to have faith, hope and charity, but most of all hope—to order them around a great deal in order to show that I expected service and was going to pay for it, but not to fee them until the day of my departure. We followed out this plan with our table waiter and obtained good service. As in doing everything else, a man who gives tips should learn how.

When at last my toilet was finished I went down to the office with a good color and a moist skin. Doctor Echeverría and Señor McGill had been awaiting me for some time, and thought that I must have slept long and well during my siesta.

Señor McGill was fond of horses, in accordance with the prevalent fashion among Panama bachelors who, in lieu of taking a wife, were in the habit of taking a horseback ride every afternoon. And the ladies smiled upon them, apparently in approval. After we had been to the cable office to send the doctor’s cablegram to his wife at San José, the señor took us to the highest-toned boarding stable in town, where were kept eight so-called fine horses. He admired them greatly and pointed out one or two good qualities in two or three of them. But I picked out three or four bad points in five or six of them, and told him that, as a bachelor and lover of horses, he should neither accept a horse nor a wife without asking some one with experience to point out their bad qualities, since good qualities could be overcome, but bad ones never. The fine (?) horses were imported, the best and largest one from Brazil; yet even that one, although of heavy Percheron shape, was rather small and scrubby, a work horse but not big enough to work. The tropics may be a good place for wild animals who take their exercise by night, and domestic animals who do not take any; but animals and men who habitually do active hard work, develop poorly and degenerate rapidly. If a man or an animal, however, does not and will not work, the tropics are the place for him. An amount of active work that is necessary to keep a man well and in working order in Chicago would soon kill a white man in Panama, while an amount of inactivity that would make a man sick in Chicago does him good there.

Tramps should go to Panama and by lying fallow renew the exhausted and dissipated physical stock of their ancestry. There they can feast on the plentiful bananas, pineapples, mangoes, papayas and breadfruit, take siestas under inviting palm trees, and lodge cheaply under wayside wagons, or in dried mudholes, according to the season. They need not toil, neither need they spin, yet not Solomon with all his wives to keep his house from him ever took the comfort they can take. Never to be cold or hungry, nor to be reproached for improvidence, nor be brought to want for not working, nor to be dependent upon saloons and jails to keep from starving and freezing; such is the paradise awaiting them on the isthmus.

Only the rich man can not take advantage of the conditions in Panama. The waiters are not well enough trained, the first breakfast is too skimpy, extras are too difficult to procure, furniture is too uncomfortable, perspiration too wet, etc. The rich man starves, tires out, gets sick and has to return to the North, with its steam-heated houses and complex cuisine, to save his life and live in comfort—if the rich ever do live in comfort. Some think they do, but they don’t—although they might easily learn how from their servants.

We shopped a little, buying Porto Rican straw hats, duck trousers and other thin clothes, and found the prices about the same as those in the United States for similar articles of good quality, but much cheaper than in Costa Rica. Although the tickets were not yet on sale, we engaged seats for the bull-fight that was to take place Sunday, January 1st. I had never seen a bull-fight, although I often had wished to. I did not hanker after the so-called entertainment, but as a student of the Spanish people and of their literature I considered it a ceremony of educational and emotional value. We had intended visiting some of the Chinese silk and curio stores, but the general custom of closing at about five o’clock made it necessary to postpone this part of it. As we were four or five blocks from home, my companions insisted upon taking a cab to the hotel. I preferred walking, which was better for the health, but being in Panama had to do as the Panamanians did. The five-minute ride, however, cooled us off and made us feel better, showing that the end justified the means.

During our walk and ride Señor McGill kept lighting cigarets and would have kept us doing the same if we had not refused. Doctor Echeverría did not smoke and I only smoked cigars. The señor was, however, very moderate for a South American, for he only smoked about a dozen cigarets during the afternoon. One of our delegates, a physician from San Salvador, said that he smoked about seventy-five a day, and that many of his acquaintances did likewise. It serves to keep men occupied, just as embroidering and knitting serve to keep women occupied. As the tobacco in the Central and South American cigaret is very black and much stronger than in those made in the United States, I should say that seventy-five of the former would equal about a hundred and fifty of the latter in its effect upon the nerves. Evolution can go no farther. Such consummate cigaret fiends are however not common in the United States. Yet the habit seems to influence men badly whether they smoke strong or weak tobacco. The practice of smoking often, seems to grow on them until finally they want to light a cigaret every time they meet a friend or have a moment of leisure. They light one every time they sit down, again when they get up, and every time they hear news or wish to impart news to others. One can keep tab on their feelings and impressions and intentions by watching their cigaret play. The habit leads them to give way to their impulses and inclinations without resistance, and they finally get to smoking automatically, without thinking about it and without really enjoying it. They smoke with the same kind of nervous satisfaction that Napoleon walked the floor when he dictated correspondence, and with correspondingly direful results. It affects themselves and their friends, however, instead of their foes, for it keeps them smelling worse than a groom. The habitual cigaret smoker habitually smells. There is only one worse habit, and that is to go about publicly sucking an old pipe. This hurts every one within sight.

Señor McGill left us at the hotel, and the doctor and I went to our rooms to replace wilted linen. I had just removed my coat and collar, and was pulling my outer shirt over my head when the dusky maiden of many seasons came in to fix my room. I got a glimpse of her in time, and pulled the garment down with a jerk and cried, “Get out! Scat! Don’t you know better than to frighten a man to death in this way?” I hadn’t time to compose anything but plain English.

“Si, señor!” she said, as she started for the water pitcher.

“You’ve seen enough. Get out, I say.”

She merely smiled in a matter-of-fact way as if to say, “Don’t mention it. I’ll excuse it this time.” Tropical women seem to know that men have no modesty.

I was too nervous to speak Spanish, and she was too stupid to guess what my English meant, so I pointed sternly at the door. She looked at my outstretched arm and, seeing no weapon in it, smiled again and said, “Si, señor!”

Finally I got the combination and shouted:

“No, no! Nada, nada! Vayase, vayase! Aburr-r!”

The formula was effective, for she stared at me with an expression of petticoat dignity and pop-eyed wonder which said plainer than words, “There is no fool like an old fool,” and walked out. She must have thought that changing garments was a public ceremony, like snoring and seasickness. It was the last time I was caught with my door unlocked.

After securing the door, I talked to the looking-glass and washstand until I was dressed. I wondered if the terrifying loneliness of the arctic regions was as hard on the nerves as the terrible sociability of the tropics. I found myself arguing with poor Weininger, who committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. He said that woman was mere matter that could assume any shape. But this one was merely a mass of petticoat that couldn’t assume any shape. Another man, who has not yet committed suicide, said that woman’s face was the most beautiful thing in the world—he had not seen them all.

All of the officials and local celebrities excepting President Amador, Mr. Wallace and Mr. Barrett were in the habit of stopping at the hotel on their way, or out of their way, home after business hours, or on their way from home after dinner, thus rendering the hotel corridor and barroom quite animated, and, of course, quite interesting to a stranger; so I went down-stairs to seek solace and safety in a crowd. After listening awhile to General Jeffries, who had fought in nearly all of the Central American republics, and who had the right of way in Panama; and to an American contract agent who was attending to the building up of Central America and Cuba on North American lines; as well as to other more distinctly local celebrities, discuss the conditions and prospects of the little republic, I was invited to take a bottle of beer with one of those typical United States old gentleman whom I had found ordering eggs for their early breakfast on the first morning after my arrival and who were making things so lively for the waiters. It was the quiet one who had allowed his large, formidable, rheumatic friend to fight the “Battle of the Eggs” for him. But it was now his turn to complain. The eggs had done their work, and the problem was how to get rid of eggs instead of how to get eggs. He had not lived as Panamanians did, and was not willing to die as they did when they transgressed. I should have been much more willing to advise him if he had drunk my beer instead of making me drink it, but I could not offend him by refusing the most expensive treat next to champagne and, to my thinking, a better (?), pleasanter and less poisonous one. I really wanted to take imported bottled water, but I feared to offend him by making him pay fifty cents for a drink of water, when beer could be had for the same price. I gave him the prescription of my old professor, Dr. N. S. Davis, who lived to be eighty-five years old and always used it upon himself when similarly affected, viz., “R. Take neither food nor medicine until your stomach is all right again.” Doctor Davis included all alcoholics in this prohibition of medicine, but I said nothing to my patient about that. It would have disgusted him with me.

Pretty soon Doctor Echeverría and Señor McGill appeared, and we dutifully proceeded to take an aperitif preparatoire, for it was half after six and we would have to face a formidable bill of fare at seven. In a colder climate active exercise would have been considered a better appetizer for a hearty meal, but in hot climates an alcoholic stimulant is considered more enjoyable and quite efficacious. Señor McGill had even less the figure and fogosity of a high-liver than he had of a warrior, but he took something genuine, and went out to dinner with us and did himself honor, drinking iced claret in place of water. After dinner we returned to the hotel corridor and barroom and spent the evening talking and treating—all three of us, excepting Doctor Echeverría and myself, smoking cigarets.

“Ubi tres medici, ibi duo athei.”

I learned that on Thursday evenings from eight to ten o’clock a public concert was given in the open air at Plaza Santa Ana, and one on Sunday evenings in the Parque del Catedral in front of our hotel. On other evenings there were about three things for the Panamanians to choose between, viz., to stay at home, undress and keep cool; to go to one of the clubs and play cards; or to lounge about the hotel and talk and drink alcoholic liquors or syrupy soft drinks (frescoes) at regular intervals. I met Doctor Cook of Panama; Doctor Calvo, the secretary of the Panamanian Medical Congress; Doctor Tomaselli, one of the busiest of the local practitioners, and other physicians, as well as a few non-professional citizens, and noticed that these physicians, as well as a few unprofessional citizens, avoided the barroom. They usually remained in the hotel corridor and did not remain long. Nearly all of the temperance men, however, drank soft drinks, and they were real men as far as externals indicated.

About nine o’clock Doctor Echeverría went out to call upon some friends, and I went across the street into the park and cooled off. The mosquitoes soon began to congregate, however, and I sneaked up to my bedroom, escaping the argus-eyed bell boy and bully girl. I locked the door quickly, undressed in the dark and after carefully tucking in the edges of the mosquito bar, crawled under it, thinking of Bryant’s stanzas addressed to the mosquito.

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung,

And when at length thy gauzy wings grew strong,

Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung,

Rose in the sky, and bore thee soft along.

The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way

And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.

Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence
Came the deep murmur of its throngs of men,
And as its grateful odors met thy sense,
They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen.

Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight

Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight.

I lay listening to the cathedral clock strike the hours and half-hours. Every time the clock struck during the night, the night watchman blew his whistle to awaken people and remind them that he was awake. Chicago policemen wake up their headquarters only. The promptitude of the whistling made one of our doctors think that the whistling was done by the clock, and was to awaken the watchman only.

CHAPTER X

About Town

Early Breakfast—The “Gentleman of the Eggs” Again—How to Eat the Juice of an Orange—Panama Shops—Chinese Silks and Curios—Purchases—Trying to Beat Down a Chinaman’s Price—The Market—Chinatown—Assortment of Smells—Chinese Style—A Large Stock—The Doctor’s Extravagance—Idleness the Cause of Injudicious Buying—Another Lesson in Siestas—The dolce far niente of It—Another Interruption--Nada, Nada!—New Year’s Resolutions—The Usual Visit to the Cable Office—Las Lonely Bovedas—Extension of Sewers to Low Water Line—The Odor Worse than the Poison—The Remedy—The Prison—The Barracks—Goats Versus Cows—Narrow Streets and Ruins—Chicago Again in the Lead—Unserviceable Sidewalks—Rich Food Eaten in the Tropics—The Promenade Concert—Costumes and Customs.

At coffee I found the portly old “Gentleman of the Eggs” in his place at the head of the table, as confident and contented as a successful South American revolutionist. Things were going his way—beefsteak, fried potatoes, camareros and congestion.

Doctor Echeverría came in and showed me how to peel and eat an orange. He thrust a sharp-pronged fork into one end, peeled it with a sharp table knife the same as one pares an apple and began biting into it. After finishing it, all of the fibrous portion remained on the fork and the juice only had been eaten. This is the way a fluid can be eaten. The old gentleman looked askance at the performance as if he considered it a foreign fraud, but did not alarm those who were not looking at him; and everything went well.

After coffee we sent a cablegram to the doctor’s wife, and proceeded to hunt up a Chinese store. All stores in Panama are, in point of size, shops, for although some of them have a frontage of twenty-five feet, in a few instances of fifty feet, they are shallow, the great majority being not more than twenty-five feet deep. Thus the stores as well as the streets are mere bumping places.

The duties on silk and, I believe, on nearly all goods are low. Hence, although scarcely anything is manufactured or made in Panama, the prices are usually moderate. But so many things are imported from the United States that I had to be careful not to buy goods that had been brought from the United States. In such cases I would pay the increased prices resulting from the moderate Panama duties, and then pay the immoderate American duties upon bringing them back. The Chinese silk and curio stores had the usual things that they have in the United States. In addition to this the Chinese kept provision stores of all sizes and grades where they sold groceries, liquors, fruits, dried and canned goods, and other delicacies demanded by their numerous countrymen and native customers.

By way of introduction I bought some feather fans and bronze sea cows. I then called for a skeleton coat. The Chinaman looked at my arms and legs and said that he did not keep skeleton clothes, but had some about my size, and brought out a white shiny silk sack coat for twelve dollars. As I only wanted it for a week’s wear in Panama and a couple of days on the Caribbean Sea, the coat would cost me more than a dollar for each day’s wear. Had I been younger and more enterprising I should have embraced the opportunity of wearing an imported coat that cost a dollar a day while worn, and would have discarded it at the end of ten days in order not to spoil its record; but I allowed the opportunity to pass and called for something cheaper. The Chinaman showed me a similar coat for ten dollars and said:

“Vely cheapee.”

“More cheapee,” I said.

He showed me one for eight dollars.

“Still more cheapee, much more cheapee.”

He then brought out one for three dollars that looked the same to me, and would catch the Panama dust and filter the Caribbean showers just as faithfully as if I paid twelve dollars for it. I gave him a five-dollar bill and received seven dollars back. I then spied a beautiful piece of silk embroidery and drawn-work about as wide as a door mat and a little longer. I guessed it to be a bureau cover but called it a door mat, for short.

“How muchee?” I asked.

“Eight dollah.”

“What? Eight dollah for door mat? No go. It looks well but it wouldn’t last an hour in Chicago. It is full of holes. I never pay for holes. Deduct for the holes and I’ll buy it.”

“No put him out doah. Keep him in house.”

“Oh, I see, he is a towel. But when we wash in Chicago we use muchee water. It would take three of him for one wiping, and then there would be no opportunity for friction. Such a towel——”

“No towel. Put him on table,” interrupted the Chinaman, with a trace of alteration in the tone of his voice.

“Oh, a napkin? Why, every time I’d wipe my mouthee the soupee would come through these confounded holes on my hands. You must obliterate them if you wish to sell him. He’s a regular skeleton.”

“Not for eatee—for pollah table, for buleau—lookee pletty.”

“Oh, a sort of tidy for the bureau. But these holes spoil him, I say. The dirt would show right through him. Here, I’ll give you six dollah for him. Quickee—comee—bargain—cashee—hoop lah!” I tried to carry the bargain by storm.

The Chinaman could not deny that dirt would show through the drawn-work. He looked perplexed and human, but his speech had the sound of a talking machine.

“Sem dollah ninety-fye cent.”

“Sew up the holes,” I said, “and I’ll give it. Nobody’ll ever buy him full of holes. Why he couldn’t hold water, he wouldn’t even hold molasses. Here’s your six dollah, last chancee.”

“Bully hole! Vela fine hole! Sem dollah ninety-fye cent. Allee hole flee in bahgain.” As he said this his words became animated, but his face was like yellow wax.

“No fleas or flea holes in mine. You’ll never sell him to a Yankee with those flea holes in him. Goodbye!”

He eyed me with patient disgust and put away his finery. As I went out he said, “Bettee fye dollah sell him to-mollah.”

I knew that the piece was worth eight dollars in Colombian money, but I didn’t like to give in, and thought it quite as well to return another time and buy it. But when I did return three days later the Chinaman pretended that the bureau cover was gone, thinking probably that I wanted to claim the five dollars that he had offered to bet. He did not seem anxious to sell me anything. But I had taken a fancy to the cover and wanted it. I offered him eight dollah and fye cent, but he said:

“Allee gone.”

I offered him nine dollah.

“Allee gone.”

I offered him ten dollah.

“Allee gone.”

So I also went, cured of my conceit as a shopper and business man. I had the best of the bargain, however, for the cover didn’t cost me anything. In my subsequent shopping I soon learned that the amount a Chinaman would throw off was so insignificant that it was not worth while to ask it. In fact, it is a good thing to offer him five cents more than he asks to make him jump about and show his goods with more zeal. As we passed out I noticed that the doctor had bought several things of considerable value for his wife.

We then sauntered leisurely down to the street that skirted the seashore, passing the market on our way. The market was a large fenced, rectangular area with a galvanized iron roof. It projected over the sea wall, giving opportunity for the disposal of all dirt by merely throwing it out, supposing, of course, that it were possible to get rid of all of the dirt in the place. It was much better constructed and arranged than the market at Colón, and was well supplied with dirty counters and dirty booths where dirty Chinamen, dirty negroes and dirty mestizos sold dirty fruit, dirty fish, dirty vegetables, etc., all of which should have gone over the sea wall instead of over the palate.

Arriving at the end of the street where it was cut off by an inward curve of the shore line, we turned at right angles to the left into a street about a quarter of a mile long and were, commercially speaking, in Chinatown. The ground-floor front of many of the houses were little Chinese stores, and most of the inhabitants that we saw were Chinese. And before we had finished our walk along the shore, through the market and up this street, we were prepared to endorse the saying that Panama had a separate smell for every turn of the head. A blind man could soon learn to find his way around easily and unerringly.

Up near the main street, where our little street ended, we came to a large, clean-looking Chinese silk and dry-goods store with an imposing entrance. A private carriage was standing in front of it, although upon entering we did not find any one who looked as if he or she had ever possessed or even driven in a carriage. Indeed, on two other occasions I saw a carriage, presumably the same one, in the same place, but never discovered a possible owner shopping there. Hence I inferred that the carriage belonged to the establishment, and was kept there to impress strangers by making them believe that rich customers frequented the place. The store had two front rooms, a main room for all sorts of articles, and a smaller one for silk. We went into the silk room where we found a beautiful display of a costly embroidered silk in the show-cases, and in innumerable pasteboard boxes on shelves reaching almost up to the ceiling.

The proprietor, who waited upon us, was a plump, handsome, courteous, intelligent and exceedingly dignified Chinaman. When Chinamen grow fat they often become good looking; those that remain thin remain ugly, like the rest of us. He showed us all sorts of finery, and Doctor Echeverría let himself out. Whenever the doctor saw silks and embroidery and a Chinaman he thought of his wife, and whenever he thought of his wife he thought of silks and embroidery and Chinamen. In Costa Rica the tariff is very high on silks, and the market is probably not good. We examined many things and made the Chinaman send for more goods from his store-rooms. The doctor wasted no time talking, but bought freely: scarfs, shawls, fans, waists, kimonas, doilies, table covers, etc., for his wife, and handkerchiefs, neckties, etc., for himself.

But this was not all, for we made other visits.

Finally one day he opened his mouth upon the subject and said, “I’m buying too much. I must keep away from these stores.”

I thought so too, and wondered how he would find room enough in his trunks for all of the goods, and what the Costa Rica custom officers would do to him. I have since also been curious to know if his wife, after seeing these things, told him, as my wife told me when I presented my purchases, that she could have bought the same at home just as cheaply, and could have selected things she wanted. My wife would have perhaps obtained more at home for the money, but I would not have gotten the romance out of it. I needed the experience. A little chivalry toward one’s wife is worth more than money.

At home I never enter Chinese shops. Being busy, and therefore in a normal mental state, I act rationally and do not buy Chinese silks and jimcracks. But in Panama I had nothing useful to do, and was therefore apt to do things I should not have done. When the mind is preoccupied with buying stocks one buys them more or less freely and precipitately; when it is preoccupied with buying Chinese silks one is apt to buy more than one’s wife needs or wants.

The shrewd insurance agents, book agents, art venders and irresponsible promoters take advantage of this fact at home where you can not escape them. They take up so much of your time and talk so much about insurance, books, pictures or investments that they communicate to you their own paid-for enthusiasm on the subject. They hammer it into your brain cells by prolonged and repeated nerve impressions until the brain cells are temporarily modified to reproduce the impression involuntarily, so that “insure, insure,” or “buy, buy,” is continually running through your mind. You are hypnotized. The only way to determine whether you want an insurance policy or a book or a picture or a fortune from the agent or promoter, is to get away from him or her for forty-eight hours, and sleep over the problem twice. The impressions of the agent’s sonorous or perhaps insinuating voice will then have become weakened, and you will find that you do not want either an insurance policy, a book, a picture or a gold mine.

After lunch I went up to my room to take another private lesson in siestas. The barricading of the door, the removing of superfluous clothing, the careful tucking in of the mosquito bar under the mattress all around, futile efforts to stop thinking and keep from perspiring, and protracted attempts to read Spanish novels, made of the siesta a not insignificant part of the day’s work. It was not the dolce far niente, the Traeumerei, the dreamy dozing so dear to the imagination of degenerates. My character was unfortunately already formed; I had my limitations, and could not adapt and reconcile myself to the popular siesta hoax. A tropical siesta is not a sleep; it is a broil in which the victim does the turning over and seasoning himself.

Finally, however, at the end of an hour and a half by the cathedral clock, twelve hours by the hour-glass in my brain, I seemed to be well done, and slowly sizzled off into a simulated sunstroke, only to be awakened as on the day before by those knockout blows on my door. I aroused myself and saw the bell boy peeking in.

“The washing, the washing,” he said hastily, and was evidently anxious to anticipate and avoid the expected torrent of dreadful Spanish. But I was too discouraged to compose epithets. Epitaphs were more in keeping with the situation, and one was due him. So I crawled out of bed, made a toga out of a towel, removed the barricade from the door and took the bundle. I then wiped my forehead and looked at him. He stood like a black Pompeian statue with the white of its staring eyes fixed upon me. I began, “Nada, nada!”—and the thing glided out. It was becoming intelligent at last.

But it was still too hot to keep clothes on, and I had to crawl into my mosquito cage and make up my mind to stay there until the three o’clock breeze made itself felt. As the new year was only two days off, I passed the time making New Year’s resolutions. I made about a hundred, but could only remember a dozen or so of them afterward. I resolved:

Never to take a siesta or a dolce far niente in the future, but to be satisfied with a plain nap when I felt the need of it.

Not to return to Panama until a Yankee hotel had reconstructed the country.

Not to personally undertake the reformation of the tropics.

Not to train the servants of aliens.

Not to begin by getting hot when I wanted to keep cool.

Not to be a conqueror.

Not to do in Rome as the Romans did.

Not to take a Turkish bath and call it a siesta.

Not to drink frescoes when I wanted water.

Not to do the tropics, nor let the tropics do me.

Not to have opinions, but try to understand things.

Not to be eloquent when silence would suffice.

Not to care when it couldn’t help.

Not to know everything.

Not to want anything.

Not to make any new resolutions until the old ones were worn out or broken.

Finally at half past three I arose, shut and locked the door, drank a bottle of imported lukewarm water, cooled myself by washing my chest and body with so-called cold water, and felt more or less refreshed.

After I had been down-stairs a few minutes, Doctor Echeverría and, later, Señor Arango appeared, and we started for the cable office to send a message to the doctor’s wife and enquire after the one he had not yet received. If one had come it would have been sent to the hotel, but he went and enquired morning and evening, just for the love of it, or of her, I supposed. At any rate, he couldn’t help it.

We then went for a promenade on the Bóvedas along the seashore. The tide, which rises thirteen feet, was out and the flat rocky bed of the bay lay exposed for more than a hundred yards. Two men of slow and deliberate intentions were digging a trench from the sea wall out to the water’s edge at low tide for the benefit of the sewer pipes. The sewers which emptied just outside of the sea wall were to be extended out to that point. This improvement would do away with some of the bad smells that had followed the daily exposure of the sea bottom by the recession of the water. The bad smells at low tide did not, however, seem to cause much sickness, the regular return of the salt water acting as a disinfectant and douche. The offense to the olfactories was probably the worst feature of the emptying of the sewage near the shore. Individual perfumery would have been cheaper and perhaps more efficacious, but the men had not thought of that, and the ladies had never told them. Whether it was too early in the day for promenading, or whether there was but little promenading done on Las Bóvedas I do not know (probably both), but the only fashionable people we met were Señor McGill and his party, consisting of two ladies and a gentleman besides himself. A few children and two men of the poorer class were the only other persons visible.

OCEAN FRONT AT PANAMA

Tide Out, Showing the Sea Wall and Bottom of the Sea

We arrived in a few minutes at the end of the lovely but lonely promenade where it turned upon itself and led us down to the low ground just inside of the sea wall. Here the soldiers’ barracks, the city jail and a good parade ground of three or four acres were situated. We saw many prisoners and a few soldiers. The prisoners were confined under the vaults that supported the promenade. Hence the name Las Bóvedas, the vaults. They were closed on the outer side by the solid sea wall and on the inner side by iron grating. Light and air entered the cellars thus formed from one side only, through the iron grating, leaving the deeper portions so dark that we could not see into them. The light space near the grating was teeming with prisoners of both sexes, mostly negroes and mixed breeds, who seemed to be uncomfortably crowded in an exceedingly unhealthy place. Just beyond the jail was a plain, rectangular brick building, in which the soldiers were lodged, and beyond this were some dilapidated frame houses, ragged children, dirty goats and drowsy vultures.

Doctor Echeverría wished to buy a herd of goats for his children and take them to San José; but although goats were plenty he could only find one good one. They had subsisted on straw hats and stray shoes so long that most of them were getting bald and leathery on their backs and sides. Cows and fodder are rather scarce in Central American cities and the facilities for keeping the milk fresh are not good, hence the desirability of a herd of goats which can be starved when corn husks are dear, and can be driven from house to house to be milked as milk is wanted for use. This provides sterile, undiluted milk, rich enough for coffee and more digestible and nourishing for children than the best of cows’ milk that has been milked several hours before being used, or that has been artificially sterilized. I should think that Central America, and particularly Panama and the neighborhood of the Canal Zone, would be a profitable place for large goat dairies. The goats could eat all night on the sabanas, manufacturing morning milk from the midnight grass and stubble, and walk the streets of Panama city all day, clearing the town of rubbish and giving certified milk to all. They could take a daily siesta from 1 to 3 P. M. in the Parque de la Catedral and in Parque de la Iglesia de Santa Ana, giving the town rubbish a chance to form fresh milk for afternoon delivery. It would be a blessing to our children in the United States if milch-goats could replace milch-cows, which can not safely be starved and neglected, and it would aid materially in clearing our homes and streets of tuberculosis and waste paper—the two white plagues.

In returning we passed through quaint and narrow streets with their small and old-fashioned houses, and here and there a ruin. Some of the old church ruins are very picturesque and very ruinous, although none of them so ponderous, pretentious and dangerous as was our old Cook County court building at Chicago, the world’s most magnificent specimen of popular and political ruin. “Si caput videas, ferias,” was its motto, and for a long time it threatened to crush the head of the solitary passerby who did not keep his distance, or to lie down suddenly on the crowd that ventured too near. The citizens had to be protected against it. Experts on architectural degeneracy reported that its angle of velocity was accelerated, its angle of repose faulty, and that its lateral parts showed great fatigue. So complete and perfect a ruin was never before matured at so rapid a rate. It made a new record and set a new pace for municipal dissolution, for without the aid of quakes, tornadoes or the help of time, it crumbled so rapidly and steadily that it could not be kept up long enough to get into guide books and attract tourists. Thus Chicago leads in ruin as well as in rush. In its place we have the new county building, which is a ruin of architectural art—a columnated parallelopiped. Its two-story basement is an example of bewindowed weakness. Its high and heavy columns have but little support and support but little; they are too stuck up, too desirous of being looked up to. But Chicago is not yet a great architect; the University of Chicago is a better one. Chicago’s specialty lies in a rampant repetition of rectangular windows without any walls, its variety in a massive superfluity of meaningless stone carved and crusted with architectural trumpery; its exception in an occasional magnificent success.

The Panama sidewalks were too narrow for the enjoyment of a walk. In order to walk side by side, two of us had to walk on the cobblestones, and as the third one was too polite to monopolize the whole sidewalk, we all walked on the cobblestones, and thus took up the whole street. But as we never met a vehicle in these parts it did not matter except to our feet. We might have walked single file on the sidewalk, but as I was the only one not too polite to walk ahead, and both of the others were too polite to take the second place, the cobblestones were the only alternative. An advantage, however, of the use of the street was that we did not have to step off the sidewalk into the depression intended for a ditch every time we passed anyone. This passing of people on the twenty-five inch sidewalks in Panama was almost as difficult as passing people in Chicago on our twenty-five foot sidewalks.

When we reached the hotel it was time for an appetizer, which we dutifully drank in preparation for a tour-de-force dinner. I formerly thought that in the tropics men lived mostly on fruits, rice, light vegetables and, if they worked hard, an occasional egg, taking but little meat or greasy, mixed dishes. But my experiences in Cuba, on the Italian ship and in Panama have taught me that the people eat as heartily, or more so, of greasy food as in northern portions of the United States, where we subsist too much upon our home-made cereals that overfill and underfeed us.

As it was Thursday evening there was to be a concert in the Plaza de la Iglesia de Santa Ana at eight o’clock, and my companions dined with some friends in town preparatory to attending it with them. So I had to go through the paces of dinner alone—and succeeded. I then sat around the hotel corridor until eight o’clock when the air had become cooler, but not cool, and my stomach lighter, but not light, and strolled leisurely to the Plaza de la Iglesia de Santa Ana, about half a mile away. The musicians were playing in one corner of the square and the people promenading in the park which, as in Plaza Centrál, occupied the entire square except the peripheral space taken up by the streets. The men were, as a rule, dressed in evening or afternoon dress, as if for protection against cold, while the ladies were draped in all sorts of flimsiness appropriate to the weather—white, gauzy, fleecy, fluffy and pretty. Their clothes were as appropriate as those of the men were inappropriate, which is quite the reverse of the methods of dress in the North, where the men dress for comfort, and the ladies for the men. Around and around the outer edge of the park they walked, some in one direction, some in the opposite, passing and repassing each other, laughing and talking and apparently unconscious of the increasing monotony of it all. But a large proportion of the promenaders were young, and to youth nothing is monotonous but inactivity.

The main street passed by the plaza constituting the front side; the church occupied the opposite side, forming a fine background with the dense, electrically lighted foliage in the middle, and the illuminated, brilliant throng moving around the edges. Whenever the music started, the crowd became more animated and the whole scene presented something romantic or fairylike to the spectator. The music was of a loud Spanish character, very appropriate in the open air, and the pieces, which varied from popular to classic, were well played.

After becoming somewhat weary from carrying my course dinner around, I stepped into the shadows of the trees and took a seat on a bench to listen with comfort to the music, and watch the young people chatter and enjoy each other as only the young can. I resolved that if providence or a vigorous digestion should ever give me back my youth I would make myself enjoy trifles also. But some men never grow young, and trifles never become important to them.

I concluded that the Panama Physicians must also have overfilled stomachs and an apathy for trifles, for none of them were there promenading and lemonading.

CHAPTER XI

Town Topics

Waiting for the Bull-fight—Daily Newspapers—Death from Yellow Fever—Fate of Mr. Dingler’s Family—Doctor Echeverría Receives the Cablegram at Last—Walks to the Seashore—The National Lottery—The Cathedral—A Titled Doctor of the Past—Ruins—A Ruin within a Ruin—Business Hours—Baths and Economy of Water—Proposed Improvements.

The next two days, Friday and Saturday, were days of waiting for the Sunday bull-fight. Panama is a small city of 20,000 inhabitants and there was nothing doing, as the saying is, excepting the walk to the cable office morning and evening with Doctor Echeverría in quest of the cablegram from San José that had not arrived. For an ignorant person like myself, however, who had gone there knowing nothing about the ways of the people in the tropics, and had only learned a couple of days before to go in out of the sun, there was interest and instruction in everything.

I spent a part of the time sitting about the barber shop, the hotel corridor and the barroom studying local customs, and reading the daily Estrella (Star and Herald) and El Diario (The Daily). The newspapers were printed in both English and Spanish and contained short but very good extracts from the latest authenticated world news. One did not have to read twelve illustrated and illuminated pages to find two doubtful facts that would be contradicted the next day. Much of the talk was about the death, which had just been announced, of the wife of Chief Engineer Wallace’s secretary of yellow fever. The young secretary had gone North to marry her, and had brought her to Panama to become a victim within a few weeks. Her death cast a gloom over the community and was certainly not an encouraging and comforting experience for Mr. and Mrs. Wallace. It reminded us of the fate of Mr. Dingler, one of the chief engineers of the Panama Canal under the French regime, who brought his wife and two sons to Panama and lost all three of yellow fever in one month. His troubles produced melancholia and he had to give up his work.

These were isolated instances of such misfortunes in high stations of life, and were indicative of many equally distressing but generally unknown or quickly forgotten ones in more humble stations. This does not apply to the Jamaica negroes, however, who think that they are suffering from too much hygiene. Instead of yellow fever they are contracting catarrh and pneumonia in their new, well-ventilated sleeping quarters. Health, wealth and prosperity, like everything else, should be enjoyed in moderation.

On Friday evening Doctor Echeverría received the longed-for cablegram from his wife, and again took interest in ordinary mundane trivialities. I missed our walks to the cable office, which was situated at the upper end of the city where it extended out upon a projecting piece of land. I enjoyed going there to gaze at the picturesque shores, the green islands and the dark blue sky and sea, and feel romantic. These walks also took care of considerable superfluous time that would have been spent sitting about the hotel, and they kept us in touch with the common people and cobble pavements. As it was the end of the week, numerous old, half-breed Indian women, and an occasional Chinaman, wandered about the streets peddling tickets for the Panama National Lottery, which had a drawing every Sunday. The tickets were divided into halves and quarters to represent the fraction of the prize one paid for, but did not draw. Thus one could gamble away a few cents or a few dollars weekly, according to one’s pocket and one’s patriotism. The lottery is a devilishly good thing for a country of impoverished people because it lightens taxation. To those who believe in gambling it represents the best and most desirable part of taxation since it takes only the money of those who pay voluntarily and cheerfully. It also collects quite a sum from visiting strangers, and did from us. I bought a large fraction of a ticket, as did most of the other strangers, and we all came near winning something.

In our peregrinations about town, the doctor and I went through the cathedral, but saw nothing cheerful or pretty, although the altar and a representation of the nativity near it were bright with gilt and gaudy coloring. The walls everywhere abounded in mortuary tablets, very cheerful and comforting things to the sick and the dead, but very uncomfortable reminders to those of us who have the Greek enjoyment of living untainted with a fondness for the contemplation of dissolution. The church contains a tablet inscribed to a physician, Dr. Joaquin Morro, which shows him to have been titled, according to the proper forms of law, for public services. This tablet, together with the fact that the present president is a physician, shows that the doctors are better appreciated in Panama than with us. It speaks well for the Panama doctors, or perhaps worse for those of some other countries.

The exteriors of the churches were much more interesting to me, for they were picturesquely old, typically Spanish in style, and most of them located among surroundings that were decidedly medieval and suggestive of strange customs and superstitious beliefs. As a rule, the ruins were roofless, imperfect shells of past glory and gloom, with perhaps a corner or small space or two boarded up for use as a storehouse or humble dwelling place. As we passed the ruins of the old Franciscan Church (a new, smaller one has been erected near by), I saw coming out from a boarded space in the walls an exact counterfeit of the witch of Endor, as we see her in the tragedy “Macbeth,” the final evolution of that species of old women that nourish themselves and their house-plants with tea and coffee. She was a sort of ambulating mummy; her face and head mere skull bones with yellow parchment drawn over them, and her body a concatenation of long bones held in line by some rags loosely drawn around them. As she came shuffling out from between the detached, fragmentary pillars she seemed appropriately housed, a ruin within a ruin. I wondered how much rent she ought to have been paid to live there among the lizards. She added life to the dead pile, and undoubtedly added romance and interest by telling fortunes and frightening children.

RUINS OF THE SANTO DOMINGO CHURCH

Across from these human and divine rooms were little dingy shops that looked like small square masonry cells, relics of the days of the old church. Large double doors constituted almost their entire front, and were kept open for light and air. On account of their smallness, the almost complete emptiness of visible merchandise in most of them, the absence of customers, and the miserable appearance of the inmates, I asked the doctor if they were not disreputable places. He assured me that they were not, but that as it was already nine o’clock, the business of the day had been about all transacted. The owners dealt mostly in perishable provisions which were sold early in the morning, and there was but little left for them to do but lounge about until the next morning. Thus poverty and leisure and content often go together in the tropical zone, just as riches and leisure and discontent so often do in the temperate and intemperate zones.

I noticed that most officials and business agents in Panama had office or business hours in the forenoon and afternoon, which were often marked on the doors or windows. This enabled them to enjoy their siestas and cigarets between business hours without being disturbed, and also made it practicable for them to finish their work early in the day. The comparatively small amount of work done by business men in the afternoon would lead one to suppose that but little was done, yet the best work is done in the early morning, at a time when Northern customers are not astir. In the tropics the early birds catch the worms. In the North the proverb speaks of only one early bird.

I had given up hunting after baths. I could not hear of any tub baths, and had been frightened out of the notion of taking shower baths by a visiting Central American doctor who was waiting to attend the Medical Congress. He told me that next to his seventy-five cigarets a day he enjoyed his daily cold shower bath at the house of a relative who was a druggist. The water that was used in the drug store to wash bottles and things with was run into a reservoir under the floor and used for shower baths in the basement. As the Panama wells were drying up and plain drinking water was bringing a price, it occurred to me that to make shower baths pay, it might be necessary in bathing establishments, where the dishwater and waste water would, of course, be insufficient to supply shower baths for all of the customers, to collect also the waste water from the baths, pump or carry it up into the tank and use it over again. When the water became soapy enough from the multitude of baths, to look dirty, it could be allowed to flow away and a new series of baths be started on the same economical plan. Having a dread of beri-beri, dengue, leprosy, elephantiasis, tropical ulcers, and other prevalent ailments of more or less contagious nature which had their habitat in Panama, I did not allow myself to deviate from my previously formed opinion that cold private sponge baths were not only more cleansing than the public shower baths, but were more available, reliable, convenient, comfortable and manageable.

After wandering about considerably among the streets and studying the business facilities, I came to the conclusion that Plaza Centrál was a good place for a residence district, but that, being at the wrong end of the town from the railroad station, it would soon be an out-of-the-way place for the agencies and business houses at present located in or near it. When the volume of business would become greater, the main thoroughfare would have to be made wider, or the business centered nearer to the station or transferred to the mouth of the canal, for nothing ever stays but dirt and nothing ever lasts but time.

Chief Engineer Wallace had, I believe, spoken of a plan, which carried to its extreme, would mean tearing down entire blocks of houses for long distances and enlarging the city area by building a sea wall out at the edge of the water at low tide, and filling in with the earth excavated from the canal. But Mr. Wallace was too modern and reconstructive. I suppose that a gradual change of the business center will be the most probable solution of the economic problem, leaving the old city as a residence district, for which it would be well located. A Chicago real estate dealer would make a beautiful suburb of it.

CHAPTER XII

The Past and the Present Panama

A Visit Planned and Given Up—Difficulties—Buccaneer Henry Morgan and President Don Juan Perez de Guzman—Story of Morgan’s Expedition against Panama—Prayers Versus Prowess—Starvation—Waiting Ambuscaders—Leather Soup—The Miraculous Feeding—Breakfast Food for Those Who Could not Walk—Making a New Road—Repulse of Don Juan’s Cavalry—Repulse of the Cattle—Flanking Movement—Victory—Fire—Booty—The Filibusters Filibustered by Morgan—Great Britain and Captain Dampier—Chances for the Poet, Tourist, Artist, Antiquarian and Lover—Something New—Panama has Changed Hands—But for Uncle Sam There’d be Something Doing in Panama.

Doctor Echeverría and Señor Arango had planned a trip to the old city of Panama, the old-gold city, founded in 1518 by Don Pedro d’Avila, sacked in 1673 by Sir Henry Morgan, the buccaneer, and rebuilt on its present semi-peninsular site, where it is inaccessible to buccaneers and inconvenient for business. But it was a whole day’s trip and there was no hotel to serve us with a déjeuné à-la-fourchette and a siesta. Besides, we would have to find a guide to keep us from falling into cellars and holes overgrown and concealed by such profusion of vegetation as only the tropics can produce in two hundred years. The doctor, rather than trust to a guide, thought it better to trust in God only and stay away, for it was a God-forsaken place.

Two hundred years ago the citizens made their Creator ashamed of them by succumbing to a band of exhausted and half-starved buccaneers. Sir Henry Morgan and his men nearly perished of hunger in trying to cross the isthmus while Don Juan Perez de Guzman, president of Panama, was praying and eating, and keeping tab on Morgan’s progress and his own prayers, instead of pleasing God by killing pirates. God is not always pleased with mere praying. He favors doing, and sometimes fighting, as the following narrative would seem to indicate.

Montebello, the Colón of olden times, was situated near the mouth of the Chagres River. Sir Henry Morgan captured and sacked the town and sent word to Don Juan Perez de Guzman that he would call upon him soon in Panama. He was desirous of seeing the city where gold-dust blew about and blinded people, where the cathedral was crusted over with shells of pearl and filled with ornaments of silver, and the trees were hung and festooned with jewels to keep them off the grass. He wanted his share. The world owed him a living, etc.

He made good his promise the next year (1670), thoroughly prepared for the work. He first captured Fort San Lorenzo that guarded or should have guarded the entrance of the river—and Don Juan P. de G., began to watch and pray. Don Juan considered himself a better man than the pirate, and thought that the Lord was with him. But he did wrong to think. Meanwhile, Captain Morgan, with 1,200 men and provisions for one day, started merrily up the Chagres River. Food was too bulky to carry, and about all he had would be needed by those he left in charge of San Lorenzo. Besides, he did not go to eat; he went to fight. He took, however, five large scows laden with artillery and ammunition to offset the thinking and praying of Don Juan. God helps them who help themselves, and Morgan was prepared to help himself.

Ambuscading parties showed themselves in the distance occasionally, but they were to do the watching part of Don Juan’s program and always retired before Morgan got near enough to shoot and eat any of them. Instead of fighting and letting him capture their food, they retired and ate the food themselves, saying: “He who eats and runs away will live to run another day.”

Poor Morgan! The food lasted one happy day. On the second day the 1,200 went hungry. On the third day they found the river obstructed by fallen trees. So a portion of the buccaneers carried the canoes over the obstacles while the rest cut their way through the dense vegetation beside the river. All of the artillery and ammunition that could not be thus transported had to be left. But Morgan kept right on to the surprise of the well-fed watchers.

RUINED TOWER OF OLD PANAMA

On the fourth day the filibusters found some dried hides at Torna Caballos, cut them into strips, made a stew and filled themselves. Such a meal ought to have staid by their stomachs for a week. At noon of the fifth day they found two bags of meal in the deserted village of Barbacoas, and accomplished the miracle of feeding 1,200 men with two bags of meal.

Some of the men were by this time so weak that they had to be carried into the boats, while many of those who could walk wanted to turn back. Yet they kept on, concluding that they might as well starve going forward as going backward.

On the sixth day they found a plantation with a barn full of maize, for the ambuscaders had expected them to starve or turn back before reaching this plantation, and had not destroyed the maize. Nor did they defend it. Their business was to watch, and they could not watch and fight at the same time. The 1,200 thus had their fill of breakfast food, and some to spare, and thus were revived and full of fight. They carried breakfast food to those in the canoes, who were too weak to walk, but not to eat.

On the seventh day they crossed the river and reached Cruces, the head of navigation of the Chagres River, and beheld the city in flames. Here they found some wine, one sack of bread and some dogs and cats, which they ate and drank. Then they were taken sick; and Morgan laid it to the wine, which was a happy thought.

On the eighth day they repulsed an Indian ambuscade near by, and lost ten men. Before they left, they were caught in a rainstorm, which was more serious. As they had no houses for shelter, they put the ammunition in holes and cellars of the destroyed houses to keep it dry while they themselves passed the night taking a shower bath.

On the ninth day they pushed on and reached El Cerro de los Filibusteros, and took their first look at the Pacific Ocean. Here they found droves of horses, mules, oxen, etc., and ate them. Spanish cavalry appeared often, but upon seeing the pirates, crossed themselves and withdrew, not wishing to be fired upon or touched by such a horde of unholy tramps. Where was Don Juan P. de G., P. of P., N. G.? At prayers where good men love to be. He thought he had the faith that confoundeth the enemy, forgetting that there is no faith without deeds. In the meantime Morgan’s men took a good sleep and recuperated.

On the tenth day Morgan abandoned the regular road which the watchers and waiters had prepared to defend with cannon, and made a new road and appeared on a hill that was separated from the city by a plain. Here the Panamanians assembled 400 horse, 2,400 foot soldiers and 2,000 head of cattle, males and females, to resist the buccaneers.

The cavalry ran out at Morgan, floundered about on the boggy plain and retired. The cattle then were shoved at him, but they were no braver than the cavalry and were stampeded back into the Panamanian lines, causing great slaughter. The main body was then flanked by Morgan’s left wing and promptly routed. Time, two hours. Casualties, 600 Panamanians left dead on the field, and many pirates sent to Satan.

Don Juan N. G. then had the town set on fire, and it slowly burned down. Indeed, Don Juan played the Muscovite game from beginning to end. But Morgan was only fifty miles from his base, with which he had already established communication, and was not now in danger of starving or freezing. In fact, it is thought by some authorities that Morgan started the fire. Anyway the fire burned. Morgan looked down from the hill and said, “Let her burn.” Don Juan looked up from the flames and said, “Let us pray.”

Then Morgan rode down and made his promised call. He and his fiendish followers staid in what was left of Panama for four months, plundering the surrounding country and ravishing the women. He held as many prominent persons as he could for ransom, and also tortured many to make them divulge the hiding places of valuables. He took what vessels he found in the port and scoured the South Sea for many miles. He captured a few stray ships, but the galleon upon which the greatest valuables had been placed escaped him. He then returned to Fort San Lorenzo with his booty and gave each of the surviving pirates $400, pretending to divide equally with them. The pirates accused him of keeping the greater part of the treasures and thought themselves poorly paid for the work they had done and the risks they had run. Those who were sent to Satan were the only ones whose rewards were in keeping with the character of their work.

Having failed to get a ransom for the castle of Chagres, he demolished some of its walls and set sail secretly for Jamaica, leaving the majority of his men behind, and almost as poor as before the expedition. God did not help Don Juan, but he hit the pirates hard. Few men would be willing to do so much dangerous work for so little pay. There certainly were and are many honest occupations available, even for the most ignorant men, that pay better in the end than trying to obtain by sword cuts or short cuts, what belongs to others. But everything has to be tried and exploited in this immature world, and Henry Morgan did pioneer work. As a reward for this, Henry was made a Sir and appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, and the island has ever since been a victim of the four elements. These were golden days for buccaneers, for they were not only tolerated at Jamaica but were licensed by Great Britain to rob and kill Spanish men and women, and to spend the money and sell the jewels at British ports.

A paragraph from John Evelyn’s diary tells the story:

“1698, 6 Aug.—I dined with Mr. Pepys, where was Capt. Dampier, who had been a famous Buccaneer, had brought hither the painted Prince Job, and printed a relation of his very strange adventure, and his observations. He was now going abroad again by the King’s encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He seemed a more modest man than one would imagine by the relation of the crew he has assorted with.”

Surely the tourist, the poet, the artist, the antiquarian, and lover of the romantic past, need not go to Europe or Asia to find ruin and romance, dirt and dreaminess, the splendor of nature and the destructiveness of man, to find history, hallucination, inspiration and perspiration.

Let him visit the solitary ruined tower at the site of the old city of Panama and tumble into old vaults and ditches; let him study the church ruins in the present city, and buy a few; let him live in the dingy old Spanish houses and go about among the parti-colored inhabitants, instead of traveling in Europe among his own countrymen. Let him study the history, legends, superstitions, customs and language of the people and be satisfied. If not let him go to Yucatan and study the architecture and religion of the Aztecs, which are not modeled after guide books, and let him wander and dream and write and paint and see something new under the sun, that really is under the sun. Europe and Asia are an old story.

Panama has changed hands since the buccaneer period when the buccaneers did all of the fighting. Panamanians now have less money, fewer prayers and more fights. They have not a praying Don Juan for president—Don Juans should not pray. Their chief fault is that they believe in frequent changes of administration. But they have the courage of their convictions, and the army has always been ready to act upon them, pro or con.

President Amador is a philosopher and believes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, that the greatest preventive of fighting is to do away with the fighters. Hence the large standing army of the republic has been disbanded and their duties given over to the military policemen. Since then there has been a revolutionary stagnation, a slump in the revolutionary market, for which Uncle Sam is said to be responsible. But for Uncle Sam there would have been something doing in Panama before this.

CHAPTER XIII

New Year’s Day and the Sabanas

Cathedral Bells—The Bawl after the Ball—Ringing in the New Year—Unique Chimes—The Musical Score—A Drive to the Sabanas—The Suburban Highway—Natives—Open Prairie—Señor Arango’s Summer Residence—Great Variety of Flowers, Fruits and Foliage—Good Cattle Country—Fire-crackers—The Siesta Hour—A Quiet Funeral—Ho! for the Bull-fight.

New Year’s eve I was awakened at midnight by the ringing of the cathedral bells, which, being directly across the plaza and at about the same altitude as my open window, had a good chance at me. After a long time the noisy tolling ceased and I again dropped off to sleep. But I was hardly asleep when I was awakened by singing, that universal type of popular song that has its source in the saloon where good cheer is manufactured for holidays; where holidays are howling days, and pay days are heydays. It was the bawl after the ball, and commanded attention. As New Year’s day is a sort of Panama Fourth of July, both as to temperament and temperature, the night watchmen considerately allowed the singing to go on, although they probably kept the amateur musicians moving, and thus distributed the noise impartially over the different parts of the town. At any rate, the noise died away in the distance long enough for me to go asleep, when it came back and commanded attention again.

At six-thirty in the morning when I was in the depths of my final heavy tenacious sleep, we had another musical entertainment, an official one this time. At the break of each New Year’s day boys were hired to pound the bells in the cathedral towers, each boy having two or three bells to strike promiscuously and loudly, according to his strength and inclination. The rhythm as nearly as can be reproduced was as follows:

Ting-aling, ting-tong, ting-ting, ating-tong, go-it-boys-aping-pong, right-along, sing-song, ring-wrong, hong-kong, gong-gong!

This was kept up right-along until the boys who did the hitting must have been tired and lame-shouldered, when peace again reigned in the air. The performance was a relic of old Panama, a musical ruin. Tooting horns and blowing whistles would have been more cheerful and practical.

As the lottery prizes were not to be drawn until noon, nor the bull-fight to be fought until four o’clock, I was very glad to take a drive with Doctor Echeverría and Señor Arango to the latter’s country residence on the “sabanas” or “prairies.” But for the almost continuous succession of courtesies shown me by the doctor and his friends, time would have hung heavily on my hands and I should have seen and understood much less of the real life of the people. My acquaintances would have been mainly negro cabmen and American travelers, and my knowledge that of the near-sighted tourist who travels hundreds of miles in order to get pointers on his guide book and commit a few well-known facts to memory, and recite them incorrectly.

We drove through the town and out on the highway, quite a long stretch of which had been paved by Señor Arango himself. The road-bed was good, but like everything else in a country that had been having revolutions every two years, with access to the treasury, the road was sadly out of repair and must have been very bad during the muddy season. The horse didn’t go fast enough to make the ruts and ridges objectionable, however, and the dust and heat were the only things to interfere with the enjoyment of our drive. Arrangements were being made to repave the highway, which was the only pleasure drive about Panama. This and the repaving of the Panama streets are undoubtedly doing something toward making life livable there.

The highway and surrounding landscape were unattractive for a short distance after passing the railway station. But a little farther on, the road was lined with huts in front of which native laborers who were spending New Year’s day at home were gathered with their families; and it was interesting to study the crowd of mixed races of all shades from the white Spanish to the black negro, in which the Indian and negro blood seemed to play a predominant part. I was reminded of Midway Plaisance at the Chicago World’s Fair and of the St. Louis Pike, minus the hallooing and calling. The low brows, narrow foreheads, coarse features and dark skin gave them a sort of villainous appearance at first sight, but I noticed, upon looking at them closely, that they had a serious rather than sinister expression upon their faces. I also happened to remember that I had not been accosted by a beggar, either in Colón or Panama. Whether this is due to the fact that all men find work; or to the scarcity of tourists to teach them to beg; or to the small number and want of affluence of the members of the better classes, rendering the profession of begging unprofitable; or whether my observation was not accurate, I do not know. I suspect that what little it costs the poor to live, is easily earned, but not so easily begged. However, when the canal is finished beggars will undoubtedly appear, among other innovations.

After we had traversed about a mile of this suburban highway, the road led through a pleasant stretch of mildly rolling prairie-land with scattered woody areas. Occasionally we passed a farm-house without much farm and, here and there, a few grazing cattle. After about an hour of slow driving we came to two or three country residences and soon arrived at Señor Arango’s.

It was an enclosure of five or six acres planted quite thickly with a great variety of trees, shrubbery and flowers; there seemed to be a dozen different kinds of fruit and flowering trees, many of them not indigenous to Panama. Flowers unfamiliar to me grew in great profusion upon bushes and small plants, and the ground was strewn with limes, mangoes, and other fruits whose names I knew not. Hence, a short walk was a walk of great interest, and was especially pleasant because of the dense shade afforded by the thick foliage. The house was a story and a half high. One side of the lower floor was entirely made up of wide doors, allowing it to open up almost as completely as if it had no wall on that side, and the porches were wide and covered by the projecting roof. The windows and large door spaces could be closed with lattice-work that kept out the sun, but not the air. The furniture was rustic but plentiful. A dark-skinned native lived apparently in one of the outhouses, but could not have had much to do except to watch the fruit grow, and eat it, for the place was evidently quite capable of taking the care of itself. The foliage was too thick for a shaven lawn to be cultivated under it, and there was no spring and autumn “taking up” and planting of delicate bulbs, or covering of roots in winter, etc. Once planted things required almost no care; flowers and fruits matured and fell and began to grow again. After a pleasant hour spent in looking about, gathering nosegays, tasting fruits and cooling off in the rustic shade, we started back.

Farther away from the town in the same direction Señor Arango’s father had a larger summer residence, and still farther up the isthmus had a farm of several thousand acres with large droves of cattle. The sabanas are well adapted to cattle-raising and good beef is plentiful on the hoof. But the transportation facilities are poor, for the country has neither highways nor railways.

As we rode back we found the boys in the city setting off fire-crackers and enjoying themselves as well as they could in a city with scarcely any street-space or yard-area. Otherwise the only activity noticeable was the passing of lottery ticket venders offering their goods for the drawing at noon. The hotel was more quiet than usual on New Year’s day, for the father of the proprietors (two brothers) had died the day before and was to be buried in the afternoon. The barroom was closed and but few visitors were about except those who came to visit the chamber of death.

After eleven o’clock breakfast we went to our rooms to take a short siesta, agreeing to meet again at half past three and go to the bull-fight. I lay down as on the previous day and began thinking of the mestizo bell boy. He did not appear, but my thoughts of him kept me awake until time to get up and go down-stairs. I had conquered him, but I could sleep no more.

Descending the steps, I noticed that the funeral cortège was preparing to leave. The body had lain in state all day and had been visited by many people. Some services were apparently being held in the room, but I heard neither singing nor other music. A crowd of citizens in black clothes, and with silk hats that had evidently been caught in many a shower, was waiting in the corridor near the street door. When the body was brought down from the silent room, instead of being put into a hearse, it was borne through the streets by the pall-bearers, and followed by the relatives. All went on foot and I suppose that the burial was in some church in the neighborhood. It was an exceedingly silent and sensible funeral, but probably could not have been conducted so simply and quietly in a large city. I was told that the deceased was Jewish, a fact which may have given the peculiar character to the ceremony. At any rate, it seemed in good taste for a man thus to leave the world more quietly than he had entered it.

Soon after the funeral procession had disappeared, I started with Doctor Echeverría for the courtyard of the International Club, where the bull-fight was to take place, prepared for the sensation of my life. I wished to see this relic of Spanish medievalism, yet dreaded somewhat the expected artistic display of killing qualifications. Two bulls were to be killed.

CHAPTER XIV

The Bull-Fight

We arrived at the amphitheater a little before four o’clock and found everything cheerful and lively as befitted the occasion. Men and boys came in rapidly, took their seats, lighted cigarets and began to call out and joke with one another in a manner characteristic of the Spanish bull-fight audience.

The arena was a square space located against the side wall of a brick house and enclosed on the other three sides by board fences about six feet high. Opposite the brick wall and commanding a good view of it, a platform had been built for the common multitude. On another side of the square was a similar platform containing boxes for the alcalde (mayor) and aristocratic few, including ladies. On the fourth side a skeleton fence had been constructed apparently for the benefit of children who could see but could not pay; in our thrifty country the wall would have been built so as to prevent the children seeing through it. The doctor and I occupied chairs among the common multitude and had the best location, for it commanded a view of the boxes and of the two doors of the bull pen beneath. On each of the four sides of the arena, and about eighteen inches from the fence or wall, was built a strong wooden screen wide enough to conceal four men standing side by side. Thus wherever the fighters might be they were always near a place of safety.

Plaza de Toros.

Feliz Año Nuevo.

GRAN CORRIDA PARA EL DOMINGO, ENERO 1º DE 1905.

Con permiso de la autoridad y si el tiempo lo permite se lidiarán, en el

PATIO DEL CLUB INTERNACIONAL,
cinco bravos toros de la afainada ganadería

“La Jagua” de propiedad del señor Francisco A. Mata, de los cuales serán

DOS DE MUERTE POR EL ESPADA “CHALECO”

La corrida será presidida por el señor Alcalde del Distrito.

GREAT BULL FIGHT

NEW YEARS DAY

The famous Spanish Bull fighter and Matador “CHALECO” will kill two Bull on Sunday at 4 p. m.

Entrance to Bull Ring below the “International Club.”

Reserved. Seats for sale on Saturday at the Walk-Over Shoe Store [American Bazaar].

CUADRILLA.

Director y Primer Espada—Sebastián Rivera (a) Chaleco.

Sobresaliente de Espada con obligaciones de

Banderillera, Pedro Ramierez (a) Rajalala.

BANDERILLEROS.

JOSE JIMENEZ (a) Cara-Ancha.—PEDRO RAMIREZ (a) Hojalata.

RAFAEL LOPEZ (a) Mestizo.—ISMAEL MENDOZA (a) El Pollo.

NOMBRE DE LOS TOROS:

1º EL FANTASMA DE LA ESQUINA.

2º EL ANARQUISTA.

3º EL NOVILERO.

4º EL BISTURI.

5º EL RELAMPAGO.

PRECIOS DE ENTRADAS

Palco con 4 entradas $ 10,00. Sillas de preferencia $ 2,00.
Gradas ,, 1,50. Entrada general ,, 80.

Las entradas se venderán desde el Sábado hasta el Domingo á las 12 m. en el lujoso y afamado Almacéa “Bazar Americano” y de las 12 hasta las 4 p. m. en la Boletaría de la Plaza.

NOTA—La Banda de música tocará las piezas más escogidas de su repertorio moderno. La corrida empezará á las 4 p. m. No se admitirá dinero en las puertas ni arrojar al redon del objetos que impidan la lidia.

LA EMPRESA.

SIR DE TORRE E MITOS PANAMA.

The alcalde appeared promptly at four o’clock, and the National band played the National hymn. While the music was playing and the audience cheering, a gate opened and the gaudily dressed matador with his five butterfly banderilleros ran in and bowed before the alcalde. They wore short scarlet cloaks, skintight, emerald knee-breeches and whitish stockings. The alcalde, who was dressed like a real man, was master of ceremonies to give the sign to begin, to give the sign to kill, and to give the sign to stop. The matador, or killer, threw his show cloak up to the box of the alcalde and the banderilleros, or dart-stickers, threw their show cloaks up over the railing at other places to be cared for by admiring spectators, for they used old cloaks to fight with. There were no picadores or mounted lancers.

The music ceased, the alcalde nodded, the bugle-call sounded, the matador pirouetted and smiled, and the green and glittering banderilleros lined up beside the doors of the bull pen. One of the doors was thrown open and the audience waited in suspense. Suddenly out ran a well-formed animal into the light and looked around and blinked in astonishment. His name was “El Fantasma de la Esquina” (The Phantom of the Corner).

The five banderilleros began to flutter about in front of him and flaunt red cloaks at him. This he apparently resented, but did not seem to know which cloak to hook at. Finally he charged at one, and then at another, but paid no attention to the grass-colored banderilleros. Before long one of the latter stepped up and gracefully stuck two ornamental barbed darts into his shoulders. This made the audience cheer and caused “Fantasma de la Esquina” to run about and jump and kick like a calf until the darts fell off. He was then pursued and teased again. But his moral nature was superior to that of his pursuers, for when they spanked him on one side he jumped around and presented the other. He only tried to defend himself against the cloaks, the only things whose evil intentions he seemed to suspect.

“No sirve,” cried the crowd. (No good.)

And so thought the alcalde. The bull was unworthy of death. He didn’t know a red cloak from a green banderillero.

“To his pen, to his pen,” they cried. The alcalde nodded, and the amiable bull was driven back, and was a phantasm of the past.

Another bugle-call and another well-fed bull, “El Anarquista,” ventured out. As he emerged from the door a couple of the barbed darts with gay ribbons on them were stuck into his shoulders. Like the “Fantasma” he bounded and kicked and stuck up and crooked his tail until the darts fell off, at which he seemed greatly pleased, and quieted down for a rest. However, the red cloaks kept bothering him, so he made a short charge at one of them and then ran to one side out of their way. But the cloaks got after him like mosquitoes, so he charged another one and then trotted about aimlessly, as if reasoning that to keep running was the best way to keep from being stung. A couple of darts were again hooked into his shoulders, making him show his capers again until they were shaken off. “El Anarquista” was also sentenced to live and was shooed back to his pen. There was nothing in his name.

The third bull, “El Novillero,” the Greenhorn of the Arena, received a dart in his shoulders as he came out, and bounded to the center of the arena as if looking for trouble. He kicked at the sky and snorted at the ground and charged vigorously at the red cloaks, and sent banderilleros scurrying behind the screens and one of them over the back fence. He also charged one of the screens, producing an exhilarating, reverberating sound as his horns struck it, and winning the applause of the populace. This full charge upon the screen was by far the most exciting thing that had happened.

After receiving some more darts in his shoulders he charged again and ran straight after one of the banderilleros who, however, outran him and thus reached the screen and was safe. This is the first time any of the bulls had really gone after a man. He was the first one whose intelligence was anything like a match for that of his antagonists. But even this bull did not want to hurt any one. His attitude was, “Let me alone or I’ll hook you. Keep your distance or I’ll chase you.”

To me this fellow seemed, taking him for all in all, brave enough to die for the benefit of Panamaniac sport, but the alcalde thought not and the banderilleros tried to drive him back. But he would not go. He was afraid to turn his short tail toward them long enough to go through the door for fear they would stick a pin into him. So, after many futile efforts to drive him they let all of the other bulls into the arena, “El Fantasma,” “El Anarquista,” “El Bisturi” (Lancet) and “El Relampago” (Lightning). “El Novillero,” the cautious, got into the midst of them and they were all driven back into the pen as a herd. It was perfectly disenchanting.

Another bugle call for another bull. After some hesitation “El Bisturi” ran out and received two darts, but he jumped and kicked cow-fashion until he finally also shook them off. Either hides were tough that day or barbs were dull, for not a dart had remained sticking. Then the routine teasing began. He shook his horns at the cloaks and charged them once or twice; then ran away and was kept running all over the arena, frightened and confused at the number of cloaks waving at him from all sides. “El Bisturi” was the greatest runner of them all.

“No sirve, no sirve,” shouted the gods. “Dé nos nuestra plata.” (Give us our money.)

The alcalde smiled, gave the usual signal and “El Bisturi” was driven back to his fodder.

A fifth bugle-call and out came “El Relampago” (The Lightning). He kicked at the clouds, shook off the darts, charged the cloaks, then stopped and shook his horns at them, and after having had his little sport, stood still and wondered what it was all about anyway. They teased him, but he lost interest in the game, although by means of head shakes, bluffs and short charges he chased two men behind the screens.

One of the banderilleros wished to show off and tried to practice a trick of the trade. When the bull made a short charge at his cloak the trickster jerked up the cloak and whirled around so as to present his unprotected back to the horns of the bull. He should have waited until the bull had completed his charge at the cloak and he would have been safe, but he chose the time badly and “El Relampago ran into him. But, the cloak having disappeared, the bull raised his head and merely hit the fellow inadvertently on the shoulders with his nose, instead of the other place with his horns, and thus raised a laugh instead of lifting the man. “El Relampago” was a humorist and a bluffer; but there was no sting to his satire. He was apparently more afraid of injuring what he considered to be one of his masters, than the banderillero was of being hurt by him. He might, instead of stopping like a horse caught by the bridle, have lowered his powerful head again and given the fellow a boost to a warmer place than Panama.

“No sirve. Otro, otro,” cried the crowd. (No good. Another, another.)

But “El Relampago” was the last of the supply of gladiatorial beef, so the alcalde signaled to have it killed.

“Es un asesinado. No lo asesinar.” (It’s an assassination. Do not assassinate him), yelled the crowd. They wanted blood, but they wanted fighting blood, not slaughter-house gore.

But the smiling matador stood before the box of the alcalde with both hands raised to receive the official nod. The alcalde nodded, partly from drowsiness, whereupon the matador turned and danced off quickly, like a martinette, toward the door and received his sword.

The sword was a beautiful one, long and slender, and so bright that it was only visible in the restless hand of the bull-fighter by its flashing. He ran nimbly toward his victim, flourishing the weapon gracefully and ostentatiously, and began confusing the tired, ill-conditioned and unsuspecting bull by swinging a cloak before his eyes. The bull did not move, except slightly with his head as he was being hypnotized. Suddenly there was a flash, and the man stabbed the animal who had been so anxious not to injure him. The deed was done so quickly that Doctor Echeverría, whose sympathies were probably slowing down his mental action, did not see it done.

The bull stood still for a moment, then turned and ran to the center of the arena and, as it happened, faced the alcalde who had ordered his death, and was thus doing his best. He stopped still, lowered his head, began to breathe heavily and lolled out his tongue. He showed great distress and was evidently bleeding internally. He stood that way for a few moments, then walked to the corner near his pen and slowly lay down with his head drooping until his nose nearly touched the ground. He evidently did not understand how this trouble and suffering had come to him.

The matador in the meantime strutted proudly in front of the seats with hands up, smiling and bowing for compliments that were not showered upon him.

Two negro menials went behind the dying bull to put on the finishing touches. The bull lifted up his head and turned it toward them, but not with his former half-defiant, half-playful expression. It was an expression of half alarm and half entreaty, and said as plainly, and much more forcibly, than words could have done, “Why did you hurt me? Don’t come at me again. I’m sick. I did nothing to any of you.” And he lowered his head again, and laid it down on the ground, resigned to die, caring no longer what they did.

“Asesinado,” cried the crowd. (Assassinated.)

“Asesinado,” re-echoed in every breast.

“Dé nos nuestra plata, Señor Alcalde, dé nos nuestra plata.” (Give us our money.)

One of the menials got behind the prostrate bull’s head and began sticking a narrow dagger into the back of his neck, trying to find and sever the spinal cord. After three or four stabs the object was accomplished, for the bull’s body relaxed with sudden paralysis. Thereupon the negro cut the paralyzed animal’s throat wide open, and blood poured out as from a street hydrant. His limbs twitched a little and he relaxed in death—and no one seemed to enjoy it. It was much less satisfactory than a packing-house exhibition.

Then they brought in two little mules in traces, hooked a rope around the dead animal’s horns and tried to drag him out. The mules started and dragged him to the center of the arena, with his nose digging deep into the dirt so as to impede their progress. At the center the mules stopped and gave up the task, upon which two negroes got in front and pulled at their heads, while another negro whipped them vigorously from behind. They started up, took a few more steps forward and gave it up again.

“Whip the front mules,” cried one of the gods, referring to the negroes who were pulling the mules—and the gods laughed.

Finally, by pulling and pushing, the negroes succeeded in getting the dead bull out, one taking hold of the tail and bending it over its back to pull with.

Only one bull had been killed and our desire for gore was supposed to be incomplete. Our expectations were not realized. As no horses were to be gored we did not get much for our money, and had a right to see another bull killed as per program. In Spain a man rides a blindfolded horse in front of the bull and prods him in the forehead, until he disembowels the horse. So another animal was admitted, undoubtedly one of the first ones who had fought. He looked like “El Anarquista” and acted like him, for he could not be made to show fight—he had learned that there was nothing in it for him except a title that was not worth dying for. Hence he was ignominiously driven back, like a tame bossie cow.

Then they let in one whose bloody shoulders bore evidence of the previous encounter with darts and banderilleros. He charged a little, but only in self-defense. This was the third of those who had been introduced, “El Novillero,” the Greenhorn of the Arena, the only one who had shown any spirit. But that was out of him now and he was as unwilling to do any harm to his masters as the others had been.

The alcalde made a signal to stop the farce and the show collapsed. Some got up to go and some sat still; but no one paid any attention to the bull, who stood where he had been left and contemplated the moving crowd with wonder and uncertainty. However, he seemed quite contented to be a spectator.

The doctor and I sat silently in our seats, not being sufficiently excited either to say or do anything, when unexpectedly the most interesting part of the entertainment commenced. A boy nine or ten years old crept over the low fence and sneaked toward the screen in front of the brick wall near which the bull stood, and ran behind it. Then he stepped forth, held out his hand and when the bull looked at him jumped back. Immediately two other boys who were on the fence climbed down and sneaked behind the screen, and also tried to tease the bull, who now placed himself on the defensive. More boys jumped down into the arena and began to leap about near the screens and whistle and halloa at the astonished “Novillero.” As there were now too many little fellows in the enclosure to find room behind the screens, I began to fear for their safety. The noise and antics, however, of so many little devils seemed to confuse the dumb gladiator, and he merely remained on the defensive, making feints at those who ventured near him.

Bye and bye a boy about fifteen years of age procured one of the red cloaks, ran up to the bull and shook it in his face, while he himself stood at one side of it. The bull, who was not afraid of cloaks, made a sort of short bluff charge at it and as he passed the boy almost grazed him, for he was so near the brick wall that there was hardly space for sidestepping. The boy repeated the maneuver and so did the bull, who was becoming trained to the cloak charging exhibition and acquitted himself like a trained dog. This greatly amused the spectators who knew what a simple matter it was to let a bull charge at a cloak with closed eyes, for they always close their eyes just before striking the object of attack. This closing of the eyes is what gives the banderilleros the opportunity of performing apparently perilous antics right in the path of a bull, who also completes his charge when he strikes the cloak, particularly if he considers himself merely on the defensive, as most of them do.

There were now about forty little boys in the arena, and when the boy with the cloak got tired the whole crowd of children rushed toward the animal, who backed up against the wall and stood at bay with head down. Now for some broken bones, I thought.

Little by little the crowd grew bolder and came quite close to him. Giving plenty of warning, he made a short, slow charge at them and sent them scattering and hooting and yelling in all directions. A cow would have hooked them. After a couple of similar bluffs he started on a trot after them, stopped in the middle of the arena, then went back to the wall and again assumed a restful defensive attitude. He was a good bull to have about children. Evidently he did not wish to injure any one, and I think that but for the recollection of the severe treatment he had received from the banderilleros previously, he would have entered into the spirit of the game with the boys and would have enjoyed it. And yet this animal had been brought in to be pricked with barbed darts, teased with red cloaks, stabbed with a sword, to have his spine transfixed and his throat cut—rough treatment for an animal who refused to harm the children. We left the children playing with him.

Doctor Echeverría had not discussed the bull farce at the time, nor did he do so on the way back to the hotel, but while we were at dinner he suddenly said in his gentle, deliberate way:

“Do you know, doctor, there are some things we see in our lives that we can never forget, things that mark off periods in our lives? I feel that this bull-fight is one of those things.”

“You are right,” I said, trying to cheer him. “It was neither a bull-fight nor a bully fight, it was merely a fight between bulls and bullies.”

In the evening the regular Sunday open-air concert was given in the Parque de la Catedrál, in front of Hotel Centrál. We did not go out and promenade, for with the morning excursion to the sabanas to tire us, the funeral to depress us, the bull-fight to haunt us, and our failure to win at the lottery to shame us, we were content to retire early and listen to the music and mosquitoes through the bars.

I lay listening to the well-played music, sometimes loud and martial as for soldiers marching to battle, at other times rhythmic and sensuous as for dancing, or soft and sentimental as for love-making, until I fell asleep to dream. I dreamed of a place where there was no killing for sport, no premature dying from disease, no gambling with lottery tickets, no scale of unearned wages, no rivalry for luxury and no system of imposition upon the weak by the crafty. Such a world there is, but it is in the region of the spirit or in the land of dreams, not in Panama nor in Pan-America.

PART II

The Pan-American
Medical Congress

Part II

CHAPTER I

The Opening of the Congress

Preparations for the Congress—Secretary Calvo—President Icaza’s Hospitality—Arrival of the Western Contingent—Doctors and Drink—Reception by Doctor Amador, President of Panama—The Palacio de Gobierno—Former Presidents and Governors—Mrs. Amador—The President—Revolutions and Their Origin—Opening Exercises of the Congress—Eastern Contingent Absent—The $25,000 Barrel—Speeches by Mr. Wallace, Mr. Robinson, Doctor Gorgas, and Music by the Band—The Panama Railway—Poetry and Prophecy by Punch.

On Monday, January 2nd, the preparations for the Pan-American Medical Congress began in earnest. Dr. José E. Calvo, the secretary, with a smile that never came off, worked like a little Hercules for the congress that almost never came off. Upon his shoulders rested the responsibility of making preparations for the scientific program, and although he was the whole thing, so to speak, he was not even hustling and impatient in his demeanor. His affability was so great and his manners so quiet that he really seemed meek, as all high officials should. High officials so often forget that they are servants.

The president of the congress, Dr. Julio Icaza, had no time to smile. In preparing for the social part of the program he did a prodigious amount of work that will never be appreciated by those who went to be entertained, and found it so easy. Early in the afternoon he arrived from Colón with our Western contingent. He and Señor Obarrio, the treasurer of the Republic of Panama, who had $25,000 to devote to the entertainment of the Medical Congress, had gone to receive as befitted the profession of Panama to receive, and the profession of the republic that had done so much for Panama to be received. The treasurer expressed the visitors through from Colón to Panama free of charge and I am sure that President Icaza gave them the South American pledge of hospitality; for, from first to last, he omitted no essential and neglected no individual. In the evening he invited Doctor Echeverría and me into the barroom and maintained the elevated dignity of his office, his congress and his country by toasting the United States over a bottle of champagne.

Champagne is the only appropriate drink for an international toast. It meets the requirements of courtly etiquette and social aristocracy. It has the favor and patronage of kings and connoisseurs, and is adopted and bruited by the nobility abroad and the capitalists at home. It is the royal nectar, the sparkling sip, the golden prod of pampered palates, the coveted badge of aping mediocrity, the ostentatious smack of upstart opulence. Therefore, let those who can afford aristocratic dissipation and affect the distinction of highborn headaches drink it and feel proud and pampered. But those who are less ambitious can find choicer bouquets in cheaper wines.

Among the fêted and dead-headed travelers I recognized Dr. N. Senn, Sr., Dr. Lucy Waite, Dr. and Mrs. D. R. Brower, and Drs. Jacob Frank, H. P. Newman, A. B. Hale and C. G. Wheeler, all of Chicago; Dr. Chas. W. Hughes of St. Louis; Dr. and Mrs. George W. Crile of Cleveland; Dr. Morrow of San Francisco; Dr. and Mrs. Palmer of Janesville, Wis.; Dr. and Mrs. Edgar P. Cooke of Mendota, Ill.; and Dr. and Mrs. Wilcox of Michigan City, Ind.

Things immediately became lively about the hotel corridor and barroom. A new world greeted the pilgrims from the wild West and frigid North, and they were pleased with it. Extremes and opposites met, and there was ebullition.

Colonel Gorgas, Captain Carter, Major La Garde and other U. S. officers and officials called at the hotel during the evening, and also spent considerable time during the days that followed in lounging around trying to make us feel at home and adding much to the goodfellowship of our visit. But none of these gentlemen drank promiscuous toasts. In fact, I soon learned that the American officers on duty, as well as the Panama physicians, drank but little if any liquor, thus proving the rule that “In Panama one should do as the Panamanians do,” by constituting exceptions. Since hard drinking and hard working are both considered to be injurious habits in the tropics, I wondered at the popularity of the barroom, and concluded that the hard drinkers compromised with their conscience by observing the tropical rules of health concerning hard working. The abstemiousness of the doctors was perhaps on the other hand due to the fact that they indulged in hard work. This abstemiousness was greatly to their credit, since from their irregular and strenuous modes of life, doctors, both in and out of the tropics, are apt to become addicted to the use of sedatives and stimulants. I have noticed with regret that in the United States the red nose and mottled cheek is occasionally seen among elderly physicians, indicating that many resorts had been had to the fancied comfort, the second-hand cheer and spurious stimulation of alcoholics. Statistics assert that three fourths of the French morphine users are physicians. A knowledge of the effects of evil does not always act as a preventive.

At 2 P. M. Tuesday we registered as members of the congress and at 4 P. M. attended a reception tendered us by Doctor Amador, president of the Republic of Panama, at the Palacio de Gobierno, the Panama White House, which is painted blue. The second or upper floor was occupied by him as a residence, and the lower floor by the treasury department of the state on one side and the soldier-police on the other. The palace was a rectangular, two-story corner one covering about fifty by seventy-five feet, built solidly against the adjoining buildings. The entrance led into a tiled patio or court of about twenty-five by thirty feet, at the rear end of which a broad stairway led up to the balcony. The balcony extended all around the court, and served as an outdoor hall or passageway to the rooms. There was no inner hall, but the rooms were connected by doors so that one could pass from one to the other, the same as is usually the case in palaces and art galleries. In fact, the building served both as palace and art gallery, for around the wall of the rectangular reception-room, hung high up near the ceiling in oval frames, were bust portraits in oil of all of the presidents and governors of Panama from about the year 1855 down to date, with their names and the dates of their terms of office printed under them. There were pictures of twenty-five presidents and thirteen governors, if my memory does not deceive me. The first president served about three months, the second one about thirteen, and the others from a few months to two years—only two or three of them longer than that. How they found so many great men in so small a country, willing to give up so short a time from their private business, and risk the lives of their friends in a tit-for-tat with the previous government is a matter of no small wonder. Some of them were patriots and some were politicians, or revolutionists. Revolution is the Spanish for election. In Spanish America the president holds office until the next revolution. If the revolution is unsuccessful he is elected for another term. The governors, of course, ruled longer than the presidents for they were appointed and supported by the Colombian government, which, in turn, was for a long time supported largely by Panama and de Lesseps. President Amador had previously served a term as governor, and probably would not have been selected as president had he not been a good governor. He was a survival of the fittest.

President and Mrs. Amador received us in a very gracious and informal manner, and as there were but few present each of us had an opportunity of conversing freely with them. All conversed with Mrs. Amador, but only two of us understood or made ourselves understood, for she did not understand and speak English as her husband did. However, she was lively and interesting for all that, and was such a good listener that she kept her guests talking English in their very best style, most of them supposing that they were making a favorable impression. She was a handsome woman of medium height and figure, and much younger and more vigorous looking than her husband, who began to practice medicine about fifty years ago and therefore must have been much older than he appeared. He was tall, slim and serious looking. He seemed delicate because slim and quiet, but I believe the slender and delicate looking men work and last better in the tropics than those who carry superfluous flesh which, notwithstanding the pride taken in it by its possessors, is a sign of physical deterioration. He had a dignified and what might be called a matter-of-fact bearing, with nothing suggestive of Spanish or French formality. His appearance was that of a cultured American of quiet temperament who was content to pass unnoticed in a crowd. He was cordial although undemonstrative in his treatment of us, and was anxious to do everything in his power to please us and, in fact, did everything he could except get up a revolution for our entertainment. This he utterly refused to do, although it could have been very easily managed—anybody could have started a revolution. But he was obstinate.

The modus operandi of a revolution was about as follows: Whenever a popular man in one of the outlying districts got tired of work he would throw down the ploughshare and say to his numerous friends, “Come, boys, let’s go and tell the president what to do next. If he doesn’t want to do it next, why we’ll do it. If those little blue-coats in the patio don’t tumble over to our side, we’ll knock them over, and run the government on business and patriotic principles, and put the idle money of the treasury in circulation.”

This was the spirit of revolutions in Panama, this democratic spirit that gave any one who had friends the opportunity at any time to serve them by becoming their president. Every man had a right to be the president except the man who was. Instead of countenancing this spirit by starting new revolutions for Uncle Sam to quell, the president-doctor offered us the champagne of good-fellowship and the cigaret of peace. This is Uncle Sam’s kind of revolution. It is the new brand. The old kind is going out. U.S. is no longer a colonel or a judge; he is a peacemaker.

With U.S. out of the way, however, the Panamanians are great fighters. They are not a bit afraid of killing one another, and the man who is afraid of death and bombs had better not run counter to them when they are out for political sport. But if we (U. S.) carry out our peculiar ideas in Panama and establish permanent peace there, what will become of the warriors and the warlike nation? Will they, and it, not become extinct through change of environment? Will not peace kill more in the end than war? When Panama has become U.S.-ified will not the Panamanians become ossified and inert, and those of U. S. who take their places debilitate and degenerate from digging in canal dirt? Are there not blights as well as blessings of peace? Can the Anglo-Saxons permanently conquer the tropics? Not until they grow black in the face.

In the evening the opening exercises of the congress were held in the theater. We put on our swallowtails and chapeau-claques and sauntered around the corner to the gaily decorated and illuminated theater building to which the band lured us, and where the dignitaries of the republic and Canal Zone awaited us. And they gave us a welcome commensurate with their dignity and the importance of the aims of the congress. Nothing was lacking but numbers to render the event one of historical grandeur. However, if the Congresistas were not numerous, a large audience rendered the defect unnoticeable.

The Eastern contingent was still on the ocean and was missing it all. But they were good sailors and didn’t mind it. They were cracking jokes and breaking bottles over their misfortune, and expecting to get in on the last day, just in time for a “home run.” Easterners are rich. They have plenty of opportunities at home to wear swallowtails and listen to music and drink champagne. But we poor Westerners were having the time of our lives. We and a few Central Americans were having it all. We and the $25,000 barrel were there. Twenty-five of us were to be entertained for four days with it; $250 a day each. Panama, the poorest of republics, is the most hospitable of nations. Her liberality is without precedent. I thought of the Persian proverb, “It does not thunder until the lightning has struck.” The lightning had struck. We were waiting for the thunder.

On the stage were President Amador, President Icaza, Secretary Calvo, Chief Engineer Wallace, Mr. Robinson, Colonel Gorgas, Major La Garde, Captain Carter and the members of the congress.

President Amador opened the congress by welcoming us in the name of the Republic of Panama.

The Panama band of thirty pieces then played the National air.

Mr. Wallace gave a résumé of the work accomplished on the canal. So far it had been necessarily preparatory and consisted mainly of an examination and study of the French work and plans, the clearing away of debris, repair of the old machinery, an examination of the ground, calculation of difficulties, estimation of the working capacity of new machinery, and the determination of the cost and time required to build a canal at sea level, and one with locks. The excavation of the 100,000,000 cubic feet of dirt and stone at the Culebra cut, and its transportation ten miles away where floods could not bring it back, was the dominant feature of the work. It would take nearly three times as long to accomplish this as to construct the other portions of the canal. Mr. Wallace thought that with the improved machinery of to-day the construction of a sea-level canal was feasible. However, a canal with locks could be constructed in a much shorter time and could be deepened while being used, and the sea-level canal could be left as a problem for the next century. This last suggestion about the next century, however, was not made by Mr. Wallace. It is my bright idea.

When the speaker sat down the Panama band again filled the building with stirring strains of music, resting our minds and preparing us for the appreciation of the other addresses. As at the opening of the third Pan-American Medical Congress at Havana three years before, music constituted a liberal part of the program and relieved it of the monotony of continuous speech-making.

Then Mr. Robinson, who had lived in Panama forty years, and during quite a large part of that time had witnessed about a revolution a year, spoke of the primitive conditions before the railroad was built. It was built under great difficulties and with scarcely any money. It was opened Jan. 31, 1855, and had earned $4,000,000 a year, a pretty good percentage on scarcely anything. Its opening constituted the greatest revolution the country had ever experienced.

Apropos of this railroad, Ex-Senator Bill Nye is reported in the Chicago Daily News of April 20, 1905, to have said, “That Panama railway is a cinch. They have one train, which they run over and back daily, and a few cars, the daily operating expense footing up to $39, and one day’s income that I was down there, for freight and passengers, was $9,000. It beats any railroad on the globe for profit, according to its equipment and trackage.” The inference is that about $9,000 was earned daily with a daily outlay of about $39 and an original investment of almost nothing. If the word Panama means good fishing, this story is appropriately told about Panama. Nevertheless the railroad stock must be good, and Uncle Sam owns the stock.

Mr. Robinson stated that the canal had been first planned by an American, but had proved a failure before it was begun. It was then planned by the French and had proved a failure after it was begun. The first American attempt showed how not to begin it, the French attempt showed how not to do it, and it was now for the Americans to show how not to fail.

Mons. de Lesseps was an honest man, but was not a practical engineer. He was getting old at the time he undertook the work, and was in the hands of his friends. His friends, however, couldn’t do the work, so they did him; they wouldn’t work anyway, so they worked him every way. But the world still thinks well of him. He was too good for the world about him.

That the so-called Yankee is the man to build the canal is proved by a poem printed over fifty years ago in the London Punch (1851), of which the following is a quotation:

O’er Panama there was a scheme
Long talked of to pursue a
Short route—which many thought a dream
By Lake Nicaragúa.
John Bull discussed the plan on foot,
With slow irresolution,
While Yankee Doodle went and put
It into execution.

Mr. Robinson claimed that although yellow fever had always existed in Panama it had not been epidemic for over fifty years, and the band played long and loud.

Colonel Gorgas then spoke of the sanitary problems, the most important of which was the killing of a female mosquito. Her death was necessary for the success of the undertaking. This mosquito, whose official name is Stegomyia Fasciata, a second Agrippina, was suspected of infecting people with yellow fever twenty years ago by Dr. Carlos J. Finley. Now she is considered to be the sole cause. It will be difficult to dislodge her from the twenty odd villages with 12,000 inhabitants scattered over a strip of territory nearly fifty miles long by ten wide. But by means of drainage of most of the surface water, the covering of the rest with oil and screens, the protection of the houses and beds by window screens and mosquito bars and the isolation of all new cases, she will not only be drouthed out, but will not be able to get at any diseased or disused individuals to obtain fresh supplies of the poison.

The sanitary work had hardly been begun, yet already the conditions were very much better than they had ever been before. Uncle Sam is accomplishing great things in the world through his reforms, not only in politics but also in hygiene. It is the only way to conquer the tropics.

Secretary Calvo made a few graceful remarks extending the hospitality of the city to the members. He announced that the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, San Domingo, Cuba and Peru had sent delegates.

President Amador then arose as a sign that the exercises were over, and we returned to the hotel to become better acquainted with each other. Afterward we went up to our mosquito bars, enthusiastic over the morrow’s program of scientific work as well as the thunder that was to come, and keep on coming.

CHAPTER II

Breakfast and Dinner on the Same Day

Lively Coffee—Eleven O’clock Breakfast on the Prairies—Appetizers Wasted—Music by the Band—The National Hymn and Its Composer—Laying up for a Rainy Season—The Banquet at Hotel Centrál—Menu Translated—Musical Program—Speeches by Experts; One out of Place and One out of Sight—Mixing Wines—Nightcaps at the Club—Too much Dining.

On Wednesday we awoke fully fledged members of the $25,000 Pan-American Medical Congress, wondering if from a scientific and assimilative point of view we should be able to accomplish all that the occasion called for.

It was lively at coffee. Several doctresses and doctors’ wives were present and they, as well as some of the doctors who had always been accustomed to eating in the morning, had to be instructed in the art of early fasting; and the poor waiters had to be protected from them. After finding out that nothing but unsweetened oranges, water rolls and bitter coffee with milk were allowed, one lady wanted water in her coffee, another wanted cream, another could not take milk in any form, another wanted tea, jelly, etc., etc. To be served bitter coffee without cream, and to be offered nothing to eat but cold dry water rolls and orange juice, was already enough to condemn the hotel and the country. The ladies wished they were home where they could have ham and eggs and fried potatoes, corn muffins and watered coffee weakened with cream. The practice of every-day patriotism should begin with breakfast.

“Well! I can’t talk all morning in congress on an empty stomach,” said one of the lady doctors.

“This is terrible,” sighed a doctor’s wife. “I have to eat to maintain my health and strength.”

“How can you, when you haven’t any health and strength?” said her husband.

“When I eat I believe in having something to chew on,” said a stomach specialist.

“It is terrible to have to fast when you want your breakfast,” sighed the doctor’s wife.

“It’s foolish to want your breakfast when you have to fast,” said her husband. “When you are in Rome, do——”

“If I could only speak Spanish like a man, I’d stir things up here,” said she.

“If I could only talk like a woman, so would I; but I’m only a man,” said he.

Upon this one of the doctors stood up and said that he had quite enjoyed his milk-coffee, water rolls and tongue sandwiches. The ladies looked about the room in search of the sandwiches while the men smiled and left the table, declaring that they also had enjoyed them, particularly the sandwiches.

At eight o’clock cabs drove up and took us to the sabanas over the same route that I had gone on New Year’s day. But it was not a holiday and the natives were not exhibiting themselves, and the drive was not very interesting. We stopped at the Country Club grounds, which were not as attractive as those of Señor Arango’s place that I had visited, but were much larger and had a roomy two-story frame house with a veranda all around it wide enough to serve us as a dining-room. The club superintended the preparations, although the Washington Hotel of Colón had a contract for the provisions. Hence the provisions were plentiful and the service unexceptionable.

The day was pleasant and cool for Panama, and quite endurable in the early morning. We wandered about the grounds for a while examining the tropical trees and telling each other all about them. Then we took photographs of ourselves under trees and talked and watched the preparations for the breakfast on the veranda. Some one asked me to go up and look at the house. I did so but only got as far as the veranda, for I noticed a corner room opening on it that was crowded with fellow congresistas; and after I had succeeded in crowding in saw what would have made Milwaukee and Louisville glad at heart if they had been there. But neither of them were there in the flesh. There was beer, whiskey and White Rock water enough to overcome the drouth of a German regiment or the American army. It seemed a pity that some one from Milwaukee was not there to help us out, for there was a heaping hogshead full of Blue Label beer in quart bottles, and not a bottle was opened that day; there were two hundred bottles of White Rock water, and only fifty were opened; there were a dozen quart bottles of whiskey and only ten were drunk.

CLUB HOUSE ON THE SABANAS

Table Being Set for Our Banquet Breakfast

Santos Jorge’s band of thirty vigorous music-makers was there to give tone and tune to the occasion and did its best to rouse up and intoxicate us with martial and patriotic pieces played at frequent intervals. Mr. Santos Jorge, who was the leader of the band and the almost constant companion of the medical congressmen, was the most prominent musician in the republic. He had been in Panama thirteen years and was the director of the Panama Conservatory of Music. He had been a student of the Madrid Conservatory and took a prize when he graduated. The Himno Istmeno, or Panama National Hymn, is one of his compositions and seemed to compare favorably with the national airs of other countries. His band was made up of whites, negroes and half-breeds, who were all well trained and played well, although a trifle too staccato and fortissimo for our anti-emotional Anglo-Saxon temperament.

As the slight effect of the early coffee and rolls upon our premature emptiness had worn off by ten o’clock, and there were no more trees or houses on the place to explain and explore, and no new subjects for conversation, we hovered around the veranda listening to music and drinking White Rock for an appetite. After having our official picture taken for the benefit of medical history, we sat down to breakfast.

The tables were spread for a hundred and there were only about forty of us, including Panamanians; but as our emptiness grew our courage developed, and each of us laid up enough for a rainy day. The difference between this breakfast, sent by the Washington Hotel from Colón, and the cold bread and bitter coffee breakfast eaten and execrated at the Hotel Centrál a few hours before, was freely expressed in feminine English, which was loud in praise of Washington and in condemnation of Gran Centrál.

We returned to Panama at two o’clock, and occupied our time from three to six with the reading and discussion of monographs on surgery and gynecology, to the great satisfaction and entertainment of the readers and talkers.

THE CONGRESS WAITING FOR LUNCH

At half past seven o’clock we gathered in the large parlor of Hotel Centrál and waited impatiently for the signal to descend to the banquet. We had eaten enough at eleven o’clock to nourish us for two or more days, and were now to eat enough for four or more days, since the menu was twice as elaborate. But we remembered that many stomachs are ruined by dieting, and resolved not to be ruined in that way. I give a translation with this menu for the benefit of those who have no dictionary, and no objection.

| MENU. |
| HORS D’ŒUVRES. |
Olives. | Jambon. | Canapés de Caviar.
| POTAGE. |
| Consommé Sevigné. |
| POISSON. |
| Corbina à la Trouville. |
| ENTRÉES. |
Vol au Vent Richelieu. | | Filét Piqué à la Parisienne.
| PIÈCE FROIDE. |
| Aspic de Foie—Gras Bellevue. |
| LEGUMES. |
| Asperges—Sauce Mousseline. |
| RÔTI. |
Lindonneau à la Broche. | | Salade de Saison.
| DESSERT. |
Glacé Marie Louise. | Petits Fours. | Pièce Montée
| VINS. |
Xeres. | Chateau La Tour Blanche. | Chablis.    Margaux.
Corton. | | Pommard.
| CHAMPAGNES. |
G. H. Mumm. | | Moet et Chandon.
| TRANSLATION OF MENU. |
| EXTRA WORK. |
Olives. | Goodleg. | Sofas of Caviar.
| POTTAGE. |
| Accomplished Sevigné. |
| POISON. |
| Crow à la Trouville. |
| ENTRIES. |
Fly-away Richelieu. | | Quilted Thread à la Paris-woman.
| COLD PIECE. |
| Asp Liver—Fleshy Fineview. |
| LEGGINS. |
| Saucy Aspersions Of Muslin. |
| ROT. |
London Water à la Spit | | Salad of the Seasons.
| DISSERTATION. |
Frosted Marie Louise. | Small Furnaces. | Mounted Play.
| WINES. |
Xerxes. | Catwater of White Tower. | Cat Bliss.
Magpies. | Courting. | Pomade.
| SHAM PAINS. |
G. H. Mummy. | | Mouth and Chindown.

After seeing the bill of fare thus exposed in plain English the reader will realize what an abomination such banquets are, and why the French language is used to express and extenuate them.

The musical program was well selected and well executed, and deserved to be recorded. The musicians played with great spirit and helped the blood to the brain and the word to the tongue much better than the eight brands of wine and fourteen varieties of food.

PROGRAMA.

QUE EJECUTARÁ LA BANDA REPUBLICANA.

Himno Istmeno, | S. Jorge A.
Vals—“Red, White and Blue.” “On American Airs,” | Tovani.
Sinfonia—“Naiade,” | C. Carlini.
“Ramona” Two-Step, | Johnson.
Mazurka—“Feliz Año,” | Jean Oliver.
Vals—“Amoureuse,” | Berger.
Scena e Duetto nell’ Opera Rigoletto, | Verdi.
Two-Step—“Yankee Girl,” | Lampe.
Vals—“Les Patineurs,” | Waldteufel.
Selections from “The Prince of Pilsen,” | Luders.
“American Guard” Quickstep, | Brooks.
“Quartetto di Concerto,” | Perolini.

El Director,

Santos Jorge A.

President Amador and the high functionaries of state were there to encourage us in our efforts to do justice to what was spread before us, and Mrs. Amador and other first ladies of the land were there to inspire the speakers.

Speeches were made by President Icaza, U. S. Minister Barrett, the Panamanian Treasurer, the Minister of War, Doctor Brower, Doctor Senn, and others whose names I did not learn, each in his own language and each one creditable to the speaker and to his country. In order to give a semblance of spontaneity to the speeches, each speaker had a number given him, and when a speaker had spoken and the band had played, the one with the next number would stand up unannounced and speak as if inspired by the preceding speaker and by the occasion. This would have worked charmingly had not the crowd called upon an extra speaker early in the evening. Doctor Brower, whose medieval ancestors had been subject to Spanish rule, and who inherited the temperament of a Spaniard and the physique of two Spaniards, did not understand Spanish. He, therefore, did not know that an extra man without a number had spoken. So he mistook his count and arose a number ahead of his turn, and ahead of the speaker whom he was to have followed, and whose speech was supposed to inspire his. But the doctor was equal to the occasion and spoke with as much eloquence as if his speech was in place, and as if people knew who he was and what he said. His speech elicited much applause, particularly from the highest ladies of the land and others who did not understand English. It was one of the best speeches of the evening, only it was out of place.

But the speech of the evening was that of Minister Barrett, who, I suppose, never was, and never will be, a minister of the gospel; he is in politics. His speech was full of wit, satire and good-natured banter, delivered in a full-chested baritone voice, and made one think that to hear a good after-dinner speech was worth a bad attack of matutinal indigestion.

The serving at table was quite rapid and satisfactory except that some of the many different kinds of wine looked alike, and tasted quite unlike, and the waiters mixed them up as they went around filling partially emptied glasses. The result was disastrous to the nerves of such connoisseurs as we all were. But in consequence of rapid serving and short speeches, the entertainment was over in time for the guests to go over to the clubs in their cocktail coats, and have more refreshments and a few straight nightcaps to settle the blended wines, and thus oblige no one to get into one of those hotel beds until his mind at least was properly made up.

Just what kind of water the Panamanians offered the Panamericans, and just what the Panamericans accepted from the Panamanians, I can not say from observation, but I know that the Panamanians offered generously and that the Panamericans were kindly disposed to do their duty. “New occasions teach new duties,” as Lowell said. Feasts are better than fevers and postprandials preferable to postmortems, was the concensus of the congress.

Having two more banquets to contend with during the following twenty-four hours, as well as a short scientific session to keep awake at, I sneaked off to bed when others went to the clubs, remembering the proverb that “He who eats and runs away may live to eat some other day,” and hoped they were as happy as they thought they were.

During these two days they dined and dinned us without intermission. Eating and drinking to the strains of stirring music occupied most of our time and attention outside of the scientific meetings, and it became necessary to give more thought to the filling of our stomachs at table than to the unloading of our minds upon the congress. Indeed, it was difficult to enjoy the scientific meetings when the energies were so heavily taxed with gastric and gustatory functions. If we had not had so many good times we should have enjoyed the meeting more.

CHAPTER III

Panama Bay and Paramount Barrett

An Excursion to the Island of Toboga—Panama from the Sea—A Picturesque Village—A Delightful Stroll to the Sanatorium—A Banquet Aboard—We Return Refreshed and Invigorated—A Dinner with Minister Barrett—His Travels and Experiences—He Wheedles One Empress and Amuses Another, Beats Admiral Dewey, Refuses a Harem, Shocks a Female Boarding-school, Suppresses a Revolution, Discourses upon Elephants and Has a Joke Played upon Him—At the Ball—Mr. and Mrs. Wallace—Twenty-five Thousand Dollars for Grave Digging.

An excursion and banquet on the bay and a visit to Toboga Island twelve miles out had been planned for us, and we assembled Thursday morning at eight o’clock at the railway station. A short ride by rail took us to the large pier at the Boca or mouth of the canal from which a channel has been dredged through the shallow water out to the Island of Perico. We started from the Boca because the pier at the city of Panama stood on dry land at low tide, and the boats were lying about on their sides much of the time.

President Amador and Mrs. Amador were present, having embraced this opportunity to make the excursion with us and visit their country residence on the Island of Toboga where they were to remain a few days. Colonel Gorgas and Captain Carter and their families, as well as several other Canal Zone and Panamanian government officials, were also among the passengers.

Two boats had been engaged and two banquets prepared, but as half of the congress was still on the Atlantic Ocean, there was no use in reserving a boat and a banquet for it on the Pacific, so we discharged one boat and took all of the provisions with us on the other, thus guarding against a banqueters’ famine.

As we steamed along the shore our old Spanish-looking town of Panama was on our left and the tropical islands on our right. The city, which occupied a rugged projection of land, was a picturesque sight in the intense morning sunlight. The white gleaming walls, dark roofs and deep shadows formed a lively contrast, and were beautifully framed by the blue of the sea below and sky above, and the green of the foliage around them. When opposite the city the boat turned stern toward Panama and passed outward between the islands, some of which were quite large and some very small. The small ones looked like mountain-tops and ridges projecting out of the water, and probably formed parts of a submerged ridge. The sea was smooth and the sea breeze felt refreshing and cool to us in our duck pants and pongee coats, and the two hours of riding to Toboga passed quickly and comfortably. The word comfortably expresses a great deal in the tropics, and means more than the words fun and enjoyment. There is a suggestion of good luck and thankfulness in it.

At Toboga a cluster of tiny red-tiled houses stretched along the shore between the blue sea in front and the higher, densely foliaged land behind, constituting a little fishing village of wondrous beauty as viewed from the boat. Arriving off shore we sent the President and Mrs. Amador to the beach in a row boat, for there was no disfigurement of nature by piers or breakwaters.

Tempted by the beauty and novelty of the foliage, several of us hired one of the row boats that hovered about the steamer, and were soon on dry land. As a fresh cooling sea breeze was blowing we had a pleasant walk of about a quarter of a mile to the sanatorium, a two-story, wooden, rectangular building which was built on posts over the water’s edge and girded by the conventional wide veranda. It is said to have cost about $200,000, and was built for convalescent and debilitated employees of the French Canal Company. In Chicago it could have been built, I should say, for about $2,000, but would have been a ruin long ago. There were good baths and a fine spring near by. With the island-bound bay and cool sea breeze on one side and the luxuriant tropical forest on the other, it was an ideal place for invalids and poets, but a very idle place for well people. It was a place for lounging, dreaming, bathing, smoking, and romantic gazing at the beautiful sky and earth. But active outdoor sports were incompatible with the climate, and the social and business activities that were needful to relieve the monotonous splendor of nature were lacking.

TABOGA ISLAND

We sauntered back to the landing-place picking ripe mangoes and accepting large pineapples from the natives, who would take no pay because we were guests of the president. Altogether the novelty of the little stroll on this most beautiful of tropical islands produced a feeling of enthusiasm and admiration for nature such as we used to experience as boys when we visited new scenes with new eyes. It seemed like something new under the sun.

On our way back to Panama we sat down to a banquet breakfast of the same character as on the sabanas the day before and which, with the sea air, the stroll on the island, and the starvation “coffee-breakfast” in the early morning to perform the function of appetizers, we ate with as much if not more relish.

In the evening Dr. Lucy Waite, Doctor Senn and myself dined with the Pan-American peacemaker, John Barrett, and his secretary in their interesting bachelor apartments near Plaza Centrál. Innumerable pictures and mementoes gathered by Mr. Barrett during his travels and while he was representing the United States at the courts of the mighty, gave the place the interest of a museum of art. We felt that we were fortunate in having him devote an evening to us, for he was one of the busiest men in Panama. But I have learned in my dealings with North Americans that the busiest men nearly always have more time for extra work than those who have not enough to do. A successful, busy man seldom does as others do, and Mr. Barrett did not do as the Panamanians did. The words siesta, gossip and barroom were meaningless to him. He paid no attention to the rule that one should neither drink hard nor work hard in the tropics. His motto was: “Work everywhere, drink nowhere.” He was such a hustler that grass did not grow under his feet nor hair on his head. He had traveled extensively in the Orient. He had visited the five great viceroys of China and had sat upon the dais with the Empress Dowager and had talked her out of 700,000 taels. He arrived at Manila only ten days after Admiral Dewey, and outstayed him. He became personally acquainted with Aguinaldo and thus was more successful than Dewey. The Sultan of Sulu offered him a harem, but he was busy, and had to refuse. While U. S. minister to Siam he accepted, however, an invitation to address the graduating class of the Young Ladies’ Seminary of Bangkok, and told them that they were charming young ladies, but soon would be old cows with their tongues hanging out. He had mistranslated his well-prepared English manuscript and had mispronounced what he did not mistranslate. He was excused on account of his youth and beauty, and because he came from a new country where refined speech and Oriental etiquette were not cultivated. He had also been minister to Argentina, but he did not mention the breaches he had made there. Possibly there was not time enough.

When General Huertas moved on Panama City with an army of 300 men and began to dictate to President Amador, Mr. Barrett advised the president to disband the hostile army. The president, to whom this method of warfare was a novelty, humored the young minister and told them to disband. But they refused. He offered them sixty days’ extra pay, half down and half a week after they had disbanded, but they demanded all of the money before disbanding. They might serve without pay but they would not stop serving without pay. Mr. Barrett advised the president not to heed this demand and made an eloquent speech that brought them to terms. He told them that Uncle Sam was back of President Amador. The soldiers were not accustomed to this kind of warfare and disbanded. After the army had disbanded, their guns were stored in the American warehouse at Ancón and the defense of the city and maintenance of order entrusted to the police, who performed after that the double duty of soldiers and policemen. And now, with no army except one of words, the words of Uncle Sam, Doctor Amador is secure in his position, and at last, “The path of glory leads to the gray,” as the poet Grave wrote.

Mr. Barrett’s delicate private supper was such a relief after the gorgeous banquets that we had been working at, that we did not really require any attention from him. His servant was entertaining and relieving us to our entire satisfaction. But the worry and responsibilities of public office in an unsettled and up-building foster-republic, and the fatigue of constant activity, did not prevent him giving himself up to our unrestrained enjoyment.

He gave us much information about Siam, where he was known as “I am, I am, the great white minister at Siam.” He said that the Sultan of Siam was very intelligent and progressive, that he had many wives but had decreed that his son and successor should have but one, and thus had shown that he possessed the courage of his convictions. Mr. Barrett told us that he had seen Siamese babies smoking cigars six inches long, and described a case in point. He said that elephants were not weaned until they were three years old, were not grown up until they were twenty, and that their working days were from thirty-three to sixty-six years. He said that elephants were afraid of mice, and gave an instance in which a mouse stampeded the royal herd, and it took six weeks to get them back in line again. He told us that the white elephant was pink, that the white was all in the white of his eye.

He and the other foreign diplomats dined once a week at the Emperor’s table. Barrett’s regular seat was beside the Empress-in-chief, and it fell to him to entertain her. In due time ordinary subjects of conversation had been worn threadbare, and the Empress helped him out by appointing a subject at each dinner for conversation at the next, which enabled him to look up his vocabulary and his ideas. On one occasion she asked him to give her some ideas on ladies’ hats. He studied hats in the cyclopedia and dictionary during the few stray moments of quiet and leisure he could find, and came to the dinner feeling competent to address the Empress in her own language on a feminine subject. But while he was discoursing eloquently about hats, and mingling Oriental compliments with incidental wisdom, she suddenly burst out laughing and kept on laughing until she burst some stays. The Emperor then became intensely curious to learn how the White Minister had done it. When finally the lady had gotten through laughing she told him what Mr. Barrett had said, viz.: “Your Majesty wears the most beautiful busts of any empress or queen in the Orient. Their originality of shape and harmony of coloring have charmed many an artist.” Mr. Barrett laughed also, thinking that he had pleased the Empress, but later learned that he had used the word bust in place of hat. However, he had not failed to amuse the Empress, which was quite a distinction.

Apropos of hats, we asked him why he had not married. He said that he preferred to be happy. His political duties already called upon him to do many things that he knew nothing about, but had not yet exacted that. He preferred to be a bachelor, and, as Doctor Waite expressed it, he shone better as a solitaire. He had read somewhere that wives talk in their sleep. He could endure any kind of babel or babble for eighteen hours a day, but not for twenty-four.

He had a little joke played upon him at his dinner that was not premeditated. The waiter was a quick and active man, as I suppose everybody about Mr. Barrett must be, and served us rapidly and well. But he got behind in his work and was hurried in serving the dessert, and had allowed the water glasses to become empty. He rushed out after water and in his haste grabbed a couple of bottles of white wine instead of White Rock water, and filled our tumblers with it. Mr. Barrett was busy talking and did notice the error. We were thirsty, and as the wine was very mild and of excellent quality we gladly drank it like water. I merely remarked that it was the best water I had tasted in Panama. We were soon through eating, and just before arising Mr. Barrett somewhat hastily took a large draught out of his tumbler. He swallowed and cleared his throat and looked at us. But as we said nothing, he said nothing, and he probably does not know to-day that we drank his best wine like plain water.

After giving us another hour of instructive and amusing conversation while sitting on the little Spanish balcony outside of the windows, he accompanied us to the ball. Here were assembled the beauty and talent of Panama. Preparations had been made for a grand dance and an elaborate supper at many small square, and a few tête-à-tête tables. We met nearly everybody we had met before and many that we had not, both Panamanians and North Americans. The naval officers of the Battleship Boston also added éclat to the occasion.

I had pleasant chats with our Chicago friends, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace. They lived in a house owned by the U. S. government not far from Plaza Centrál in the crowded part of the city. But Mr. Wallace had contrived to get out of the crowd to a certain extent by going upwards. He had built a sort of roof garden or open-air story on the top of the house, and had made other improvements that rendered it in comfort, although not in kind, as nearly equal to our North American homes as is consistent with the climate. He was enthusiastic about his canal work and apparently happy, and expecting to keep right on, although a few months’ residence in Panama is a great disillusioner. Mrs. Wallace seemed cheerful and contented in her new surroundings and apparently enjoyed great popularity in society. Whether she would have been able to stand the climate for ten or twelve years without injury to her health, and whether he could have retained sufficient vigor during such a long sweltering period to prosecute the work, must have been a question of some concern to him. It certainly would have shortened the natural course of his life somewhat and was not worth while unless there was something in it for him besides money. Wealth is not his who gets it, but his who enjoys it. He who gives a part and risks all of his life, and sacrifices all of his comfort and enjoyment of life, and does the work, deserves credit and appreciation.

At the time of the reorganization of the Canal Commission the newspapers of the country were talking wildly about a hundred thousand dollar man with power and authority to build the canal and build it quickly. They spoke of finding him, but left Mr. Wallace practically out of consideration. I do not doubt but this gave Mr. Wallace an attack of dyspepsia and that he took a gloomy view of things and saw himself at the end of four or five years with his health shattered by struggles with climatic and Congressional influences and hindrances, and discarded by a forgetful and impatient country. The country had already begun to go back on his contract, and the understanding with him, and I suppose he felt that he had the same right. If it was a question of salary only, why earn it in Panama where red heat and yellow fever were suggestive of future rewards and quick realization? Twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars is a small sum for digging one’s own grave and then not being allowed to occupy it. “To thine own self be true; and ...”

CHAPTER IV

Congress Redivivus

Visit to the Culebra Cut—Culebra Ridge—Trying to Learn of Time of Departure of Boats—Yellow Fever Causes Stampede—The Eastern Contingent Arrives and Visits President Amador—All Is Lively Again—Last Business Meeting that Was not the Last—The Great Eastern Report—Another Meeting Voted—Wishing Well of Panama.

On Friday morning the congresistas were taken to the Culebra cut to learn how a little mountain could be gnawed in two, and show how a big breakfast could be swallowed. As I had heard all there was to be said about the cut and had gone through it slowly and comfortably on an express train, I did not care to hurry through it on foot under a hot sun; for after all there was more to be imagined than seen. As far as the banquet was concerned there was more to be seen than could be eaten, and my stomach needed rest, not exercise. But the others had had more experience and practice in eating than in fasting or dieting, and naturally preferred doing what they could do best.

But I can not pass this part of my narrative without indulging in a digression—not to my stomach, but to the great Culebra[2] Mountain Ridge, Nature’s pre-historic sea serpent, which had successfully stood the test of earthquakes and volcanic action, and had held the impatient oceans apart ever since it arose out of the open sea and divided them. It was there when Columbus discovered the continent, when Cortez fought, Pizarro crossed and Morgan plundered. It witnessed the moving of all the gold that glutted Spain. It laughed at the engineering schemes of explorers. It snored at the pickaxes and shovels of France. It balked the tricks of trusts, the greed of commerce and the changes of time. It is left for U. S. to conquer it. Let U. S. watch and pay. Let U. S. smite the rock and start the water. Let U. S., the only Americans, live up to our pretensions. The eyes of the world are upon U. S. and the great Culebra, the dreaming dragon of Panama snores and sings, “Lass mich schlafen.” Let U. S. be wiser than the serpent. Let U. S. return with interest the gold that was carried away by Spain, and our children shall conquer the great Culebra.

[2] Culebra is the Spanish for serpent.

I executed a little Chinese shopping after “coffee,” and did considerable scouting, trying to learn something about the departure of boats from Colón for New Orleans, but accomplished nothing definite. I had written three days before to W. Andrews & Co., the agents at Colón, and had just received an indefinite answer referring me to the Panama Estrella and Herald, in which the arrivals would be announced. This was quite unsatisfactory, for the time of departure was never known until after the boats had arrived. And as they always departed as soon as they had unloaded, and the consignments to Colón were frequently small, I might not have time to get there after the notice had gone through the delays of being printed at Panama nearly a hundred miles from the port.

I ate my eleven o’clock breakfast in the usual way, and afterward took my siesta in the usual way, and attended the three o’clock scientific meeting in the usual way, feeling much more fit for mental exertion than if I had breakfasted and bibbed in the Culebra cut. Papers on General Medicine were read and our ignorance of life and death scientifically expounded.

Yellow fever rumors and mosquito stories had been circulating since the evening before and the ladies were becoming panicky and were clamoring to return to Colón to be ready to catch the first ship for home. Five fever patients and two suspects had been discovered and taken to the hospital. Hence Doctor and Mrs. Brower, Doctor Waite, Doctor Senn, Doctor and Mrs. Crile, Doctor Newman, Doctor Frank and several others did not hesitate to take the afternoon train for Colón. I had no fear of yellow fever and malaria since mosquitoes had corners on these markets and had not bitten me, or at least had not succeeded in penetrating through my skin. Panama mosquitoes are small and have short stingers. Hence I concluded that it was safe to wait until the next day, in order to see and say goodbye to the fashionable Easterners when they “passed first base on their home run.”

About the time our afternoon session, which was the last of the scientific ones, adjourned, the Eastern delegates arrived under the guidance of the faithful and long-suffering President Icaza, who had been at Colón waiting for them since the evening before. Those of us who had remained accompanied the newly arrived delegates to President Amador’s second complimentary reception, given in order that none of the members might be slighted. Champagne was again passed around and constituted the only refreshment connected with the congress that the Easterners arrived in time to enjoy. And that probably did not come out of the $25,000 barrel. The Westerners had done their duty.

At the hotel all was lively again, for the new arrivals more than replaced those who had departed, both in numbers and animation. The closing business meeting, scheduled for 8 P. M., was called to order at nine in an immense scantily furnished corner room on the second floor over the barroom. It was called the parlor. Ladies and guests were present, and the majority of the men were in evening dress. The army medical officers were dressed in white duck suits trimmed with heavy white braid on the front edges of the jackets, on the shoulders, cuffs and outer seams of the trouser legs. This white, fancy dress suit constituted a tropical uniform of appropriate beauty and purity, and was worn on full-dress occasions by government officials. A formal speech was made by a delegate of each country represented, and finally the Eastern contingent asked the privilege of making a report. The favor was courteously granted.

Doctor MacDonald, of Greater New York, arose and began his report. But the forgotten National band was in attendance below in the patio and, thinking it their turn, started playing, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night,” so that although the doctor’s lips moved vigorously and there was intelligence in his facial expression, no voice could be heard. The secretary’s smile vanished for a moment as he rushed out on the veranda of the patio and waved the well-meaning musical patriots, who had stuck to the congress closer than friends, to silence. When order was restored and smiles smoothed out, the speaker began again.

“Mr. President! Members of the Fourth Pan-American Medical Congress! Physicians of Panama! Conquerors and possessors of this beautiful waist of our glorious continent, of which the United States is the bosom and Brazil the bustle!

“On behalf of those who, like Achilles, have been beaten about by unpropitious winds; on behalf of those who were unfortunate enough to embark in an ancient ship called the Athos, built by Greeks and navigated by dagoes, and renamed by us the Pathos, I wish to give greetings, and submit our report to the North American members, the Middle American members, and the South American member.

“Our classic ship had chosen December 12, 1904, at 11 A. M. to sail from Baltimore, and promised to arrive at Colón the next year in time for us to be here to breakfast with you at 11 A. M. But the ship left one day late. It was bound for a Spanish country where to-morrow is always in time, and where to-morrow never arrives. And the jealous dagoes, not to be outdone by rivals or arrivals on the old Spanish main, added another to-morrow, and another, knowing that they had only doctors to deal with.

“And we, like good Samaritans and average physicians, allowed them to do as they pleased, viz., to start late and put us in a special ship that has not been seaworthy since the birth of Christ, and is good only for doctors who are supposed to delight in resuscitating one another when shipwrecked. And when we awoke on the day we were to arrive for breakfast we, to our surprise, discovered that we were three days from our destination. We consulted, we agreed, but we found no remedy. We had no firearms about our persons, and only firewater at our disposal. We had lances and poisons and corkscrews with us, but could only kill time. And so we allowed the dagoes to live to bring us here.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is our excuse which must, on account of the importance of our mission, go on our records as a matter of history and hysteria, for we had members of both sexes among us.

“But we are here, and desire to thank you for waiting for us, for delaying President Amador’s reception until this afternoon, and the opening exercises until this evening. We are glad to come in time to assist you in honoring and emptying the $25,000 barrel.[3]

[3] The following newspaper clipping deserves to be preserved as a part of the subsequent history of this remarkable boat:

FACE DANGERS OF OCEAN.

VACATION PARTY IN PERIL.

STEAMER ATHOS ARRIVES OFF SCOTLAND LIGHT-SHIP WITH
A TALE OF WOE AND A LOT OF SICK AND
HUNGRY PASSENGERS.

“New York, Aug. 22.—The steamer Athos, seventeen days late, with eight passengers, a cargo of rotten bananas and the bones of half-eaten sharks on board, arrived off Scotland light-ship late last night.

“July 30 the Donald Steamship Company’s steamer Athos left Port Antonio, Jamaica, for New York, a six day’s voyage, with provisions in plenty for this short period. Three hours out of port an eccentric rod on the engine broke, and from that hour until last Sunday, proceeding sometimes only an hour a day under her own steam, the Athos drifted at the mercy of storms, in constant danger of famine, once without drinking water, and receiving supplies from time to time from passing vessels, until the disabled steamer gave up Aug. 20 and signaled the Altai for a tow. This steamer brought the Athos to New York.

“The trouble was in the engine all the time. From July 30 to Aug. 7 one to two breaks daily were recorded. The log chronicles the fact that the daily delay was only thirty minutes long Aug. 5. Two days later the catching of the sharks is recorded. Chinamen on board attempted to eat the sharks, but the meat made them ill and the fish were thrown into the sea. During the next two days boats were lowered from the Athos in search of food fish.

“BANANAS TAINT WATER.”

“Aug. 8 the disabled steamer sighted the steamship Adirondack and signaled ‘All well on board,’ but Aug. 10 the last tank of water was opened and was found to be tainted with the juice of rotting bananas. Some dolphin were caught two days later, and Aug. 13 the incipient famine was relieved by the steamer Montevideo, which supplied provisions.

“Between Aug. 10 and 17 the engine’s shaft was useless, and not only was the steamer forced to drift about while repairs were under way, but for two days of this period a great storm and high seas broke over the helpless steamship. The log meanwhile indicates that more dolphin were caught. Aug. 18 the coupling flange broke and the Athos abandoned the attempt to make New York under her own steam, after twenty days of repeated accidents. It was decided to accept the first offer of a tow. This did not come for two days, during which a second famine was averted by the steamer Vera, which came alongside the Athos, supplying food and drink.

“Worse even than the danger of famine and of thirst, the passengers say, was the odor of the decaying banana cargo.

“At Scotland light-ship last night the tow line broke as a last chapter in her long series of accidents, and the Athos could not repair the broken line in the dark, but anchored for the night, while the Altai brought her passengers to quarantine. To-day tugs were sent out to bring the Athos into port.”

One of the congresistas arose to a point of order and informed the ancient orator of the Athos that we were celebrating the closing session, that the meetings had been held, the contributions discussed and the contents of the barrel dissipated.

MacDonald of Athos looked enquiringly at Icaza of Panama who, understanding neither English nor Athos when spoken so fluently, smiled politely and said nothing, while the band taking advantage of a moment of silence, played enthusiastically and loudly.

“Mr. President,” he began again, when the band had done its duty, “I am glad there is a congresista left to tell the tale. I understand that the previous deliberations of the congress have been carried on by a minority (since the majority were in the Athos, now the Pathos, holding majority meetings) and are therefore void. If they are not void, I move that they be voided, and that the congress begin over again.”

The secretary ventured to say that such was an impossibility since there was nothing left of the $25,000 barrel but a barrel of beer, a hundred bottles of White Rock, a can of evaporated cream, and half a bottle of Mountain Dew.

“Then I withdraw my motion,” said the speaker, “and move that all of the meetings held on the Athos, and afterward on the Pathos, be reported in full to the secretary, and be constituted a part of the transactions of the Fourth Pan-American Medical Congress.

The South American delegate arose and spoke against the motion as being irregular and unparliamentary, and would establish a bad precedent. He wished to place the vote of the entire continent of South America on record against it.

Doctor MacDonald replied, saying that he spoke for North America. He was from Greater New York, in which lived one out of every twenty-one persons of the United States; the others lived out of town. Therefore, in behalf of those he represented, he felt it his duty to insist upon the motion. It would enable the Athosnians or Pathosnians (whichever name might in the future prevail) to hold another closing scientific session mañana for the presentation of the Pathos proceedings, and to leave immediately afterward so as to reach Havana on the last day of the meeting of the Pan-American Public Health Association—and be able to do the same thing there. MacDonald was a born leader, and conducted himself more like a man accustomed to dictate terms at the head of a nation rather than at the head of a bed.

The president listened with rapt attention and, not understanding the New York dialect, smiled politely in approval. Thereupon the secretary put the motion and the Pathosnians, being in the majority, carried it. The secretary explained the situation to the president, who smiled and nodded, but whether ’twas with pleasure, displeasure or in sarcasm, no one knew. A motion to adjourn to meet at 8 A. M. the next morning prevailed. The band then played Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” and the meeting broke up brilliantly.

What transpired at the business meeting the next morning at 8 A. M., I do not know, for I took the train for Colón at seven, fearing to delay any longer lest in the meantime a ship might arrive and set sail with my Chicago friends.

I was treated well by the Panamanians right up to the end, and will always retain a kind feeling for them and their gentlemanly doctors. I hope that Panama will apply for statehood in the United States in the near future. We like the Panamanians, and wish to take them into our family and share with them our prosperity, our affections and their afflictions. Colombians are apt to distrust us and believe that we have captured Panama, but they are mistaken. Panama has captured us and our money, and we forgive them.

CHAPTER V

To See Ourselves as Others See Us

Comparisons—Our Countrymen Refined in Feeling but often Inconsiderate in Conduct—Instances of the Latter Quality—Thoughtlessness and Indifference in Public—Gourmands—Three Varieties—The Young or Simple Gourmand—The Acquired or Temperamental Gourmand—The Specialized or Calculating Gourmand—Dangers of Gourmandizing—Evading the Results.

To be or not to be polite, that is the question.

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous manners,
As the courteous Spaniard does before U. S.,
Or to take up arms against a sea of courtesy
And, by opposing, end it?—To smile—to—bow
No more;—and by such conduct end
The inconvenience and the thousand amenities
Politeness calls for—etc.

During the ride back to Colón on Saturday morning, instead of admiring the scenery I fell into a sort of saturnine revery appropriate to the winding up of a medico-social congress in a country in which hospitality and its time-honored formalities had not yet suffered deterioration. I had associated during my first week in Panama with Spanish Americans and cabmen, and during the second week with my own countrymen and, being in the proper mood, could not help making comparisons. The Spanish Americans and cabmen had been polite and courteous, while the manners of some of the no less worthy North Americans had been as unpolished as their boots.

We have plenty of money as compared with these poor Panamanians, and we know it; everybody knows it. We enjoy spending it freely entertaining and “treating” friends and acquaintances, or in doing them favors, yet we are apt to be exacting and businesslike in our casual relations with strangers whose interests conflict with ours or who do not awaken our sympathies. We generally know what ordinary politeness demands of us, and practise it upon special occasions when we are on our behavior, but we are too natural to cultivate politeness for its own sake. Society manners have for us a savor of insincerity, and we so often neglect to assume its conventional forms that we finally forget to do so and become impolite by habit. In crowds we push ahead, fail to give others their rights and commit all sorts of petty improprieties. In registering at a hotel or buying a ticket or choosing a seat in a public place, we are apt to take advantage of those who politely take their turn, unless we are reminded that we must not trespass, when we may feel ashamed and subside. In Paris one is knocked down or put out for such behavior. Hence, Parisians are polite.

At Hotel Centrál a copy of the daily newspaper was placed in the office for reference in looking up announcements and news items, and was kept carefully folded at one end of the counter, against an elevated case, to show that it was not a stray paper. When the members of the congress arrived it soon disappeared. A Westerner, who probably wished to save his nickel and did not think of anything else, came out of the dining-room after breakfast, saw it, took it up, carried it to the front door, seated himself and read it for twenty minutes. He then put it under him and sat on it. He might at least have returned the paper for which he had not paid to its place. He would still have saved his nickel. Probably he knew better than he did, but had acquired the habit of not stopping to think, and anyway didn’t care Adam.

Another instance of thoughtless conduct was that of a very prominent, distinguished-looking physician whom I found sitting at my table one evening when I came to dinner. He was waiting to be served, and sat there with both elbows on the table, gazing dreamily at the ceiling and nibbling at a crust of bread which he held in both hands. He was probably tired—too tired, or perhaps too indifferent, to remember his table manners. Besides there was no one else at the table, and those about him at the other tables were all strangers; and what did he care for them, so his elbows were rested and his hunger relieved.

American travelers will gladly pay a good price for a good meal or a good room, yet will often sneak out of feeing the waiter or porter, when they know it is the custom to give small fees. It may be wrong to fee waiters, but the Bible says there is a time for everything.

I am sorry to say that a member of the Pan-American Medical Congress was guilty of rudeness toward the lovable, ever-smiling secretary, Doctor Calvo. The member refused to pay the full registration fee of ten dollars in gold because a friend who had been to the congress when it met in Mexico, had told him that he only paid five dollars in gold. Doctor Calvo looked at him with that pleasant, meek smile of his, shrugged his shoulders, showed him the printed rules calling for ten dollars in gold, and said, “Ah! In Mexico! Your friend make it go dere, but I can not make it go here,” and kept on smiling. A North American official would neither have joked nor smiled, nor have exhibited such politeness—a politeness that did credit to the little secretary, and certainly seemed preferable to our sincere but abrupt U. S. method of dealing with such customers. When the objector had left without registering, Doctor Calvo, with a scintillating smile, whispered in my ear the Spanish proverb, “Long journey, long lies.”

This out-and-out, straightforward, honest North American only wanted his rights, and did not stop or care to consider that politeness made it obligatory, and that a finer feeling would have made it a pleasure, to pay even double dues to the half dozen physicians of the smallest and poorest republic on the continent who were straining themselves to entertain a crowd of physicians from the largest and richest republic in the world, and who would be responsible to the printer for the cost of the transactions. He did not refuse, however, to partake of his share of the $25,000 appropriated by their government for our entertainment. A Spaniard under similar circumstances might have felt imposed upon, but he would have smiled and paid—which is politeness. “He who sows courtesy reaps friendship,” is another Spanish proverb. But the honest, home-made doctor could not appreciate foreign manners and methods, and remarked to a friend, on another occasion, that those Spanish fellows were too blamed polite for him. They reminded him of Josh Billings’ geese who lowered their heads while going through a barn doorway eighteen feet high. But that sort of doctors are gradually dying off. Better be such a goose than such a doctor.

I do not know whether I ought to say anything about our American gourmands or not. Gourmands are indigenous to all countries but there are certain species in this country that are more or less characteristic. In foreign nations, as everywhere, the healthy child is always a gourmand, but he is usually taught table manners quite early unless he belongs to the lower classes, where caste immures him, and where polished manners do not form a part of politeness. But in this country so many men whose parents were uncultured or negligent in their parental duties, are successful in obtaining the means with which to live well and travel, that the American gourmand is met everywhere. When you see him eat, you know what he is, no matter where he is or what he eats. His palate and purse are not in the same class. He carries cowboy manners among cultivated people, advertising abroad the American brand of “Liberty, equality and fraternity.”

I will mention three concrete cases: one, of the youthful starved gourmand; another, of the mature, temperamental variety, the gourmet; and another, the deliberate, systematic complete gourmand.

The young gourmand first attracted my attention by his pale complexion, sunken cheeks and spindle legs. I diagnosed consumption at first sight, but was only half right. His sunken uneasy eye suggested starvation. In our conversation which inevitably turned to eating and drinking, he said that he did not see how people could eat too much, and that he never injured himself eating—he did not live to eat. I naturally inferred that he really was in need of a little gourmandizing.

I watched him at dinner. He was the first at table and as I came in he sat there eating olives and flirting with wild-eyed impatience, first with one dish, then with another. When soup was served he stretched out his arm to assist the waiter in putting it down, as if afraid that a drop might be spilled; and immediately bowed down his head over it and “done his level best.” He had finished it by the time the others were fairly started. He then reached for the chow-chow, put a few pieces on his bread-plate, ate them quickly and sat glancing at the hors-d’oeuvres that were out of his reach. He spoke to no one, but sat leaning slightly forward like a panther ready to spring at meat or whatever might come within his reach. Pretty soon he asked his neighbor to pass him the radishes, and put a few on his plate. Finishing these, he asked for the olives. He was very quiet, and perhaps no one but myself, who sat opposite to him, noticed his famine. When the meats began to come, his head went up and his nose was leveled at it like a pointer dog’s. He did not, however, eat very much of the meat or vegetables, but took a large quantity of jelly with it, and afterward more jelly. When the dessert came he helped himself liberally, ate it rapidly and looked at the plates of the others as if he wanted more. While they were eating theirs leisurely and conversing, he handed his plate to the waiter and asked for a clean one. As soon as he got it he reached across the table for an orange and ate it, then an apple, then some raisins. While the others were finishing he sat and watched their plates, first looking longingly at one and then at another, thus tantalizing himself until the last person had left the table. Then as he got up he put an apple and an orange in his pocket. The dinner seemed to be an hour of anxiety and longing rather than an hour of rest and enjoyment. Two hours later he was eating an apple on deck, when his friend, upon noticing it, said, “I declare, you eat about every five minutes in the day.”

I suppose that this stuffed gourmand, this food-consumptive, this sweetmeat starveling, this hors d’oeuvre horror, really thought that he did not eat much because he did not believe in eating much hearty food and that hors d’oeuvres, sweets and fruit did not count heavily as food, and that he could eat them all of the time without injury to himself. It is true that there is not a large proportion of food value in most of our Northern fruits nor much proportionate digestion required, but there is often a great deal of indigestion to them. The amount of stomach space and absorption required to accommodate the constant influx of the mass of fruits and sweetmeats he ate would have enabled him to appropriate enough meat and bread and butter to fill out the sockets in his eyes, the cups in his cheeks and the bows in his thighs, and convert his restive panther expression to that of a sleek, mild-eyed pussy cat.

The mature, temperamental gourmand is a square trotter with a record. He goes straight for the goal and beats the field. He is talkative and good-natured, and not only enjoys good food but enjoys himself and his surroundings while eating. He is greedy from selfishness and a desire to get all there is out of a meal, rather than greedy from any unnatural craving for food. He has the best he can afford. He fees the waiter and gets served first and well, to the disadvantage of others who depend upon the same waiter and always have to wait; he makes waiters of us all. He is frank and open in his conduct and unconscious of inconveniencing others. He is apt to be a good manager, and enjoys his success in getting the best of the meal, and supposes that others are also looking out for number one. He has the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, for we all love the best to eat, and Christian charity should lead us to enjoy seeing others get it.

The third kind, the many-sided, systematic gourmand, has not the wild greed of the panther nor the competitive go of the race-horse; he is more like the domestic animal. He adapts himself to his surroundings, and watches for chances. You may eat with him once and notice nothing, for he knows he eats as he ought not, and may dissemble and restrain himself in company. But among intimate friends or among entire strangers he indulges himself more or less covertly. When he sits down at table he soon begins to help himself to such hors d’oeuvres as are near. He talks a little when not daft after some dish; but if maneuvering for something, answers questions absent-mindedly, although he may start up and answer more in detail after having obtained what he was after. If the soup is good he eats it quickly, and if he can catch the waiter’s eye he may, without attracting attention, get another plate of it. Between courses he keeps himself busy eating of the dainties within reach, or quietly asks his neighbor to pass what is out of his reach. His jaws work constantly and contentedly. If anything is passed he takes some and eats it immediately, and is ready for more, should it be passed back to its place. He is a master of opportunity. If a friend has wine or other delicacy and offers it to him he invariably accepts and takes a liberal quantity, and will usually accept a second time although with a half-expressed excuse for taking it. Or, if his neighbor does not offer it he will delicately hint for it by questioning or by praising it, and when it is offered say, “Just a taste, to see what it is like,” and will help himself liberally. He eats steadily and cares but little for conversation until there is an interval when nothing is being passed or can be reached or be asked for, or until the dessert is served and there is nothing more to be had, when he becomes quite congenial. He is not a suborner of the morals and manners of waiters. He is stingy out of selfishness and smallness, and usually obtains what he wants without recourse to tipping.

Nature is kind to him in not killing him outright. As a rule, she has arranged our systems so that the excesses partly correct themselves. The superfluous food acts mechanically to evacuate itself from the system and may for a time act less harmfully than would a constant moderate excess. But Nature is consistent. Appendicitis and gallstones lie in wait for him; ulceration and cancer of the stomach, diabetes, Bright’s disease, rheumatism, gout, asthma, dropsy, apoplexy, etc., are at the other end of his path, and if one of them does not attack him soon, another will later. The danger of living lies in eating. To die of one of these diseases, or to require an operation for appendicitis or gallstones ought to make the victim ashamed of himself.

I have not wasted words on our ordinary, every-day business gourmand, the one who dines at home or in a boarding-house, and lunches at restaurants, and goes but little into what is called society. He is a hard worker, perhaps a hustler. He is a necessary evil and is tolerable until he eats, which he does as an automobile travels. He takes large bites in rapid succession, fingers his food to help make schedule time and talks with his mouth full, if he is a talker. He is too numerous to mention and too common to require a description.

These may not be representative types, but they represent actual observations and they abound. They may not be peculiarly American but they were Americans. They are somewhat different from European gourmands I have seen. The higher the grade of civilization the less pronounced the types. Each country, in fact, has its own varieties, and they are found everywhere except at the poles. Yet even in the Arctic regions travelers are apt to be great gourmands, although seldom gourmets. They have been known to eat everything in sight, from hair oil to shoe polish, from old shoes to dish cloths, and boast of it afterward—if they survived it.

PART III

BACK

Part III

CHAPTER I

Accommodations at Colón

Arrival—Queer Methods of the Manager of Washington Hotel—Driving People Away—The Astor Hotel and the Swiss Hotel—The Town Noises—Advantages of the Washington Hotel—Reason for the Peculiar Treatment—The Veranda and the Breeze—A Delightful Room to Sleep in—A Healthy Situation at Last—The Shower Bath and “Next”—A Bald-headed Dude in a Three-bedded Room—The Meals—No More Siestas Needed—Gathering Cocoanuts and Throwing Them into the Sea—A Fine Place for Useless Windmills—A Doctor Goes Hunting—A Tropical Shower and a Glorious Morning.

The remainder of the Western contingent, including myself, arrived at Colón about 10 A. M. on Saturday, January 7th, and went to the Washington Hotel. As usual the manager had no vacant beds. A guest arriving in the morning would find him busy with his little grocery store that adjoined the hotel office, and could not ascertain whether any vacancies would occur before night or not. If a guest arrived in the afternoon the places had been given to those who had arrived in the morning. I knew this and waited until the manager could give me more definite information. Doctor and Mrs. Crile and Doctor and Mrs. Palmer, however, were square-dealing and plain-speaking North Americans, and took him at his word when he shrugged his Italian shoulders and said in French that he had no empty beds or rooms. They went to the Astor Hotel where Doctor and Mrs. Brower were stopping and which was located near the center of the town, one short block from the main street and main noises. They said that the food was quite satisfactory after it had been supplemented by the fruit laid in by them and which could always be obtained at the public market. Doctor Brower and his followers seemed to think that in Colón man could live by fruit alone, but many of us felt that we could live by water alone; and thus we were divided into two camps, one near the market and the other near the sea. A few Westerners who had no patience with the foreign diplomacy of the Washington Hotel manager found good rooms and eatable food at the Swiss Hotel, which was located on the main business thoroughfare called Front Street. There it was noisy within as well as without, for the building was a wooden shell that conveyed the indoor sounds from hall to hall and room to room until the last guest was in bed. A merry-go-round with its shrill music marred the early evening, the carousing public disturbed the late evening and the switch engines and freight trains puffed and rattled all night along the main street in a way that suggested insomnia. As the town was only three streets wide and the third street was on stilts over stagnant water and inhabited only by negroes, it was impossible to get far away from the noises and noisomeness. Besides, the sea breeze did not blow through the town as it blew at the Washington, and the rooms were so hot that refreshing sleep was impossible, even when the din subsided for a few moments.

SQUARE IN COLÓN

Showing Tent of the Merry-go-round

The Washington Hotel was, in fact, the only one in which one could live without suffering in health from the heat, noises and inconveniences. It was not a good hotel, but it had three features that rendered it attractive, viz., its name, a bath-house and a sea breeze. The reason for the difficulty in obtaining lodging was that it belonged to the Panama railway and was leased to the manager rent free, with the proviso that he was to be ready at all times to take care of any of the railroad employees that might be sent there. This made it necessary for him to wait until late in the day before filling all of his rooms. His foreign diplomacy that repelled the doctors was dictated by American business methods.

While I was waiting, Doctors Frank and Newman invited me to camp with them for a few hours or days until I could get a bed elsewhere. I accepted, and found them located in the same old three-bedded, one-sided, breezeless bunking-place in the wing of the building, that had driven me away two weeks before. It was a sort of room-like receptacle used for late comers. The third bed was occupied by a stranger, and the place was so full of the belongings of the three occupants that there was not even space for me to sleep on the floor.

After piling my things behind the door and under the table I went to the combination sitting-room, writing-room and barroom. This was about twenty feet square and the only place to sit in unless we except the barber’s den, which was about ten feet square, and the hotel office, which was of the same size but more than half filled by a large flat desk. The hotel conveniences were practically all out-of-doors, and every one sat on the lower veranda, where the steady sea breeze blew as if from a thousand electric fans. The veranda was worth forty parlors and sitting-rooms, and no one complained.

I waited patiently until the hotel-keeper had taken the indispensable siesta, and was rewarded by getting a bed in a double room on the second or upper floor. It had a door and window facing the sea to let the breeze in, and another door and window on the opposite side to let the breeze out, and covered verandas on both sides. By keeping the windows and doors open a veritable gale could be kept blowing through the room and over the beds day and night, thus making sleep not only possible, but delightful and refreshing. It was like being blown into the temperate zone, like going home for the night; and I felt that with this room and the lower veranda I could remain at Colón a month with great benefit to my health, instead of daily losing ground as those who were staying at the other hotels certainly would.

WASHINGTON HOTEL, STREET FRONT, COLÓN

Behind the lower sign a short passageway leading
through to the water front

Although the bath-house was accessible from the ground floor only, we had a shower bath on our floor that was very convenient and very popular. Every morning soon after daybreak and every evening before retiring, the guests put on bath-robes or overcoats, whichever they happened to possess, stole along the veranda to the shower room and had a refreshing time under the shower. The water which was rainwater, was not cold enough to be chilly and could be enjoyed for an almost indefinite time, or until one was obliged to give place to “next.”

As a roommate I had Doctor Morrow of San Francisco, a genial young man of wholesale proportions, who had a ready laugh and knew a thing or two about bubonic plague, leprosy and other interesting curiosities. I was more than satisfied.

But not so Doctor Frank. The stranger who shared the hot air of the one-sided, three-bedded room with him and Doctor Newman, was a bachelor and a dude who filled the place with toilet articles and perfumes, and spent most of his time undressing and dressing. His best and most constant, possibly his only, friend was the looking-glass. Doctor Frank pointed him out to me in the afternoon as he came sauntering along the walk in front of the veranda: an immaculately dressed, red-whiskered, delicate-skinned dandy who had polished the hair off the top of his head and was proud of the incandescent horseshoe fringe that connected his beard with the back of his head. As he sauntered along beaming with self-satisfaction and shining with bare-headed brightness, we gazed at him; and he seemed to think that we were admiring him, and was apparently not displeased. Moral: Be vain and you will be happy.—Vanity had at least made something out of him. Those who have no vanity live in darkness, undiscovered and unappreciated.

I did not feel compelled to take siestas here and preferred to stroll about along the breezy beach hunting shells, or sitting on the veranda smoking and talking with Doctors Waite, Senn, Newman, Frank and Morrow, and with others who came to visit us from the other camp.

While we were there the negroes gathered the cocoanuts and trimmed the cocoa palms that fringed the beach. This was a very interesting sight. A bare-footed negro would put a hatchet in his belt, catch hold of a tree trunk with his hands and rapidly walk up the tree just as a man with spikes fastened on his ankles walks up a telegraph pole, except that he used his bare toes with which to cling to the corrugated bark. A monkey could not have done better, nor looked better. The cocoa palm that grows on the seashore, although tall, is always slender and somewhat inclined, and is thus favorable for climbing. Nevertheless the climber must have the great strength of his remote ancestors in his toes, as well as a steady head, to climb so high in that way. Upon arriving at the top he chops off the branches that bear nuts and then trims the tree by removing those that hang downward. In less than ten minutes he is down and toes up the next tree. When all trees were trimmed, the negroes cut off the end of several of the cocoanuts, drank the milk and threw them into the sea. Most of the nuts, however, were left lying around, for nobody seemed to want them.

PATH LEADING ACROSS THE LAWN FROM
WASHINGTON HOTEL TO THE BEACH

Showing One of the Cocoa Palms that Bordered

What a place this would be for a row of windmills to be kept going by this steady seabreeze! I wondered why I had not seen any windmills in Panama. But the negroes did not seem to have much to do but gather cocoanuts and drink the milk and be fanned by the breezes; and as windmills can neither gather the cocoanuts nor drink the milk they would be quite useless and superfluous. Perhaps as the years pass on the canal will be finished and the 20,000 laborers and the high-salaried employees be discharged and the stores that feed, clothe and saloon them be closed; and it may then become necessary to work the land and develop the industries and build windmills and factories. But that time is a long way off. Millions of dollars must find their way to Panama, and thousands of deaths be died while windmills wait. Neither windmills nor factories are tropical institutions.

On Sunday morning Doctor Morrow stumbled audibly out of bed at five o’clock and went hunting up the river. But he came back safe and sound in the afternoon, without having gotten anything but plenty of exercise and a few pounds of alligator mud upon his clothes. Not being deaf, I was wide awake when he left, and embraced the opportunity to take an early shower bath and thus turned annoyance into pleasure. Returning from the bath I witnessed the shower bath he was caught in, and wondered if it looked as beautiful to him in the swamps as it did to me on the covered veranda. It was a tremendous, I might say terrific, downpour of water. It darkened the heavens and lasted about twenty minutes, administering the greatest Colonic flushing on record. It started suddenly, soon after sunrise, and when it began to pass off the sun shone through it with great brilliancy, developing a heaven full of aurora tints which turned rapidly into deep blue and finally brightened into a glorious, cooled-off, tropical morning.

CHAPTER II

Sunday at Colón.

Colón’s Architecture—Trying to Procure Information about Ships—The Brighton and the Preston—Had to Give It up—The Cab Ride on the Beach—The Canal Zone—Picturesque Christobal—Cool Breezes—Statue of Columbus—The Entrance to the Canal—Railroad Company’s Hospital—The Turtle Trap—The Bath—The Ladies—The Shark—The Retreat—The Embarrassment—Uncertainty about the Departure of Boats—Crowding a Small Boat—Mistakes and Discomforts—An Unsatisfactory Explanation—Rozhestzensky—Laying in Private Provisions—Off Late—Rough Weather—Bocas del Toro—Almirante Bay and Chiriqui Lagoon—Bocas del Drago and Bocas del Tigre—Proposed Naval Station—The Town and Its Doctors—Plenty of Fruit.

Colón has one piece of architecture, viz., a church, a more or less Protestant one, the Church of England. There is nothing else like it in Colón, which is a city of saloons, not of churches. It stands alone and lonely on the seashore across the street from the Washington Hotel annex or wing, and is thus as far away from the bad people in the town as possible. The congregation is made up largely of Jamaica negroes. I do not remember seeing any other churches in this town, nor any church ruins, although ecclesiastically considered, the whole town was a ruin.

Sunday morning I called at the United Fruit Company’s agency and learned that the Brighton, a re-christened Norwegian steamship with a Norwegian crew, and said to be the smallest boat on the route, would sail Monday; and that the Preston, a larger boat, would arrive Monday and probably sail Tuesday or Wednesday according to the amount of unloading to be done. I went to the wharf and looked at the Brighton and gave her up. To be shaken up in her for a week, like shot in a bottle, would be almost sure death. She had one small room amidships to be used as a combination salon, dining-room and smoking-room, and eight little cabins near the stern, which opened into a narrow passageway about thirty feet long and three feet wide. The cabins had no place for steamer trunks under the berths, and hardly room enough for two persons to stand side by side on the floor. They were originally intended for the officers of the crew, inasmuch as the ship was not built for passenger service. The space over them was used as a passenger deck, and was about thirty feet by fifteen between the life boats, with the center taken up by a skylight. As the deck was uncovered and unprotected at the sides, there was no place on the boat for the passengers to go to in bad weather except to bed, or to the little dining-room which was pretty well filled by the table. So I returned to the hotel, having gained nothing but an appetite. I would have to wait for the Preston.

CHRIST CHURCH AT COLÓN

Seen from a Corner of the Hotel

After the eleven o’clock breakfast Doctors Frank, Newman and I sat on the veranda and gazed at the sea and smoked and talked small talk, and thus managed to kill time and keep cool until three o’clock. Then we hired a Jamaica negro, with a cab that had seen better days, to drive us everywhere, viz., to the mouth of the canal and then along the seashore in the opposite direction as far as the road went, where we were to have a salt-water swim.

We drove through the main street to the Canal Zone at the other end of the town. Here the beach curved out seaward to form a projecting area or tongue of land shaded by a grove of tall cocoa palms which gave it a very picturesque appearance. As we entered the grove we saw large and comparatively elegant-looking frame houses and a Catholic church, all of which Mons. De Lesseps had built, at great expense, for himself and his high-salaried officials and their employees. The settlement was called Christobal, after the discoverer of America, and occupied a most charming and salubrious spot. Like the beach of the Washington Hotel, it was fanned by the prevailing winds and, like it, was apparently much more breezy and much cooler than the intervening town. We drove through the palm grove, past the well-preserved houses, to the other side of the little peninsula where the canal opened into Limón Bay. A statue of Columbus that had been presented to the country by the Empress Eugenie twenty years before, stood on a clear plat of ground near the shore in the attitude of watching or guarding the boca or mouth of the canal. We left the cab and sauntered a short distance along the shore of the bay to the boca, finding the way strewn with fragments of crockery, tin cans and debris of all kinds, and obstructed by old car trucks and parts of machinery. The canal here looked like a river or bayou extending through flat, alluvial land. The bay is now a part of the open sea, but when the United States has invested a few hundred thousand dollars in a breakwater it will be converted into a magnificent, protected harbor.

We returned to the Washington Hotel and had a cool, pleasant drive for a couple of miles along the shores in the opposite direction. A drive on a tropical beach is always a treat. Although the road may not be well kept it is usually hard and dry, the sea air exhilarating and the luxuriant foliage alluring. We passed the Railroad Company’s Hospital, a small frame building standing on posts over the water’s edge, which was said to accommodate over one hundred patients, but did not look that capacious. I was told that it was poorly supplied with materials and facilities, although this difficulty has, of course, been remedied now that Uncle Sam has finally become interested in tropical hygiene. After seeing the surviving evidence of the French sanitary work as shown in the Ancón Hospital, the sanitarium on Toboga Island and the construction of Christobal, it occurred to me that the French had given much attention to sanitation as it was then understood, and had spent much money upon it, while the United States was not even providing sufficient medicine. Our legislators were waiting for more deaths and the application of the big stick before conferring independent authority upon the doctors. The American citizen is intelligent in all things but health and disease. But he makes up in opinion what he lacks in knowledge. It is for him to decide when doctors are right and when wrong, and which are right and which wrong.

DE LESSEPS PALACE AT CHRISTOBAL

The road terminated abruptly at the entrance of a small shallow bay. Here we alighted and walked a few hundred yards along the edge of tangled woods to a little palm grove where the shore made an abrupt turn. About a hundred feet out from the water’s edge a circular empalement twenty feet in diameter had been constructed for catching turtles. Between the turtle trap and shore was the bathing place selected by the negro driver, and as no one was about we were soon frolicking in the water. The bottom was sandy and the place left nothing to be desired as a place to get wet in except a little more water. It was waist deep only. We did not venture far beyond the empaling for fear of sharks and because the water did not get much deeper, but managed nevertheless to obtain considerable refreshing exercise and enjoyment.

When we at last started for shore we saw two ladies and a gentleman standing in the palm grove with their backs toward us and looking up toward the tops of the trees. They had evidently been stopped by us and did not know what to do or where to look. As the road led along the edge of the water they could not get by with dignity and we could not get out with dignity; and they did not seem to know that our dressing quarters were within a few feet of their backs, where we could not dress with dignity.

Upon looking around to see about moving a little farther away from shore in order to allow them to pass, we saw a slight commotion of the water and a speck of black disappear from the surface.

“Not that way,” said Frank, “I believe that was a shark. And the ripples seem nearer.”

We stared at each other as nonchalantly as possible, expecting at any moment to lose a leg.

“Well, which is it, boys,” I said, “the ladies or the sharks?”

“The ladies for me,” said Frank, who was fat and juicy and would have been the first choice of either a shark or a lady.

“I don’t care,” said Newman, who looked like a tough morsel for either of them, and who was lying.

I said that I would risk the shark. I was born bashful and couldn’t help it. I could bear to be eaten by sharks, but I couldn’t bear to be looked at by ladies. Privately, I knew that sharks were not after dry bones, particularly when meat like Doctor Frank was to be had.

Doctor Frank, who preferred being eaten by ladies to being looked at by sharks, hurried out and Newman, who began to quake, followed him. They were not seen by the strangers, nor would I have been had I had courage enough to follow them out. They then threw my trousers out to me, and began to dress—and told me to do likewise. I remained in the water until I heard a splash behind me and a cry of “shark” from Frank. I hesitated no longer, but screened myself with my trousers and started out of the water. The noise also caused the ladies to look around just as I was emerging. However, I emerged. I had grown brave. So the ladies had to turn around again and gaze at the tops of the palm trees. I thought I detected a faint smile on their faces, and felt ashamed of them. After emerging I learned that Doctor Frank had made the splash by throwing a stone. The negro cabman said that the first rippling of the water was caused by a turtle. Thus does fear make cowards of us all.

MONUMENT TO COLUMBUS, CHRISTOBAL

When I was no longer in the way to frighten them, the ladies, who proved to be old girls with calico complexions, passed on and went into a little gate that was overgrown with vines, and which had not been noticed by us. I suppose they lived there, although I could see nothing but trees about and beyond the gate behind which they disappeared. If they had only told us that they would disappear there we would have allowed them to pass.

We drove back along the shore thinking that Colón was a poor place for surf bathing on account of the sharks and the ladies.

Monday morning I went to Andrews and Company and learned that the Preston had not been heard from, but was expected during the day. They were, however, uncertain and indifferent as to whether it would require a half day, or one or two days to unload what was intended for this port. Hence I became panicky out of fear that I might lose several days waiting if I did not take the little steamship Brighton. Besides, most of the Chicago members were going to take it, and I did not relish being left behind by them. Doctor Senn, who was a good sailor and had been in some of the worst as well as best boats in the world, praised its arrangements immoderately and advised us Chicagoans all to take it and have a nice, cosy, comfortable time together. We would have plenty of room because the crowd would of course wait for the Preston. He allowed his enthusiasm to sway him, and to prove his sincerity engaged the best room on the boat for Doctor Waite, and the second best for himself. Doctor and Mrs. Brower were willing to go through yellow flames to get away quickly from yellow fever. They chose the captain’s room, which was next to the dining-room, so that they would not have to walk half of the length of the ship through rain and dashing spray to their meals, as the rest of us would have to do in bad weather. Doctor Frank also was willing to take chances with fire or water, so it brought him quickly back to Anglo-Saxon civilization. Doctor Newman, who came to the congress for his health, felt so well and contented that he did not care what he did, provided he did it. He only cared to be away from home-sick-home and with the crowd and, in order to be provided for in any event, he went down to the boat, hunted up the Norwegian steward and engaged Doctor Waite’s room for himself and Doctor Frank, not knowing what he did.

I finally made up my mind to cast my lot with my Chicago friends and accept the week’s torture on the Brighton, trusting to the presence of many doctors to keep me alive should I become a sick and helpless stowaway in one of those rudimentary cabins near the rudder. I therefore went to the boat again to see and fee the Viking steward, who was as stupid as responsibility and limited authority could make a fjordman, and engaged as large a part of a room as he would let me have. I had to take a berth in one of two rooms that were left, and which were farthest back, and hoped that no one else would consent to be put back there. But a panic seldom takes one person alone, and when we got off every berth was filled and all officers turned out of their rooms except the purser, who shared his with Doctor Hughes of St. Louis They all tried to get ahead of the crowd, but the crowd was too smart for them.

Doctor Senn and Doctor Waite had not only each engaged a separate and entire stateroom of the steward on Sunday, but had reported their choice to Andrews and Company in order to be sure of them. But the steward, who also became panicky at the sight of so many doctors and doctors’ fees, gave Doctor Waite’s room to Doctors Newman and Frank, and assigned Doctor Waite to Doctor Senn’s room—he didn’t know the difference between a man and woman, except in Norway. So when Doctor Senn came to the boat with his trunks and bags and guns, he found the two doctors comfortably settled in Doctor Waite’s room, and one of them going to bed for a five-days’ nap. Doctor Senn’s gun was loaded for alligators, but he didn’t shoot. It was his custom to think twice before shooting at human beings, and upon second thought he was in doubt whether to shoot the doctors, the steward or the United Fruit Company. Finally he said, “They treat us as if we were a load of bananas. I will go to the office and find out about it.”

Upon arriving at the office he walked to the clerk’s window and said abruptly:

“Do I look like a banana?”

The clerk raised his iron-dyed head, peered over his spectacles in a deliberate way and looked at Doctor Senn’s yellowish hunting coat and well-rounded figure.

“Well, I hadn’t noticed it. I’m a bit short sighted.”

“I thought so,” said the doctor. “Did I not apply for a stateroom for Doctor Waite and another one for myself, and did you not take the money for them?”

“I dare say you did, sir, and that I did. I always do that. The steward does the rest.”

“Then why did you not tell me that the steward transacts your business?”

“You didn’t ask me, sir. I gave your names to the steward.”

“As a sort of vocal invoice, I suppose. But Doctor Waite was put in my room and that put me out.”

“And without your having any voice in the matter, I suppose. But don’t be put out about it, doctor. It was all a mistake. The steward had your names for the rooms, but he probably thought that the words, ‘for Doctor Waite,’ meant ‘wait for doctor.’ Funny mistake, wasn’t it? He waited, and gave it to the first doctor. Doctor Waite waited too long, you know.”

The clerk was kept in a cage, like a bank teller, and knew that he was safe, for Doctor Senn had not brought his gun and had no training in profanity, and was thus at a disadvantage. He finally recovered sufficiently to say:

“Why don’t you have a time for the arrival and departure of your boats?”

“Because we can’t make time wait upon their arrival and departure.”

“But you could place the time for departure so far in the future that they could start on time even when they were behind time. Then all there would be to do would be not to be ahead of time—and one could be on hand on time.”

“On time? Ahead of time? Time in Panama? You’re joking, you know, and don’t know it. You Americans can undoubtedly attend to your own business, and ought to, but you can’t do business here.”

“Yes,” said Doctor Senn, “I have found that out. I suppose I must talk to the steward. Perhaps I can make him understand that I am not a banana.”

“Yes, doctor, talk to the steward. Perhaps he’ll understand.”

Whereupon the clerk’s thin lips closed like a clam shell, and he would neither talk back nor come out of his cage and fight; and Doctor Senn turned away murmuring that it was a sad thing that old heads could not be put on young shoulders, but it was much sadder when they could not be put on old shoulders.

Thus the organizer of the cosy little sea-party was an outcast. It was left for me to take pity on him and share my covey hole with him. He was grateful to have a place to lay his head.

However, after much to and fro running around and about the stupid steward, like ants about a lump of sugar, we all succeeded in our one desire, viz., in becoming stowaways in a little tub that was to be delivered to the mercy of the deep, and take great chances, like Rozhestzensky’s sacrificed fleet. I could not but feel that we had about the same kind of starting out chances as had the unpronounceable admiral with thirteen letters in his name, who should have left authority for others to exercise and mistakes for others to carry out, like Andrews and Company of United Fruit Company fame. Then he would not have been sent to a certain death at sea, and be sentenced to an uncertain death on land for having been sent to sea.

When we were nearly ready to start, I met the captain and asked him if he had plenty of mineral water, wine, beer, Scotch whiskey and stomach bitters on hand, for there were many Chicago doctors aboard. He said he believed he had none of these in his medicine chest, for he had not expected to have more than a passenger or two, and the crew was quite healthy and did not require any medicines. I then sought Doctor Senn, our party leader, and told him of the fate that threatened the ship. He was speechless for a moment but rallied quickly and said:

“We must have these things. Let us go and buy some. Let us go immediately. One can live longer without food than without drink.”

So we hunted up a wholesale grocery and liquor store, and each bought a bottle of sherry, a bottle of Black and White and half a dozen bottles of claret. We met the captain in the store also buying MEDICINES. But we were afterward more pleased that we had put in our own stock, for there are two kinds of ship wine, one good enough to go down, the other good enough to come up. He had bought what he considered good enough to come up.

We finally cast loose at noon, one hour late, and did not get our eleven o’clock breakfast until half past two. To wait until half past two, after having trotted about almost constantly since seven, on a cup of coffee and a roll, perspiring profusely and worrying intensely for fear we might not get stowed away at all, and then suffering a shock at the sudden discovery at the last moment of the neglected state of the commissary department of the ship, was an appropriate initiation to what was in store for us. There were about eighteen of us to be fed by a steward who was not accustomed to serve more than one or two who usually served themselves; and the question was, how many of us would get anything at all? The ladies were undoubtedly “in for it,” in more ways than one. No boudoir comforts, hair dressers, manicures and ladies’ maids for them.

We all, however, got our breakfast down in time to have it churned by the trade-wind, which was in the ship’s quarter and which played with our little boat like a gentle, purring cat with a captive mouse. Doctor Senn and I carried iced sherry to the ladies who began to say, “Oh my!” and “Oh dear!” and “Goodness! I wish I were home,” “I’m so sick,” etc.

Pretty soon I began to sympathize with them and took a taste of the sherry myself, and lay down on my steamer chair and left the ladies to the care of Doctor Senn.

At six o’clock most of the gentlemen tasted of the dinner, and most of the ladies didn’t. But we all got to bed early and without any discoverable mishaps, consoled by the knowledge that soon after daybreak we would be in the sheltered waters of Bocas del Toro. Our little bunks had boards, plain boards, for springs, with thick comforters for mattresses and straw bags for pillows—genuine sailor luxuries. But we were glad to stay in them and on them. I wondered how it must seem to a person who had become accustomed to such a bed by years of service, to put up at a first-class hotel. I suppose that he would feel insecure and would wake up every few minutes in the night with a sensation of falling through space, and would have to feel of the soft mattress to be sure that something solid was under him.

In the morning the sea was quite rough, but I managed to get on deck just as we steamed triumphantly between the foamy reefs into the tranquil bay. Beautiful Bocas del Toro! Welcome Almirante Bay! Islas Tropicales! Haven and heaven of the seasick and suffering!

The large bay was enclosed by luxuriant tropical islands with their white fringes of foamy reefs, and the town looked bright and beautiful beneath the tropical sun and deep blue sky. Numerous little naphtha launches darted about in all directions giving a sense of festivity to the scene. At last we had found something worth coming to see. The tropics were out in all their splendor, and we forgot the other things. Had we taken the Preston we should not have seen Bocas del Toro, for her loading place was Port Limón, which I did not care to see again. Limón had fine piers, a beautiful garden and a new hospital, a trinity of artificial attractions whose origin and pedigree went back to bananas, but here were the beauties of Nature as they came from the hand of their creator.

Bocas del Toro is the chief seaport town of Panama after Colón and the City of Panama, if not before, and is the center of the banana shipping business of the republic. It is situated in the Almirante Bay, which is the northern end of the Chiriqui Lagoon, but is completely separated from the main lagoon by islands and reefs between which small boats only can pass. The channel leading into the bay is called Bocas del Tigre (Tiger’s Mouths), and the channel into the main lagoon, fifteen miles farther south, is called Bocas del Drago (Dragon’s Mouths), appropriate names for these wild and dangerous passages as we were soon to learn by experience. The lagoon between these passages is shut off from the sea by a row of islands and reefs placed closely together and surrounded and connected with breakers that reveal the hidden rocks and shallows. Beyond and south of these reefs and Bocas, the lagoon extends into the mainland, forming a body of water forty-five miles long by fifteen wide. It is a magnificent bay and is, I believe, to have a U. S. naval station, for which it is an ideal location.

Bocas del Toro is nearly two miles from the entrance of the bay on the narrow end of an inner coral island four miles wide by nine miles long. Although it appeared to us to be situated on the main land, a ride around the point of the island revealed miles of water behind it. The town had the usual shape of the tropical coast towns in Central America, viz., a narrow strip of houses extending for about a mile along the thickly wooded shore. There was no need of piers here for the bananas were brought in launches from the Chanquinola River, which ran through the company’s plantation, and were loaded directly on the ships. On account of the protection afforded by the islands and the consequent tranquillity of the water in the bay, this presented no more difficulty than loading from a pier and meant one less handling. It was the plying back and forth of these launches that gave the animated appearance we noted when we arrived and made the place look at first glance like a fashionable watering place with many pleasure boats.

The company sent out a launch and took us ashore, landing us on a little platform near their office building and warehouses. This narrow end of the island, all but the main street, is under water at high tide and out of water at low tide, the difference between high and low tide being twenty-three inches. When we landed it was low tide. Excepting on the main street, the sidewalks and street crossings were built two feet above the ground, and in the slimy side streets we saw innumerable crab holes about which little sea crabs were crawling so thickly that one could not have put a foot on the ground without stepping on two or three of them. They easily had the right of way except on the raised sidewalks. The main street, which was next to the sea, was high and dry however, and had no elevated sidewalks crossing it like the others, and thus was adapted to the passage of vehicles. But I saw neither donkey nor cart and concluded that the highness and dryness of the main street was a luxury rather than a necessity.

COMBINATION STORE AND RESIDENCE AT
BOCAS DEL TORO

Dr. R. E. Swigart, a young man from Tiffin, Ohio, who had been located here for several years, told us that the overflowing of the tide was a benefit to the town. The salt-water at high tide disinfected and washed away the filth of the negroes who threw their dirt and garbage anywhere and everywhere, and would have rendered the place unsanitary in a short time. He said that they could not be made cleanly in their habits. The authorities had planned to fill in the whole marshy part of the town to a level above high water, and to cut a channel across the narrow end of the island occupied by the town, and thus drain the ground. The place was, however, very healthy as it was, for there was but little sickness excepting malaria, and the doctor thought that, when filled in, the place would become dirty and unhealthy, notwithstanding the drainage. He said that they neither had yellow fever nor typhoid fever.

The town itself is small, having only about 1,000 inhabitants, but there are 30,000 people in the surrounding country for whom it is the center of supplies. The United Fruit Company’s warehouses are capable of supplying a large population with general merchandise, but quite a large proportion of the houses are small groceries and fruit stores and provide the people with ordinary comestibles.

The sea breeze enabled us, without great discomfort, to walk the entire length of the town and a short distance beyond along the beach at the edge of a dense forest, where all that was lacking were a few monkeys in the trees to transport us into the real, complete tropics of our juvenile books of travel. On our way back we bought the largest size ripe pineapples for ten cents each, and oranges and limes for almost nothing. Doctor Brower, who did not believe in being seasick on an empty stomach, bought a dozen pineapples, so that he could be seasick all he wanted to.

The other two local physicians (besides Doctor Swigart) were Dr. R. H. Wilson from Sterling, Mo., and Doctor Osterhout from Texas. The latter, a graduate of Jefferson, had been in Central America since 1888, and in Bocas del Toro since 1895. He had charge of the Marine Hospital. The doctors devoted their whole time to our entertainment and organized two of the most delightful and unique excursions that we had yet taken, affording new experiences to all of us.

The Fruit Company returned us aboard the Brighton with two dozen pineapples (one dozen for Doctor Brower and one dozen for other members of the party), several dozen fresh juicy oranges and many limes. The oranges we get in Chicago taste like chips in comparison with these juicy ones, ripened on the trees and eaten soon after being picked.

We found breakfast ready on the ship and, being hungry as the result of our exercise, we applied ourselves to it with all of our energies and dispatched it with the celerity and success of true sailors, filling up with solid food and packing it down with juicy fruit.

CHAPTER III

After Bananas and Alligators

A Rough Ride—Wild Scenery along the Reefs—A Devoted Wife—A Recommendation for the Prevention of Divorces—A Guide with the Sleeping Sickness—An Exhilarating Ride on a Platform Car—The Big Banana Plantation—About Bananas and Plantains—Jamaica Negroes as Laborers—Beautiful Scenery—The Great Ambuscade of the Little Revolution—Loading at Night—On a Reef all Night—Danger, Modern and Ancient—Saved by Accident Insurance—Return to Almirante Bay—The Hunt Organized—An Excursion to the Chanquinola River through the Canal—A Twelve-mile Plantation—Tropical Birds—The Toucan, the Greatest of Degenerates—Scratching the Alligator’s Back—The Reason why I Am not an Alligator Hunter—How the Trip to the Tropics Was Saved from Being a Failure—Work in the North and Loafing in the Tropics—Canal Officials and Soldiers.

The S. S. Brighton had to go into the Chiriqui Lagoon to gather fruit from two large banana plantations, and then return to Bocas del Toro to complete its load, thus making an excursion which promised us not a little entertainment. As our ship was too large to pass through the small channels between the islands that separated Almirante Bay from the main lagoon, it would have to enter through Bocas del Tigre and thus be four hours on the way, three of them in the open sea.

We started a little before noon taking with us Doctors Swigart and Osterhout, who did not hesitate to go, although they knew that we were to return by night and that there were no vacant bunks in the ship. Mr. Reid, a civil engineer who had to make a business trip into the interior, and his wife, who had to see him off, were acquainted with one of the members of our party, and added to our entertainment by engaging passage in our boat. They had lived long in the land of the banana, and thus knew everything we wished to know. Doctor Osterhout took his telescope and delighted himself and us with excellent views of the islands and breakers which were never out of sight. Although he had lived in the neighborhood ten years, he seemed even more enthusiastic over the scenery than we were. At least he was enthusiastic until we got into the open sea, when he suddenly lost interest; he said that the sea air always made him sleepy, and forthwith rolled himself up in a blanket and lay on a bench with his back toward us, and stayed there until we had passed through the Tiger’s Mouths into the quiet waters of the lagoon.

It was a pretty sight to steam along in full view of the islands thickly covered with tropical trees and bordered by submerged reefs which converted the sea for half a mile out into curling and splashing foam. In places the waves struck the abrupt shores and leaped twenty or thirty feet into the air to descend in snowy showers. The telescope brought the shore quite near and enabled us to realize the intensity, activity and grandeur of the perpetual dashing, receding, returning and shattering of the waves on the shore, and the immensity of the fields of seething foam. This wild island scenery was entirely different from the peaceful color crowded views that we had enjoyed on our little excursion along the islands of Panama Bay to Toboga. One afforded a peaceful, sensuous sort of enjoyment; the other filled us with wonder and admiration.

After having been out in the open sea for a short time, the ladies became uncomfortably quiet, and likewise Doctor Frank, who could always be relied upon. The rest of us found it helpful from time to time to gaze steadfastly at the sky, like saints in Madonna pictures; or shut our eyes like opossums in trouble; or lean back and draw deep breaths, like prize fighters in distress; or talk ourselves into a state of tolerance to woe, like stoics in books, in order to pull through. But we managed, nevertheless, to derive some benefit from the fifteen miles of continuous animated panorama, and at last arrived at Bocas del Tigre. We entered the lagoon and, presto, wind and waves and woes were gone, and we were alive and well again, including Doctor Osterhout. Mrs. Reid had been, as was her custom, very sick, yet she had insisted upon accompanying her husband as far as the boat went. She had deliberately chosen, even against his wishes, to undergo several hours of sickness in order to spend them with him. Surely the mind of woman is inscrutable, and her ways are beyond the ways of men. Praised be her courage and devotion and cheerfulness. Woman was made to set man a good example, although man was not made to follow it. Men are apt to remember Eve as she was, and forget woman as she is. Possibly the comparative isolation of a life in a foreign country where there was neither social nor public entertainment, but an abundance of hardship and inconvenience, had drawn them closer together than the average husband and wife. In any case I would suggest a residence in some half-civilized foreign land by those who, after having been married a few years, imagine they deserve a divorce. If such a residence were made a legal qualification for a divorce, happy marriages might be more common and our courts less crowded.

Mr. Reid and Doctor Swigart spared no pains to entertain us; but after we had entered the lagoon Doctor Osterhout outdid them, and thus atoned for having gone to sleep in our forlorn company. He had found some one to entertain, and was not to be deprived of the opportunity. He was a type of our genial and hospitable Southerner, and gave us more interesting information about plantations, bananas, negroes and internecine wars than if he had been a guide paid to tell us all that there was and was not.

The little settlement at which we stopped presented much of the varied charm and beauty which had characterized all of the tropical seaport towns I had so far seen. The company had built a pier about one hundred yards long upon which the narrow-gauge platform cars were brought to be unloaded directly into the ship.

Doctor Swigart persuaded the company to put a platform car at our disposal for a ride over the eight miles of railroad that traversed the plantation of 800 acres. Chairs were placed upon the car, an engine attached behind, and away we sped at the rate of twenty miles an hour through a sort of artificial lane that had been cut through the forest jungle, and which, by the encroachment of the foliage, had become so narrow that the branches projecting from the sides often touched us. We went around curves at such a speed that each one had to hold on to the chair of his neighbor in order that those sitting at the sides might not be tipped off. Occasionally we would pass an opening and get a better view of the high forest trees, among which were rubber trees, cedar trees, trumpet trees and other magnificent-looking trees and plants that were beyond even Doctor Osterhout’s elastic nomenclature. At one large meadowlike opening we saw a herd of sturdy-looking cattle grazing peacefully in a meadow upon which a picturesque little slaughter-house had been built for their convenience. The company did its own slaughtering and thus provided their employees with good fresh meat. After riding for a couple of miles we came to the banana trees, which also grew close up to the rails. Every few hundred yards side-tracks ran out at either side enabling the laborers to load directly on the cars and sent the fruit out on the piers to the steamships.

A BUNCH OF BANANAS

As the temperature is practically the same all the year around, banana trees are planted at any and all seasons and each tree bears twice a year. They do not, however, bear according to the season of the year, but according to their individual maturity. Slips are planted at any time, and begin to bear in a year, and thus bananas are maturing and being gathered at all seasons. When a stock is cut off a new one grows out in its place. The ripe bunches grow wrong side up, for when they become heavy the stem bends until at last the end points downward and the individual bananas upward. They are gathered before they are fully grown, otherwise they burst upon ripening and spoil quickly. The yellow ones are cultivated almost to the exclusion of the red ones, which have less flavor (although perhaps a more delicate one) and have, I believe, poorer keeping qualities.

Doctor Osterhout bribed a negro to find a couple of bunches of plantains to be cooked for us on the ship. The plantain resembles the yellow banana but is nearly twice as long and is not palatable until cooked. When ripe it may either be roasted in the rind or be cut in slices and fried. It has not such a rich fruity flavor as the banana, but is very nourishing and makes a better dish for the table. Those served on the boat were fried and had a slightly tart taste, and were very acceptable as a substitute for fresh vegetables.

The plantations are worked by Jamaica negroes, who are hardier and better laborers than the natives and are said to be good-natured, docile and content. They gathered in crowds to see us pass, for some one had told them that the governor of Jamaica was one of our party, and Doctor Senn was designated as the man. The doctor bore the honor with becoming dignity and left them with the impression that he was genuine. They showed great respect toward him and were evidently loyal British subjects.

We soon rode into a wide valley along which the plantation extended for miles. A lively river ran through it and steep hills arose on either side becoming progressively higher and more rugged. A succession of beautiful and varying views of mountain, forest and river scenery was thus presented to us as we rushed around the curves in an almost constant state of exhilaration for fear of being swung off into the bushes and having our faces scratched.

We stopped at the spot where, during the recent revolution, the insurgents had ambushed the government troops. The insurgents, 1,000 in number, stood on the steep side of a round hill near the railroad track where the train bearing the regulars had to pass. But the foliage on the hill was so dense that not an insurgent or field-piece could be seen from the cars, nor did it look as if there was room for field-pieces between the trees. When, however, the train arrived nearly opposite the rebels, they opened fire with gun and cannon, killing the helpless troops in great numbers. The vivid conception of this horrible tragedy, occurring so recently on the very spot we halted that I looked about me for blood stains, interfered somewhat with the full enjoyment of the scenery.

When we returned, the ship proceeded to the other landing not far away to take on bananas in the dark and start back for Bocas del Toro in time to be there at daybreak. The success of this plan would have saved us three hours of distress, for we would have been asleep during the passage through the choppy sea outside of the reefs. But neither sleep nor a night ride was granted us by destiny.

As it was raining, I retired early and fell asleep about the time the loading in the lagoon was finished, expecting to awake at Bocas del Toro in Almirante Bay. About midnight, however, I was awakened by the noise of the machinery. The screw would start up with a terrific noise, then stop for a few moments and begin again. I soon became aware of the fact that the ship was not moving forward, but only shaking itself like a dog emerging from the water. But why it should want to stay there and shake itself all night and churn us up in its vitals, I could not divine, and lay hoping that it would quiet down or go ahead before bursting something.

At seven o’clock we began to move at last, and I went on deck and learned the truth, viz., that the negro pilot had attempted to find his way out through the channel and, as the night was dark and rainy, had run the boat on a reef. There was no lighthouse to mark the channel, but he, like Admiral Rozhestzensky, had his orders to go and come, and like Rozh—nsky, he had to try his luck. If the reef had not been planed off by Providence and sunk just to the right depth to let us get on and off easily, and had not the wind and waves been kept down, the second-hand ship would have been wrecked and our steamer trunks lost. But the above-mentioned combination of circumstances had conspired in our favor, a combination, take it all in all, the like of which we shall never see again. As it was, the boat must have suffered considerable damage and might not have been able to live in the West Indian storm that was waiting for it—and us.

However, I took the matter coolly during the time of danger, and also afterward when I learned that there had been danger, for I was a student of statistics and knew that men are ten times as safe on a ship as on land and that more accidents occur to people in their homes than while riding on the cars. Bankers suffer twice as many accidents as policemen, and carpenters nine times as many. Railroad conductors are considered good risks by the accident insurance companies, and commercial travelers the very best. In fact, statistics prove that there is danger everywhere. There is danger in crossing a street, danger in opening a window and in shutting a door, danger in bathing and danger in taking off a coat. There is even danger in sleeping, for many accidents take place during sleep, and most people die in bed.

I felt thankful that we were not living in the times of ancient Rome where danger and death were the rule, and survival was accidental, if we may credit an account of the conditions once prevalent there given by one evidently who knew what he was writing about.

“Owing to the great noise in the streets, none but the rich could sleep, while most invalids died from want of rest and well people from suicide or accidents. A stream of carriages was continually passing in the narrow and crooked thoroughfares, and the drivers were perpetually engaged in noisy disputes and foul abuse of one another. If you were in haste, your passage was obstructed by the crowd. If you loitered, a rich man’s litter, borne aloft on stout shoulders, jostled you aside; those behind pressed upon your back; one man would dig into you with his elbow; another with a sharp pole; your shoulder would be struck by a joist, your head by a beam, and a cask would bark your shins. Your legs were bespattered with mud, on all sides you were trodden on, and the nail of a soldier’s boot would stick in your toe. The cooks scattered the burning coals as they hurried by with their patrons’ meals, and your clothing was torn into shreds. One wagon loaded with a fir tree, another with a huge pine, shook the streets as they advanced, the rear ends waving to and fro, felling the people right and left. Another wagon was loaded with stones from the quarries of the Apenines, and when the axle broke the mass was precipitated on the people. Who could find his scattered limbs or gather up his carcass thus ground to powder? Then there were the dangers of the night when broken crockery, thrown out of lofty windows, made dents in pavements and skulls. Indeed, there were as many fates awaiting you as windows where you passed. You might thank your lucky stars when they threw only the contents of the basins and pots upon you. Rash was he who went to supper without first making out his will. Or your life was put in jeopardy by some drunken and ill-tempered fellow who picked a quarrel with every first person he met. He took care to avoid the scarlet cloak and the long train of attendants, the many lights and the brazen lamp, but you whom the moon alone attended he assassinated. Or you met a worse fate if you fell into the hands of the soldiers, driven by a mob and legging it about the streets, and who would crack your head as if they were cracking a joke, and thus revenge themselves on the pursuing mob.”

Thus in ancient Rome they needed insurance and only had assurance, while nowadays we have insurance but only need assurance. In modern life danger is minimized and insurance magnified. I was quite heavily insured against accident, and my observation and experience had been that the heavier the insurance the slighter the danger, and the slighter the danger, the heavier the insurance. This is the policy of the companies. The only difficulty about insurance is to get enough to entirely avert danger. It is a subject for statistics. Statistics never lie to insurance companies, for they have policy holders to make good and an advertisement system to make policy holders.

Those who did not carry much insurance were considerably frightened, particularly after the danger was over and they learned of it, and even to this day they talk with bulging eyes of the might-have-been disaster. Accident insurance, therefore, should be carried for the comfort it affords both before and after the dangers are past, as a remedy for nervousness. You go into danger with a prospect of making your family the present of a snug little sum of money, and are thus braver and more cheerful; that is, if you are a married man. A bachelor may be brave, but death for him has no cheerful side. He has to depend upon life.

Mrs. Reid, in trying to spend more time with her husband, was fortunate enough to be left behind. She thus would have two or three more happy days with him before the next ship would come for bananas, and she would then return at night according to the regular custom. She would, of course, have to take her chances with the reefs if the night should happen to be dark; but who would hesitate to choose between a slight death risk at night and certain deathly sickness by day? I think it quite likely that her husband did not allow her to risk the passage of the Tiger’s Mouths in such a night.

We bore up pretty well during the trying three hours at sea, all but Doctor Frank and the ladies. Doctor Osterhout was again taken with one of his drowsy, unsociable spells soon after we got out in the open sea; he lay down on the bench and covered his head, as usual, and was not heard from again until we entered the tranquil waters of Almirante Bay just in time for the eleven o’clock breakfast. He seemed to have the faculty of awakening whenever he wanted to eat or talk.

Doctor Senn had been hinting enthusiastically about an alligator hunt, so the local doctors organized an excursion up the Chanquinola River, which ran through the company’s plantation. The plantation, according to Doctor Osterhout’s information, contained 1,000 acres of land and was twelve miles long; but he did not say how wide that would make it. The reader can easily figure out the width for himself, or if he can not, let him get one of his boys or girls who is going to school do it for him—they are fresh in mathematics. The river is about 1,200 feet wide and quite deep, but as its mouth is completely closed to navigation by reefs, the company had dug a channel about twenty feet wide and eight miles long connecting it with Almirante Bay.

A steam launch having been placed at our disposal, we steamed across the bay to the mainland, which was several miles from Bocas del Toro, entered the connecting channel, and were soon gliding through the jungle. On our left the forest came to the water’s edge; on the right a narrow pathway had been cleared for pedestrians. Without this cleared way pedestrians would not have been able to reach the different stations along the canal. A fine rain was falling a large part of the time, but Doctor Senn and Doctor Osterhout sat upon the awning with their legs dangling down over the edge, shooting birds and looking for alligators. The rest of us sat or stood comfortably under the awning and, thus protected, enjoyed the novel scenery. The most interesting part was watching the tropical birds of many sizes, shapes and colors that flew incessantly from one part of the impenetrable wilderness across our path to settle down in another, some remaining on the trees where we could get a better view of them as we passed, others disappearing in the jungle as suddenly as they had appeared. We saw cockatoos, parrots, toucans and a great variety of small birds, which, taken together, might be said to be almost as numerous as sparrows about our Northern houses and gardens. Although Doctor Senn killed a large number of them as they flew by, we could seldom get one because they fell into the tangle of the dense underbrush.

TOUCAN, OR PREACHER BIRD

The most common of the larger birds was the toucan, the most extraordinary degenerate in the whole animal kingdom, not even excepting man. It has a nose as long as its body. Pluck out its feathers and you can not tell which is the degenerate part, the enormously developed, six-inch bill or the comparatively puny, six-inch body. The bill is certainly the best developed of the two and capable of giving the body the best possible chance of gathering food and surviving where other species might die out. Perhaps this adaptability for feeding itself accounted for the great number we saw in comparison with the smaller number of others of any one kind. But how the bird manages to escape indigestion is certainly a mystery. One mouthful ought to replete it beyond recovery. The color of the bill is a softly blended mixture of red, yellow, blue and green, and the body a gaudy combination of the same. The bird is called by the natives the “preacher bird” because it owes its reputation to the development of its mouth; and one variety has a black body like a preacher. But I myself would have called it the “fashion bird” because it resembles a woman of fashion; for it attracts attention from a distance by the enormity of its headgear, and when the body arrives you are confronted with a bunch of beautiful frills and feathers, a “thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

But Doctor Senn was out for alligators, for something that could not fly away and get lost in the jungle after it was killed, and he would have sat on the sharp edge of the awning with his feet in midair for a week rather than miss the big game. He did thus sit for four hours, and was finally rewarded. After traversing eight miles of wilderness, we came to the river and steamed upstream a few miles, enjoying extended views of hill and valley; and on our way back spied the alligator. He was lying on his stomach basking in the sun, which had come out after the rain and which was drying off his back and Doctor Senn’s legs. He looked immense, sprawled out at the water’s edge in an attitude of the greatest reptilian comfort and content, as if seeming to say, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Doctor Senn took in the situation and scratched his back.

As we were several hundred feet away, it was impossible to say just where the bullet struck. The alligator knew, however, and was satisfied with one scratch, for he flopped into the water and disappeared as if he had been shot and we left him for dead. It occurred to me that there were three things an alligator hunter has to contend with, viz., first, to find his game; next, to kill it, and, last, to get it. But for these difficulties I might enjoy alligator hunting myself.

As we glided back late in the afternoon through the still waters of the artificial forest channel, closely hemmed in on either side by the mysterious solitude of omnipotent Nature, and which was now silent and strewn with the dead reminders of Doctor Senn’s fell ambition, it seemed to me that these two excursions to the banana plantations would have saved my trip to the tropics from failure even if the congress had not served as the fulfillment of a joyous scientific duty. Nothing else had come up to my expectations, except bad weather, seasickness and the $25,000 barrel. Now I had had my reward and felt that traveling in the tropics surpassed all other travel in the world—sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. Staying at home is the only thing that beats it in either respect. Any fool can travel in the tropics but it takes a wise man, or a poor man, to stay at home. Blessed are the wise, and the poor.

However, there have been wise men who went to Panama; but they came back again. Work was made for the white man in the North and probably for the negro in the temperate South, but no work was intended to be done by any one in tropical regions, unless he goes up on a high mountain to do it. The Northerner, by centuries of practice, has acquired immunity from the bad effects of work in temperate climates, but this immunity soon wears out when he goes to the tropics, just as the immunity from the bad effects of loafing wears off when the native of the tropics comes North. The bad effects of work are endemic in the tropics and are only kept from becoming epidemic by the small amount of work done. I hope that the new canal officials and engineers will be soldiers and will, like our army officers already stationed at Panama, prove an exception to human nature and will become immune to the laws of human nature and do some work on the ground, and that they will live long enough.[4]

[4] The above was written before the president undertook to construct the canal through the agency of army officers and thus removes all doubt about the wisdom of his course. The work is now being done for the benefit of the United States instead of for the benefit of engineers and contractors. The adoption of this course was a happy thought of a great administration.

CHAPTER IV

From Bad to Worse

Out of Provisions—Shopping for Wet Goods in the Dark—Mud and Rain—Artistic Imitation of Jamaica Cigars—Smoking for Fair Weather—A Stoic Doctor—Ingratitude—A Model Roommate—A $1,200 Bill for False Labels—Spoiling a Good Article with a Poor Price—Prepared to Fast—The Greatest Mathematician and Gravest Philosopher of Modern Times—Rough Weather—A Ladies’ Man—In Protected Waters—All on Deck—A Sudden Arrival—An Unsuccessful Attempt—A Rolling Ship Gathers no Stoics—A Charge on a Steamer Chair—Washing the Deck with White Rock Water—Female Sympathy—A Dispute between Two Old Friends—A Broken Chair—A Retreat—An Immune from Seasickness—Rough Again—The Breakfast Habit—Eating and Rolling—A Mixed-up Breakfast—Being Rammed and Trod upon—Too much Hughes—Pope and Jordan—The Apotheosis of Calmness—Philosophy out of Place—Struck by a Norther—A Night of Pandemonium—Distressed Doctors—A Doctor’s Appetite—A Doctor in Distress—Getting Dressed Successfully—Losing Time to Avoid Being Wrecked.

Upon our return to Bocas del Toro we discovered that we were in need of a new supply of provisions. We had smoked the cigars, the ladies had consumed the sherry, Doctor Brower had drunk the water and the liquor had evaporated. Hence we resolved to make a night raid upon the company’s warehouse.

The darkness was intense and it began to rain again, and as there were no street lamps, we had to find our way by the light of memory. This guided us successfully both to the warehouse and to the mud puddles, the first of which was unfortunately closed and the latter open. However, the local doctors, our good genii, who always appeared whenever we “rubbed” up against difficulty and wished for anything, went off into the dark and hunted up the agent and found him eating. After he had finished what must have been a many-course dinner he finally appeared; but as he was not the custodian of the keys he started out to locate the negro who was, leaving us standing at the warehouse door in darkness and drizzle, and in hopes that negroes dined earlier and less protractedly than managers. When the negro at last arrived he also went away in search of a candle, for there was no provision for lighting the warehouses. The absence of lighting apparatus and the prohibition of smoking in the building served as a substitute for an insurance company and a fire department. When the candle finally came, its light was practically lost in the large salesroom, and the salesmen, who were the only beings that knew where the goods were kept, were not there. But we did not care to wait for the salesman to eat and be sent for; waiting and eating didn’t seem to expedite matters. So we proceeded to hunt in the dark for the needles in the haystack, for the candle showed but one thing at a time, and that was after it had been brought about near enough to set it on fire. However, Doctor Brower found and purchased a box of one hundred bottles of White Rock, and Doctor Senn found plenty of Pommard, although Pommard was not what was wanted.

By this time we young men were tired of waiting for what could not be found and, leaving the older ones marching single file around and about between the counters and shelves by the light of a candle, like a catacomb party without a guide, we waded across the muddy street toward a light that proved to be in the window of a Chinese provision store, and obtained what we wanted in a minute. We called for some Jamaica Tropicales, which were the only good cigars retailed over the counter in the Panama Republic. They were always uniform in quality as far as our experience went, and when the Chinaman put a half box of them on the counter we quickly transferred them to our pockets and called for more. But instead of opening a new box, he reached under the counter, gathered a couple of handfuls of cigars and placed them in the box out of which we had bought the others. This, of course, made us suspicious, since Jamaica cigars must have been imported in boxes. Nevertheless, when compared with one I had left from a fine lot I had bought at Washington Hotel, I could not detect any difference. If the cigars were imitations they were works of imitative art that did credit even to a Chinaman, and were valuable as such. So we bought freely of them and felt still more certain of their genuineness because he charged us twenty-five cents in Panama silver instead of twenty cents, and would not listen to our offers to buy much more freely for twenty cents. We were, however, glad to pay the extra five cents as it was a sort of guarantee that they were genuine. We knew that an imitation never costs more than the original. Finding the cigars so orthodox, we called for sherry, and as it was labeled exactly like that we had bought before, we purchased some and went out in the rain and mud rejoicing.

We were soon back on shipboard, and when we had finished our dinner I sat down to enjoy one of my fresh Tropicales. To my surprise, it did not have the flavor it should have had, and became worse with each puff. I threw it away half smoked, for what I smoke on shipboard must be all right, or it is all wrong. I again compared those I had bought with the good one I had brought, and there still seemed to be no difference. They looked so good that I felt like keeping them to look at whenever I was tempted to smoke. But that would have been selfish, for I had learned that Doctor Senn had not been able to find any cigars in the dark warehouse, and was longing for a good smoke. I also knew that anything that looked like tobacco would be acceptable to him, just as boiled leather made grateful soup for Morgan’s buccaneers when they were starving on their way across the isthmus. So I presented my Chinese works of art to him. He accepted them gratefully without dreaming of questioning their quality, and smoked them on faith during the rest of the stormy voyage, a remarkable tour de force at such a time. He had the faith that performs miracles and perfumes tobacco. During a storm a cigar seemed to steady him as a pole steadies a tight-rope walker. While the ladies were praying for fine weather, and the men sighing and groaning for it, Doctor Senn smoked for it, and got it. He made his own weather. To him storms and showers became unsubstantial externals and went up in smoke. Neither strong cigars nor mountain waves affected him nor disturbed the even tenor of his ways. He took them as they came and called them good. Indeed but few men are gifted with his powers of endurance nor his even temper in times of storm and distress. I was his roommate and, altogether, heard him sigh only twice while in the stateroom, and these sighs were probably merely little suppressed gusts of impatience at the choice of the ship he had made, and the ingratitude of the company’s officials in turning him out of his room after he had filled the ship for them with first-class passengers.

I have thought it worth the while to mention this Chinese cheat for the benefit of those who remain at home and can not get their experience at first hand. It is necessary to be careful in buying wines and liquors and other less popular goods of them, to see that they are properly labeled and in unbroken packages. However, there is even then an opportunity of being cheated, for although the Chinese on the isthmus have not the facilities for putting up goods in imitation of those imported in packages, some of the white merchants are reported to be carrying on a large business in the substitution of goods. One firm in Colón is said to have paid a single bill of $1,200 for counterfeit labels to be put upon goods of their own bottling. This is shocking to us North Americans, who have recently passed a law against false labeling.

Of course, the Chinese are apt to buy these falsely labeled articles and sell them in good faith. Hence it is also better to get everything one can not judge of for himself from reputable business houses, although one may have to pay more. I remember that when Doctor Senn and I stopped at a Chinese store in Colón and asked for the best sherry in the country the Chinaman offered us a bottle for seventy cents in gold. We were too aristocratic to buy such cheap stuff, although the label looked genuine, and we refused to take it. We hunted up a well-known wholesale and retail importing house and bought a bottle for a dollar. I afterward examined the label and it was exactly like the label on the Chinaman’s seventy-cent bottle, and like the one on the bottle I bought of the Chinaman at Bocas del Toro for seventy cents. The wine tasted the same and was the same in every respect but one, viz., the price. We knew also that it was imported wine for we were not buying it in the United States.

At last we were all aboard the Brighton: bananas, plantains, pineapples, oranges, wines, cigars, land-lubbers, land ladies and all, and started merrily for home. We were glad to get out of the mud and rain, and soon were off, and out in a rough sea.

The next morning we awoke to find the ship rocking like a cradle. We had prepared ourselves to feast, but found ourselves ready to fast. Feasting is often a preparation for fasting. This fact is in keeping with the advice of the greatest mathematician and gravest philosopher in the business world, viz., the modern insurance agent, who says that in health we should be continually preparing for sickness and death. Feasting does it.

All day long we had a succession of squalls and tropical showers, drenching the canvas of our steamer chairs and converting the upper deck into a rendezvous of cold shower baths. The ladies staid in bed while the men wandered disconsolately along the wave-swept deck from the stuffy staterooms to the dreary dining-room. With the aid of appetizers some of the more determined ones managed to go to meals, nibble a little and hurry out on deck where the ever-waiting wave seldom failed to give a douche and get a d——n.

As Doctor Senn was not seasick, he was kept busy waiting on the ladies. There was no stewardess on board, but I am sure no stewardess could have been more willing for pay to do what he did out of kindness of heart. The ladies suffered not for iced sherry nor for egg-nogs and under his care, got better whenever the weather moderated. He proved to be a ladies’ man in the best sense of the word. The steward, who was not a ladies’ man, was kept busy in the dining room and pantry most of the time but, acting as the doctor’s assistant in preparing things, he managed to be of some occasional use besides putting on and taking off table food that was not tasted. Whether the doctor enjoyed the honor thrust upon him of waiting upon the ladies, or whether he was clandestinely annoyed, no one could assert or deny, for he did it with the same dutiful cheer that he ate, slept, smoked and worked, one or more of which he was doing all the time.

During the night we ran into protected waters near the coast of Honduras and the doctor’s patients all felt better, and Friday morning were able, by lying very still on their steamer chairs, to be on deck. He asked them how they felt and they said they felt quite well, and thanked him for it. The ship had stopped its pitching and had taken a slow-rolling gait, a sort of sea-canter, that was quite easy for those who liked it.

The weather overhead was sunshiny and alluring, and all of the men but Doctor Brower and Doctor Frank were out. Suddenly, to our delight, Doctor Brower appeared among us and was greeted with appropriate applause. The doctor is a large man with one of those cheery natures whose hearty laugh spreads its contagion wherever it is heard. He is of sober Dutch descent, but so many American grafts have been incorporated into the original stock that the only Dutch qualities left are a large waist, great industry, and an unusual capacity for work and words. Physically considered he is the equivalent of a whole roomful of Dutchmen, and has tenfold the vivacity of the whole Netherlands on his tongue. He has that easily aroused, nervous organism that belongs to our own country, and which is undoubtedly accentuated in him by having spent his whole adult life studying and treating neurasthenics and lunatics. It is a well-recognized fact that people who live with or associate intimately with the insane have more or less mental aberration induced in them by a sort of hypnotic suggestion, an aberration which neurologists recognize in others, but not in themselves.

He greeted us without the signs of joyful emotion that characterized his usual manner, and hurried across the deck to the pile of steamer chairs, jerked off the topmost one, which was Doctor Frank’s, and unfolded it hurriedly. Just as he had it straightened out and placed, the boat gave a lurch to one side and sent him staggering across the deck. When he struck the life-boat he clung to it, straightened up and stared at the chair defiantly, as if to say, “Damn!” But he had the gentlemanly instinct that did not allow him to forget himself in the presence of ladies. He tried to assume his usual cheerful but dignified expression, but his feature only expressed pathos and pathology. A rolling ship gathers no stoics, as the saying is. We would have led him to the chair, but we knew that he had the pride born of the habitual exercise of power and authority, and would resent help as long as he was able to be on his feet. Moreover, most of us felt that we ourselves might suddenly lose our dignity, etc., if we did not lie still. Finally the spirit of the soldier gained the upper hand. He made a successful charge upon the chair and dropped on it with such force that its rickety joints cracked and its slender legs began to spread. While on his feet he had displayed some remnants of his great energy, but his head was no sooner down than his energy centered itself in the stomach. He jumped up into a sitting posture as if started by an electric shock, and before he could get on his feet the deck was flooded with White Rock water. He then sank back in the steamer chair, causing more spreading and creaking of its frail legs and exclaimed, “I declare! That White Rock tastes better out of the bottle than out of the stomach.”

At this, the lady who sat next to him could not resist an impulse to imitate him, although she had otherwise good manners. But she had no reserve of White Rock to call upon; she could produce nothing but a set of teeth, which went overboard. Discouraged with the result of so much conspicuous and exhaustive effort, she allowed herself to be helped off the scene by her gagging husband. Several of us suppressed a few sympathetic flourishes and hid our eyes like ostriches, and were safe.

Pretty soon Doctor Senn, who had experience in about everything but in being seasick, began to think that perhaps Doctor Brower needed some helpful advice, and said in his kind, deliberate way: “Brower, you have been drinking again. I have always told you that so much water disagreed with you. The deck was made to be kept clean, but not with White Rock. If you would drink something stronger, it would teach you to drink less in quantity, and thus incline you toward moderation.”

Doctor Brower raised himself to make a vigorous response when the spreading legs of the rickety chair gave way, and man and chair collapsed, the doctor sick and the chair dead.

“Come, Brower, let me help you to your stateroom. Bed is the best place when you are sick.”

While saying this Doctor Senn went to him to help him, but he began to feel better and would not be helped.

“No, thank you, Senn; I am all right now. I never felt better. I’ll try another chair.”

“Ah, I thought that you were not really sick. It was all a joke after all. As long as a man can continue producing more than he consumes he must be all right. Have a cigar.”

Doctor Brower looked at the cigar, turned suddenly pale, said “Ugh,” and started toward his stateroom.

“What a great thing a sea voyage is to bring out all there is in a man,” said Senn, as his friend disappeared. He then lighted a fresh cigar and sat down to read French poetry.

But Doctor Brower’s experience was only a sample of what was in store for the rest of us. He merely got ahead of the crowd, as usual. Eleven o’clock, our breakfast hour, came an hour too late. By eleven o’clock the wind blew, the waves grew, and the breakfast flew. But the breakfast habit had become too firmly fixed to be broken off voluntarily, and when the hour came around, those of us who were able to be about could not resist the impulse to try our luck. Two ladies were counted among the brave when we solemnly filed into the dining-room, viz., Doctor Waite and Mrs. Brower. But they were out of place, for the occasion called for gymnastics rather than gustatics, for dexterity rather than daintiness. The table, which extended across the room from side to side, was set with the frames on, for the rolling of the ship was such that itself was about the only thing that did not go over. Every few minutes a big lurch would send dishes, frames, chairs and passengers sliding down to the end of the table, changing food from one framed space to another, and feet and elbows from one place to another.

Doctor Hughes, who sat next to me, had an old head and a young face, and was of that indefinite age at which the hair turns prematurely white and men grow considerate and gentle in their ways and feelings. He was greatly distressed whenever his chair struck mine, when his feet came down upon my feet, when his elbow rammed my ribs, and his bottles and plates with their spilling contents mixed freely with mine. His elbows hurt me and he knew it; but he was helpless to avoid it, for I sat in the corner of an ell at, the end of the table and served as a buffer to stop the advance of the whole line. He had the accumulated momentum of the others, besides the motion of the ship, to resist, but he had me for a cushion. His distress was mental; mine was physical.

In order to conceal my suffering I called in as gay a voice as I could command to Doctor Newman, who sat opposite on the solid seat that ran along the wall of the room, and was able to cling to his place and to his food.

“What do you think of this jam, Doctor Newman?”

“I’m fond of jam; pass it over, please.”

“Ask Doctor Hughes. I got mine from him.”

“Oh! Ah! I see! You’ve got too much Hughes. Everything is going your way. But this passive exercise is just what we all need. The boat is doing the moving; all we have to do is to resist, and to eat.”

Doctor Frank had brought Jordan’s “Majesty of Calmness” to read en voyage, but had not yet come out of his five-days’ doze. So Doctor Hughes borrowed it (not the doze), and spent the afternoon reading extracts to us from it, and in quoting Pope’s “Essay on Man.” At any other time and place I probably could have appreciated these books, although I would not have taken time to read them, but it seemed to me that Jordan was more or less possessed about the word calmness. It is easy to say to yourself or to the sea, “Be calm,” but there are things beyond Jordan both in the mind and in the sea. Pope’s polished verse and filigreed philosophy are out of place in the trade-winds. Even the meaning of words and the truth of philosophy depend upon the way the wind blows. It is not what the author writes, but what the reader reads that makes the book.

We were heartily weary of trade-winds which came from the east and kept steadily in our quarter, and we clamored for a change, knowing that all things come to those that wait. And the change did come. At about 9 P. M. the wind changed and a “norther” struck us. And we quickly realized that it was a change, all except Doctor Senn. He may have noticed a difference. It was one of those things nobody could divine.

Discretion was the only part of valor for us and we arrayed ourselves on the side of Doctor Brower, who was a born leader. We got to bed as quickly as possible without thinking of consequences, or of preparing either our souls or our staterooms. The ship began to pitch as well as roll, and a sort of “still life” pandemonium kept us awake all night. The steamer screw was out of water half of the time and shook us, and the motion of the boat knocked us about in our bunks until we felt beaten up like raw eggs. The electric light was put out as usual at midnight and we were left to our imaginations. Doors and port-hole windows began to slam with startling thuds, chairs tumbled over and bumped back and forth, bottles rolled and clinked around the stateroom floors, while heavy things all over the ship fell and crashed. The sailors did such noisy work that we could not listen to it and sleep. The night was long and dreary.

Finally at daybreak the machinery suddenly stopped working, allowing the ship to drift before the wind, but the sailors made more noise than ever, replacing broken bolts and tying the shaky rudder on with ropes. I knew that the boat was drifting and said, “Let her drift. Let her go down. Let us have peace.” I thought that I might as well die in bed as to get up and die with my boots on. I might as well lie there comfortably and die from taking too much water as to get up and drink California sherry, and have my head cracked against the bunks and washstand beforehand, or against the walls of the narrow passageways. I might as well be a good-looking corpse as a mutilated one. I was less helpless in bed than out of it. In bed I could die with majesty, the majesty of calmness. Besides, it was rainy and cold outside, and although my bed was a hard rolling-place, I dreaded the difficult dressing, the dreary standing about all day in the cold, the holding on, and, above all, the dizziness and distress that belonged to keeping the head up. So I remained in bed and took my chances.

The slamming, hammering, clinking and shaking of the screw all stopped at last, which gave a certain kind of relief and enabled me to hear what was going on in the corridors and adjoining staterooms. Apparently some of the others were trying to get up and out into the rain and cold. I suppose that, like eating, the habit of getting up in the morning had grown on them and that they could not rest until they had done it. The first thing I heard was a feminine voice saying:

“How bad the air is in here!—If I could only get up on deck!—Doctor Senn, are you anywhere? If you are, will you please bring me some iced sherry?—If I only had something on my stomach it wouldn’t make me feel so sick. I’m so faint. I wish I had an egg-nog.”

Soon afterward I heard Doctor Newman call out in a sonorous, unnecessarily cheerful voice at the other end of the hallway.

“Why, good morning, Doctor! How do you feel this morning?”

A man’s voice answered:

“First rate, thank you. Did you rest well?”

“Slept like a top. Only woke up once when I rolled out of bed upon an overturned stool and struck my head. Let’s go and have our coffee.”

“No, thank you; I’m not going to take anything this morning.”

“Why not?” said Newman. “Why, I wouldn’t miss my coffee and strawberry jam for the world. Come along; it will ballast you and keep you from being light-headed.”

“No; I’m not hungry. You can have my share of rattan coffee and strawjuice jam this morning. I never eat without an appetite.”

“Nor I,” answered Newman, “but I always eat. It doesn’t matter what you eat; it’s how it tastes. I have an empty place inside of me the size of the United States. This constant motion of the ship doesn’t give your appetite any rest. See you later. Wish you’d come.”

Pretty soon some one came stumbling along the narrow passageway and exclaimed as he struck his head or something against a partition:

“Ouch! What to —ll did I get out of that infernal bed for? I wish the Lord had made the waves some other shape. I’d rather get out and walk home than ride up every derned single wave in the ocean and then slide back again. I always supposed that a boat went forward instead of upward and downward and sideways. Confound the boat!—I wish ’twould go to the bottom. ’Twould serve the miserly Fruit Company right for putting people in such a drifting rat-trap. I wish I were home. Home is good enough for me. Whoo-oop!”

This periodic whooping reminded me how undignified people will act in the most conspicuous places and inopportune moments, and how often such unseemly actions become contagious and spread like laughter.

The man had evidently rushed or staggered out to the outer door as he uttered the last whoop. After a short session of silent thought, I heard him walk back to his stateroom mumbling between his teeth:

“The yellow fever is bad enough, but seasickness is a deuced sight worse. The next time I want to see a canal I’ll look at the Chicago Drainage Canal. When I want a change of climate I’ll stay in Chicago where it’s always changing, and where it sometimes changes for the better.”

I took an ounce of dry sherry at nine-thirty and again at ten, and soon after arose to give my bones a needed rest. After some shivering from the unaccustomed cold, some unintentional collisions and gyrations about the room, and some expressions of opinion about the luxury and healthfulness of sea voyages, followed now and then by a short recess in my bunk in order to press my bruised scalp into shape and allow the whirl in my head to subside, I succeeded at last in getting my winter flannels and heavy suit out of my trunk and on me. As the result of the night’s wakefulness and the morning’s exercise of bracing and holding on while dressing, I actually felt a desire to eat, and resolved to do it before I changed my mind.

There were not many at table, for most of those who had arisen early had already changed their mind. As I couldn’t conceive of anything worse than going back to my cabin, I lay down on the cushioned benches along the wall of the dining-room and gained some of the rest I had lost during the noisy night. We were going ahead again but only at the rate of seven knots an hour, were already nearly twenty-four hours behind our schedule time, and were likely to lose another twenty-four before reaching New Orleans. To try to go faster would have put us in danger of breaking the screw propeller, of losing our loose rudder and of cracking open at the part of our shell that had struck on the reef. In fact, we had been voyaging under conditions that according to natural laws and insurance statistics should have resulted in a wreck, and were content to be careful. Better two more days of comparative purgatory than to take up hastily and without preparation a longer residence in some more uncertain place.

CHAPTER V

The Didactics of Seasickness

Breaking the Sabbath—Giving up—Humiliation—Beef Tea Versus Coffee—A Disappointed Engineer—English without Grammar—The Lecture—Pathology—She-sickness—A Rebuke—Symptoms—A Homœopathic Cure—The Passive Treatment—A Reproach—Conclusions—A Suggestion and a Vote of Thanks.

During the first day of the “norther” both the ship and myself came through without any but threatened accidents, although neither of us was seaworthy. The next morning, however, my stomach broke the Sabbath and my pride had a fall. To arise early on Sunday is a bad habit; we are commanded to make Sunday a day of rest, I ought to have known better.

I arose in time for “coffee” and found the “norther” breaking the Sabbath, but did not take the hint. I stumbled out of bed and was precipitated across the stateroom, balancing and plunging from door to washstand and from bunk to trunk. I got one foot in my trousers and fell over, tried it again and sat down on the floor, holding on with my right hand while I pulled up my left suspender, and vice versa. Suddenly my stomach felt as if it were going to break, as the Germans say. I quickly ducked my head and allowed myself to be thrown into my bunk, and called up Christian Science, as I had successfully done the day before. But it was Sunday and she wouldn’t work. It would have been a feather in Doctor Brower’s hat to have caught me. But he probably was too busy himself to be out hunting for feathers. After a short rest I took some sherry, which is not a calendar saint, and it worked, for in half an hour I was able to finish my toilet and go to the dining-room and publicly drink a cupful of beef tea. The ship coffee did not tempt me, which was a point in its favor. Indeed, if all coffee were poor it would be better—it would have less opportunity to do harm in the world.

I lay around in the dining-room after a light breakfast and listened to instructive talks about yellow fever, leprosy, etc., but was particularly interested and enlightened by a non-professional Western gentleman who had gone to Panama in search of a job; one of those travelers who, like Walter Raleigh, had never eaten with a fork. He claimed to be an experienced engineer (whether civil or locomotive, he did not say) who had not been able to procure any kind of work there with a larger salary than thirty dollars a month, although Wallace was drawing much more than that. Hence he had kicked some of the mud off his feet and was on his way back to “God’s earth.” He could not praise De Lesseps and the French enough. The French employed white men and paid them like gentlemen.

But the most interesting part of his long and loud conversation was the illustration it afforded of how the English language can be used to express vividly and intelligibly all sorts of sentiments for hours at a stretch without conforming to a single rule of grammar. It was a most complete triumph of synesis over syntax, of eloquence over elegance. How he had learned to disregard the rules of grammar so unerringly was marvelous. The unequivocal force and fluent ferocity of his expressions afforded a striking compliment to our self-made language. Foreigners think that the English language has no grammar, and it was the mission of the engineer to prove that it could do without it. He expressed himself much more clearly and impressively than a large proportion of men do whose speech is all grammar. He said:

“Them French was cracker-jacks, and no joke. They wasn’t afeared to employ white men, nohow; and they knowed how to treat ’em. The Amerikins won’t employ nobody but niggers or such as works for niggers’ wages. They’ll never get the blamed banana canal digged no way. They ain’t nothin’ doin’, nor won’t be while them fellers is bossin’ the job, and it’s up to you and I to show ’em up. A man kin go down there and work until he pegs out, but he can’t get no pay fur it—only hell. The hull business ain’t got nuther head nor tail, it needs preorganization, and that’s what it ain’t got. As to Wallace, him and me ain’t old cronies, but we know each other, and that’s enough.” I concluded that he was a locomotive engineer, a loco as the Spanish would call him.

As it was Sunday and there was no ordained preacher aboard, and Doctor Senn wouldn’t preach, and Doctor Brower couldn’t preach while the wind blew, I delivered a medical lecture on seasickness, believing that the best way of benefiting them morally was by material instruction. I felt that I could speak from experience, and that there were those about me who could appreciate from experience. We could at least hold an experience meeting. I began:

“Seasickness may be defined as an uncertain attitude followed by a certain act. It is one of the most ancient and orthodox of known ailments. The Greeks called it nausea or boatsickness, and it has changed neither in name, in nature nor in the manner of manifesting itself. It is thus as immutable as the Catholic religion, although it depends upon the weather, which, during the past few centuries, has undergone many changes, like the Protestant. It resembles religion in that it has no pathology; it resembles disease in that it makes people sick. It depends neither upon germs nor upon imagination as do the modern orthodox ailments.”

At this there was a murmur of dissent and slight temporary inattention. Raising my voice, therefore, like a lawyer, I proceeded:

“To illustrate: When a woman has hysteria she wishes you to treat her, and not the disease; but when she is seasick, she wishes you to treat the disease, and let her alone.”

Doctor Morrow, the tall, lardaceous, disgustingly healthy and handsome-looking young doctor from California, who could laugh more eloquently than he could talk, interrupted me and wanted to know if it wasn’t she-sickness that I referred to.

“No, sir,” I said, “I refer to seasickness. Seasickness does not wear off during the daytime and does not depend upon conditions within, but on conditions without the body. In order that seasickness or Greek nausea may exist there must be a boat and a breeze—a zephyr, as the Greeks called it. ’Tis interesting to note that the discovery by the Greeks that the disease was a boat-sickness, or disease of the boat, led them to personify the boat. And this is why a boat is called she instead of it. The word nausea originally had an h in it, and was spelled nau-she-a.”

“Then the Greeks did consider it a she-sickness,” butted in Doctor Morrow, who was still harping on women—a man of one idea.

“Doctor Morrow, you have yet to learn the silence of medicine, which, in practice, is as important as the science. And as for the art, the Greeks would have made a statue of Hercules out of you, and would have given you muscle in place of fat, form in place of speech, poise instead of avoirdupois. A want of silence is often more meaningless than a want of speech. The disease could not have been she-sickness, although if you insist on gender, you might call it her-sickness since the disease can be said to affect her, but can not be said to affect she. Both Greek and grammar are against it.”

He was silenced, even to his laugh.

“The symptoms are exaggerated but honorable hiccups, a persistent but harmless disinclination to retain food, and an indifference to danger that makes one willing to be thrown overboard without having the courage or energy to insist upon being thrown.

“The treatment is always successful, for the patients all get well. As an illustration of how a complete cure may thus be effected I will relate the case of a confessed homœopath who, I am ashamed to say, crossed the Atlantic in the same boat in which I did. He prescribed for himself pure water taken according to homœopathic ‘dilution,’ viz., ten drops of water in a tumblerful of whiskey, two tablespoonfuls to be taken every half hour or two while awake. And he continued thus taking water until we arrived at our destination. I met him three days after, and asked him if he had been seasick. He said that he had felt bad since leaving the boat, but couldn’t remember having felt sickness of any kind on the boat. This was a perfect remedy in his case, and the proper one for those who believe in homœopathy.”

“Hear, hear!” “Y-o-u-reka!” “Down with homœopathy,” and other spontaneous applause greeted me from all sides, and encouraged me to continue talking.

“But there is another class of cases and another kind of treatment, viz., the passive or starvation treatment, which is homœopathy carried to its true and logical end and aim.

“It consists in going to bed and eating nothing and drinking water from a teaspoon until the boat has given up plunging, or arrives at its destination. If the patient is still able to do so he then arises and assumes the activities and indulgences of life, and temporarily recovers. This is the fat man’s remedy. His stomach is relieved of its fat and of its fullness. It gives him the prolonged fast that his burdened system needs and which he has not the self-denial and fortitude to take on shore. It constitutes the benefit of a sea voyage upon his health, and is the only obesity cure worthy of trial, except the one employed by Panama cabdrivers upon their horses.

“We have an illustration of the efficacy of the passive treatment in Doctor Frank. He stays in bed and rests his stomach. He neither eats nor drinks, yet not one of you is improving in health as he is. It is the repudiation of our food and the ridicule of our remedies, since the patient has nothing to do but not to eat and drink. If his patients knew of this and had common sense instead of blind faith, Doctor Frank would not have to go to sea to starve. Our patients should therefore know what we do, but not what we do not do. For a lot of doctors to embark in a boat and have everything their own way, and learn nothing and do nothing about boat-sickness, except to get it, is a reproach to our profession. You talk knowingly, but you must remember that boat-sickness is not a mere postprandial-ephemera. You ought to know that one should not only fast on board but also on land before boarding. How not to eat is an oriental delicacy——”

Here I was interrupted with such long-continued applause and discussion and such frivolous interrogations that I concluded that they were unfit to be reformed, and did not wish to learn how not to eat. How not to eat is one of the lost arts. In keeping with the development of the culinary art, man’s longevity has diminished in 6,000 years from 969 down to 70 years, and his teeth and appendix have been steadily dwindling and will soon fall out. In a few thousand more years another zero will be dropped from his age and the world will contain babes only. But as my audience was unprepared for such a revelation, I closed with the following short summary of my views:

“Therefore, seasickness is not a disease to be avoided, but a remedy to be taken. You have much to learn, but much more to unlearn before you can tell the world anything about it. You must become as babes, and be unborn and born again before you can unlearn and learn again.”

“Every man to his berth,” shouted Morrow, who was entirely devoid of a sense of humor. He regarded my lecture as a joke.

A vote of thanks was passed with the request that, if I should talk again, I take up the subject she-sickness, which they considered more interesting and more in my line. They were still harping on women, and I resolved to cast no more pearls, remembering that all big D’s do not stand for doctor.

CHAPTER VI

The Last Day at Sea and the First on Land

A Bad Headache and a Bitter Dose—A Poem—The Singing Cherubs—A Sign of Fair Weather—Promised Feasting—Eating Oneself into Premature Old Age, and Starving into a Ripe Old Age—A Delicate Question—A Business Meeting—Drawing up Resolutions to Exonerate the Captain—The Eads and Jetties—An Enjoyable Toilet—A Hook Apiece—The Penalty of Early Rising—A Cold Day—Discovery of the Preston—Unfavorable Comparison—New Orleans and Oysters—Absinthe—A Fraudulent Automobile Ride—Advice to Young Men—A Corrected Advertisement—The French Quarter and Legendary New Orleans

The next morning was Monday, our last day on the “ocean wave” and “rolling deep,” with all its poetry and pantomime. We were due at New Orleans Tuesday forenoon and were happy in anticipation of soon being back on prosaic land again.

When I awoke I knew that the “norther” was weakening, for the motion of the boat was quite consistent with an elaborate toilet, and produced no uncomfortable sensations. In fact, the cool, invigorating United States air made all of us feel lively and disposed us to object to coffee and jam sandwiches as a substitute for something to eat.

Everybody was well and on deck except Doctor Waite, who had a headache. When I had about completed my elaborate toilet (which consisted not of any extra finery, but rather of an elaboration and deliberation in the adjustment of the same old weather-worn and salted-down garments), I opened my stateroom door just in time to be in at the finish of an interesting sick headache. Doctor Waite had sent for Doctor Hughes, one of those prescribing neurologists who place their confidence in medicine rather than in their Maker, who pursue their cases to death, and dose them until they die. He wore a gentle, white-haired, sugar-cure expression on his face, and suggested an overflowing fountain of professional kindness in the tones of his voice. But he was giving her one of those old-fashioned bitter draughts such as only neurologists know how to compound—not harmful but worse, and which depend largely upon their taste to cure the patient of all further desire for diseases or drugs. She, womanlike, swallowed the dose as if it had been the gospel. It was hardly down, however, before it returned as if from a volcano, and threatening to carry away the crown of her head. She was frightened at the suddenness and intensity of the paroxysm and disgusted by the terrible taste, or she would have noticed the immediate relief that followed. In her sudden fright she exclaimed:

“Oh, Doctor, you’ve killed me; you’ve killed me. Ugh! This is terrible.”

“Madam!” said Doctor Hughes in his soft and gentle way, “you misjudge me. I may be a killing man but I’m not a killing doctor. Ahem!”

Doctor Waite had to laugh at him; and her headache passed off. She expressed a determination, however, not to have another until she was safe at home.

At the breakfast table one of the doctors, whose identity I will not betray, read the following poem:

Low she lay with aching head,

Mingling moan with smothered sigh.

“Dose her,” all the doctors said;

“Dose her, Hughes, or she will die.”

Dosed her with his deadly stuff

Till she groaned, “My end is nigh.”

Then the doctors said, “Enough!

Make her laugh, Hughes, or she’ll cry.”

“I’m a killing man,” he coughed,

“But no killing doctor—see?”

She forgot the dose, and laughed.

She was cured, and it was he.

Hughes-dee-dum and Hughes-dee-dee.

We had hardly finished criticising the impropriety of thus making public the privacy of the sick-chamber when we were startled by a hilarious hullabaloo outside, a strident inharmony of jubilant vocal sounds emulating and imitating the cadence of song. We looked toward the port-hole windows, and there stood Fasting Frank and Heavenly Hughes leaning on their elbows and smiling like cherubs, and singing popular songs at the top of their voices. I blushed at the undignity of it. Doctors! Professors! Fathers! I felt embarrassed. They would not have done it before their families and patients. But I was glad to see them, for I knew that if Doctor Frank had come out of his hole in the wall fair weather and a calm sea had come in earnest. The greeting we gave him was vociferous and as undignified as his behavior. His seasickness had been a premeditated means of increasing his popularity without exerting himself. He had fasted himself into favor. To see him smile like a child, and then howl like a Dervish after a five-days’ fast and close confinement, made us regard him as a suffering hero who no longer suffered, although anyone who couldn’t eat could do the same.

We persuaded him to come in to “coffee,” although he declared that it was against his principles to eat or drink at sea. He wasn’t ready to be tempted yet.

“Tut, tut!” I said, “A cup of coffee and half a roll can not upset you, now that the storm is over.”

“Half a roll, man!” he cried. “Do you know what it is to eat half a roll after a five-days’ fast? Half a roll! Do you know how good it feels to fill up a complete and perfect vacuum in you when you get started? Do you know how good it feels to have your stomach full of solid greasy food after it has been digesting itself for a week?”

“Do I know?” said I. “It is the man who denies himself that knows the joys of indulgence. To habitually suffer from prolonged and painful hunger before each meal, and always stop when you have taken a few mouthfuls and your appetite is at its fiery zenith, is the best training for the mad enjoyment of a full and filling meal that I know of; and I know of it. You are young yet. Wait until you get the gout and you’ll be thankful for half a roll. You’re not rich enough to appreciate half of a dry roll. Your time is coming.”

“Why, you’re just the man I am seeking,” he exclaimed. “I am hunting for a fellow who is as starved as I am and as you look. When we get to New Orleans to-morrow morning, we will have an oyster supper, postponed from to-night; at noon we’ll have an oyster supper for lunch, and before we take the night train to Chicago we will have another oyster supper. Just think of it, if we were not thirty-six hours late we would have the three suppers in us now.”

“Doctor Frank,” I said, “you are going to make yourself sick in earnest, for on land you will not have seasickness to cure and curb you of your overeating. I will eat these three suppers with you and get my stomach full for once—and then swear off forever.”

Here Doctor Morrow interrupted me. “Full for once? Full forever, you mean! You have only been full once since we left Bocas—you have kept at that sherry between meals and claret at meals——”

“Doctor Morrow, I refer to food—food only. On dry land I drink neither sherry nor claret, only water at different temperatures and dilutions. I am glad to say that I am not as you are. I do not intend to harden my arteries and bring on premature arteriosclerosis by overeating. You eat twice as much as you ought to eat every day of your life, except when you are ‘off your food,’ as the result of it, and when nature evens up by forcing you to fast. I intend to curb my appetite. To make use of a paradox, I might say that I am going to starve myself to a good old age.”

“You’ve done it already.”

“Look here, Morrow, you’re a great man, thanks to your appetite. But beware! A man is also as old as his appetite makes him. You’ll die of old age by the time you are forty. If I had your appetite I’d have been dead ten years ago. You are the most unpromising insurance risk here except Doctor Newman, who was never made to be an old man and knows it, and who can thus eat himself to death with impunity. There is hope for the others. Doctor Frank fasts occasionally, and thus postpones the day of reckoning. Doctor Senn is smoked through and through, and smoked bodies undergo no farther change or decay. Doctor Brower is water-soaked, and water-soaked timber sometimes lasts a long time. Doctor Hughes and I are drying up, and when we are thoroughly dried we will last longer than any of you.”

“How about me?” asked Doctor Waite.

“I cannot pass upon your case, for the nourishing and keeping qualities of eggs are uncertain. In a cold climate you might live quite a long time.”

While I was talking, all had left the dining-room except Doctor Waite, who arose to follow them. I knew that she was exceedingly conscientious and truthful, and I determined to ask her a question about a matter which was troubling my conscience.

“Doctor Waite, you have asked me a question; may I ask you an equally important one in return?”

“Why, certainly, Doctor, and I shall try and be as frank as you were when I asked mine.”

“I merely wish to ask you if you have noticed anything wrong about me?”

She said she had noticed that I had been in a critical state of mind ever since we left Colón.

“In a critical state? Is that so? Am I as bad off as that?”

“You have raked us over the coals pretty badly.”

“Is that so? I often do things badly. I’ll try and do it better hereafter. But have I been acting out of the ordinary? Has my articulation been distinct? I sometimes talk without listening to myself, and——”

“And so do not always know what you are saying,” she said with a little laugh. “Well, if I must speak out I should say that you are talking somewhat unintelligibly now. I hadn’t paid enough attention before to notice it.”

“Well, I feel very much obliged to you for not noticing it. There is no harm in talking unintelligibly when you are not noticed. I wish I knew whether I have been enjoying myself or not. Having a good time is much more unsatisfactory when you don’t know it. At home I have a good time working hard, but I know it; on this voyage I have worked much harder at having a good time, and didn’t know I had it. At home I shall work off this tired feeling. In fact, I should have explained before——”

“Never explain anything to a woman, Doctor. Explanations and arguments never convince us. We are apt to take them as jokes to be laughed at.”

“Well, women are right. They laugh much more effectually than they reason. To laugh at us is one of woman’s rights. And we laugh with them to show that we approve of woman’s rights. But I merely wanted to get an honest professional opinion, and didn’t know how. They are so hard to find. I have been calculating how much alcoholic liquor I have consumed since landing at Colón a little over two weeks ago. I have drunk half a pint of whiskey, two quart bottles of beer, three quart bottles of wine and a quart of soft drinks. Think of the mixture! I have kept on drinking regularly and have not, to my knowledge, been intoxicated. I have felt well during the whole time until now, but now I’m beginning to feel bad. What I want to know is whether I have been irresponsible during the whole time and am just beginning to clear up, or whether I have been sober the whole of the time and am just beginning to feel the effects of all I have taken.”

She again laughed three or four notes as she answered:

“Well, there has certainly been something unusual about you, but whether it was due to the disturbance of the liquid in the sea or in the bottles I will not attempt to decide. In the first place, I never saw you so critical in Chicago as you have been on board. In the second place, you have been offering and recommending wine to ladies, which you never do in Chicago. In the third place, you have criticised my eating, which no other gentleman has done.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll do it as a doctor hereafter, not as a gentleman. As a return favor I will ask of you not to speak of my condition to any one in Chicago. I suppose the delegates all know of it. But I’ll shut their mouths; I’ll treat them in New Orleans, etc.”

“But, Doctor, they would refuse to take treatment. They will not be sick on dry land. Sherry will be superfluous there.”

She finally got away from me and my questions, and went to prepare egg-nogs for the convalescing ladies. She beats the world making egg-nogs—for ladies. Men don’t like them.

Later we held a business meeting of the passengers in the dining-room in order to give substantial expression of our gratitude to the gentlemanly crew of the S. S. Brighton for our rescue from the reefs in the lagoon of Chiriqui on a dark and rainy night; also to the captain who had so successfully stood the trial of his first trip as a commander and had consulted the heavens so diligently for us, predicting stormy weather with unerring accuracy. We feared that the adventure of the reefs might be used by his enemies and the United Fruit Company as an excuse for depriving him of his command of the smallest, most rickety and most sure-to-go-down boat of the line.

We also took up a subscription which netted each man of the crew a dollar for having risked his life for us when the boat struck and stuck on the bottom where it really belonged.

We then drew up the following resolutions in honor of the captain, to be presented by him to the United Fruit Company. We made them strong and striking in order that they might not be put aside unnoticed:

“Whereas, the S. S. Brighton did, between the night of Jan. 10 and the morning of Jan. 11, 1905, come to rest on a reef in Chiriqui Lagoon, and thus imperil the lives of her passengers and the reputation of her captain;

“Whereas, the S. S. Brighton was not made for man but for bananas;

“Whereas, in a time of danger, when the moon and stars failed and darkness prevailed, when the passengers were suffering from the fear of death and the feeling of nausea, the captain was cool and collected and waited in patience until the sun arose and the cock crew and the ship forced its way backward into deep water;

“Whereas, we deliberately and of our own free will, chose the said Brighton, and were, thus responsible for our mistake, and the company of its own free will chose the captain and is thus responsible for his mistakes;

“Whereas, we should not have been caught out at night in the absence of the heavenly bodies, or of the phosphorescence of the waves, or of the fireflies of the beach to indicate to the negro pilot where we were at;

“Therefore, be it resolved that we, the benighted and bereeft passengers of the S. S. Brighton, do hereby express and extend our thanks to the captain and the ship for successfully getting us off the bottom and out of danger;

“Resolved, that we assume the blame for the accident in that we added weight to the ship and worry to the captain;

“Resolved, that we promise nevermore to put this responsibility upon the ship, but will stay at home and attend to our own affairs;

“Resolved, that we beg clemency and favor for the gallant captain, and that he be given a pilot who can see in the dark;

“Finally, we, the survivors of the last but not least eventful voyage of the S. S. Brighton, do petition that the ship be enlarged as fast as possible, that basins be attached to the pillow-ends of the bunks, that the allowance of wash water be doubled, that the electric lights be not put out at midnight, that evaporated cream be provided for coffee instead of condensed milk, and that bananas and bric-a-brac hereafter be carried to the exclusion of passengers.

“Signed.”

There was a prolonged discussion as to whether we should all sign these resolutions individually or whether merely the president, Doctor Brower, and the secretary of the meeting, Doctor Morrow, should sign officially. The secretary was finally forced to sign them alone.

We were to arrive at the jetties at 10 P. M. according to the captain’s consultations with the heavenly bodies. Now if the captain had any shortcomings it was not a lack of devotion to the heavenly bodies, which he consulted frequently and fervently. But he never succeeded in fixing correctly the time of arrival anywhere. It was I who had faith in the heavenly bodies, yet never consulted them, who could prophesy unerringly. Whenever the captain announced the time I added two hours. So when we were told that we would arrive at the jetties at 10 P. M., I knew that we would arrive at midnight.

About half of the passengers had never seen the jetties, for on their trip to Panama they had passed out of the river after bedtime. And now that they were to enter the river after dark they were inconsolable. Next to Panama they desired to see the jetties, about which they had heard and read so much. They asked all sorts of questions about them; what jetties meant, what Eads meant, what jetties and Eads looked like.

The sun sank in Oriental splendor behind his green and golden bedcurtains as we went to dinner, and the unfortunates complained of the sun for setting before we got to the Eads and jetties. They blamed the captain for not having sailed faster during the storm in order to arrive before sundown. They were not content with having escaped the dangers of the reef, as well as having kept the rudder and saved the screw and crew during the storm. With them the jetties were the thing, the dangers passed were nothing. Who cares for dangers that are passed? They wished that they had waited for the Preston, or that the Brighton would anchor outside all night.

We told them that they could sit up and see the lights, and so could tell everybody that they had seen the Eads and jetties.

As they kept on asking what the Eads and jetties looked like, they received various answers. Some said they looked like lighthouses on piers; others that they were like Greek temples covered with electric lights; others said that they were nude figures of lions bearing immense candelabra on their heads and electric lights on their tails; others said that they were a narrow channel running out at sea—mere longitudinal space. When we got through answering them they were discouraged, for they would not be able to describe the Eads and jetties to their friends at home.

They, of course, took the captain’s word that we would pass the jetties at 10 P. M. and paid no attention to my assurance that we would pass them at midnight. At ten o’clock they were gaping and shivering on deck like tired ghosts on a moonless night, and wished they had gone to bed. By eleven it was evident that I had told them the truth about the time of passing the jetties, so they placed a sentinel to watch the Eads and jetties and report what he saw, that they might describe them to their friends.

I enjoyed making my toilet the following morning as I had not for a long time. To be able to stand still and stretch both arms above my head leisurely and without danger of falling; to be able to gape without having a tooth knocked loose by an approaching shelf or edge of a bunk; to be able to get the right foot in the right trouser leg at the first attempt; to be able, while washing, to stoop down without a head-on dive; to find both shoes on the same side of the room, and my clothes hanging on the nail just as I had hung them: these were luxuries that made me forget my previous misery. Reaction from misery is, after all, the best substitute for happiness. Real happiness is too rare and impalpable, and is enjoyed in the past and future only.

Doctor Senn and I each had one hook upon which to hang our overcoats, heavy suits, belts, hats and the garments we removed at night. And I was glad that there had been no occupant of the sofa bunk to share these two hooks with us, for there would then have been no alternative but to throw our city clothes overboard where they would have been better preserved. I never knew to how much use one hook could be put until we tested the possibilities on the Brighton; nor did I realize the condition clothes could get into from hanging in a bunch upon one nail for a week.

At “coffee” I found the whole company. Those who had sat up and shivered while watching for the “Eads” and jetties looked hollow-eyed. The vigilants had retired at eleven o’clock, but had lain awake a long time with disappointment and cold feet, and had arisen early, famished and unrefreshed, and had shivered and shifted about cold corners and corridors for a couple of hours waiting for lukewarm coffee and jam to start the depressed circulation through their congealed capillaries.

Although it was a cold January day and ice had formed during the night, the river looked beautiful in the morning sunlight as we came nearer to New Orleans. Doctor Waite was even more enthusiastic in her appreciation than were the ladies who were not doctors, a thing which I could not understand. I always had supposed that a busy surgical life would take nearly all of the womanly out of a person. I had often observed such an effect upon others as well as upon myself.

When we arrived off the docks of the United Fruit Company the first thing we noticed was the S. S. Preston, the large boat that had not arrived at Colón when we left, and for which we did not wait because we wanted to save time and avoid the crowd. We expected the delegates to return in it en masse and crowd it until it would become more uncomfortable than the smaller, unpopular boat, the Brighton, that detestable little, breakdown little, slow poke of a rat-trap which no one was supposed to take, but which nearly every one did take. The Preston had sailed from Colón two days later than the Brighton and had arrived at New Orleans two days earlier. On a scheduled five-days’ trip she had beaten us by four days. She had provided a stateroom for each passenger or married couple, had not struck a reef, and had only broken one sailor’s leg—which didn’t signify as Doctor Palmer was there to set it immediately. She had kept her screw in the water and her deck out of the water, and thus had allowed passengers to eat, sleep and wear dry clothes. Some of us felt like blowing up the Brighton and the United Fruit Company, one with dynamite and the other with damning it.

We arrived at the docks in time for me to take the morning train for Chicago and thus escape Doctor Frank and his three deadly oyster suppers. But the suspicions of Uncle Sam had to be allayed, and before we had signed papers and suffered the conventional derangement of our baggage and bric-a-brac, the train had gone and I was doomed to eat oysters and drink gin fizz and absinthe with a starved man. It is not pleasant, after you have eaten more than you want, to sit half an hour or so and watch a starved man giving way to the eager ecstasy of slowly oncoming repletion. It seems to be the uppermost desire of every one upon arriving at New Orleans to eat a dish of oysters. In fact, it is remarkable what an amount of enjoyment the human being gets out of what it puts into its stomach, forgetting that an organ which affords such universal and almost continuous enjoyment deserves, like Hamlet’s “Players,” to be well used.

After satisfying our curiosity by taking a silver fizz, a drink which had made a reputation for a certain saloon in New Orleans, Doctors Frank and Newman and I had our eleven o’clock breakfast (the postponed oyster supper) at a French restaurant near the St. Charles. I myself could only eat half a dozen of those large and luscious oysters, but I will not destroy the reader’s good opinion, if he have one, of my comrades by telling how many they ate. However, we finally stopped eating, promising ourselves other oyster meals before the time for the evening trains to depart, and went to a saloon in the French quarter to increase our knowledge by taking a drink of the absinthe that had made New Orleans and this saloon famous for twenty years. I swallowed my dose and pretended that it was good. Absinthe makes people lie. It is the essence of seasickness and mendacity, and good only for those who, like horses, can’t get sick at the stomach and can’t tell the truth. When I have an enemy I will treat him to absinthe, but I will not drink it with him. Doctor Frank liked it on account of its reputation, just as his patients like him. Doctor Newman looked at his emptied glass and grunted, then rolled his head solemnly from side to side and opened his mouth as if he were going to say something important; but nothing came out.

In the afternoon after all hands had had their oyster lunches, we were attracted by the “sight-seeing auto” standing in front of the St. Charles. Circulars were scattered about, advertising “Two delightful tours daily and Sunday, leaving St. Charles Hotel daily at 10 A. M. and 2 P. M.” I have thought it worth while to print a copy of the advertised description of the tour in order to show the reader how quackery flourishes and is respected in business life as well as in professional. I formerly supposed that the medical, legal and sporting professions were the only ones which could successfully impose their frauds upon the public, but I am now hunting for the only profession or business that does not. I would advise all young men to divide the business public into two classes, viz., enemies and friends. The former will want his money to enrich themselves at his expense; the latter will solicit it to ruin both him and themselves—but him at any rate. Above all he should beware of the latter, that his money may not ruin both.

DESCRIPTION OF TOUR

THE largest automobile in the world takes its way through the modern business and residential sections of New Orleans as well as that most mystical and picturesque part known as the “French Quarter.” Here every square has its realistic or legendary lore and here will be seen the descendants of the French and Spanish noblesse and that peculiar type of American civilization—the creole of Louisiana.

Below are given a

FEW ATTRACTIONS OF THIS TOUR

St. Charles Hotel. | Statue of Benjamin Franklin.
A Ride Along the Great Levees. | Statue of John McDonough.
Canal Street. | Beautiful St. Charles Avenue.
Steamboat Landing. | First Presbyterian Church.

The Custom House and Post Office
(Corner stone laid by Henry Clay).

Home of the Famous “Sazerac
Cocktail.”

Liberty Monument. | Old French Market.

Building costing $4,000,000.00.

House where Gen. Lafayette was
entertained.

Lafayette Square. | Old Basin.
Henry Clay Monument. | Carondelet Canal.

Mississippi River Packets.

Most Ancient Cemetery in New
Orleans.

Algiers. | Monument to Gen. Jackson.
Immense Sugar Refinery. | Bourbon Street.
Jackson Square. | First Church to be built in Louisiana.

Former “Plantations of the King.”

Building in which transfer of Louisiana
Purchase was made to U. S.

Place d’Armes. | Old Antique Shops.
Royal Street. | Ancient Court House.

City Hall (1850).

Old Cabildo—house of Spanish,
French and American Governments.

New Court House and Jail.

St. Louis Cathedral (first built in
1718).

Orpheum Theater. | Famous French Opera House.

Y. M. C. A. Building.

Old St. Louis Hotel (now Hotel
Royal).

First Sugar Refinery in Louisiana
(1794).

Tulane and Crescent Theatres.

Statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. | Cotton Exchange.
Lee Circle. | Boston Club.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. | Chess, Checker and Whist Club.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. | Pickwick Club.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 3.

Building in which Mardi Gras Balls
are held.

THE famous auto passes these and many more points of interest, traversing the historic byways and grand boulevards of this quaint old city. An expert guide accompanies each tour and points out each interesting feature and tells of the past grandeur and romance and the future greatness of New Orleans.

ONE DOLLAR—THE ROUND TRIP

Leave St. Charles Hotel

Seats Reserved in Advance.    Telephone, St. Charles Hotel News Stand.
Main 1600

There was a fifty-cent touring auto that started once a day from the corner of Canal and St. Charles Street, but the best was none too good for us (as the sequel proved) and we chose the dollar tour because the price was higher and the advertising circulars more numerous.

The description should have commenced thus:

“The largest and most old-fashioned and used-up automobile takes its way at a snail’s pace through the modern business and residential sections of New Orleans as well as that most delusive and dilapidated part known as the “French quarter.” Here every square inch has its realistic or legendary lore of which our guide knows not a thing and says not a word—therefore don’t bother him with questions. And here will be seen the descendants and decadents of the French and Spanish noblesse—and great has been the descent—and that peculiar type of American civilization, the creole of Louisiana. All of these things and many more will not be pointed out to you.

“The infamous auto passes by these and many more points of no more interest, traversing the historic byways and grand boulevards of this grand old city. A pert guy accompanies each tour and puts out each interesting feature, and says nothing about the present, and knows nothing about the past grandeur and romance, and the future greatness of New Orleans.”

If the company will change the circular to read as I have corrected it, I will recommend it as an honest one trying to live up to its advertisement. Otherwise I must condemn it as a corrupt Philadelphia company, a buyer of cast-off automobiles and off-caste young men, which are sent to far-off cities to play tricks upon visitors. The company runs automobiles in Washington and Philadelphia as well, and sends uninstructed strangers to act as guys and guides. They depend for their success upon the reputation of some of the well-conducted tours in other cities, notably Chicago. They avoid trouble by collecting the fares before they start.

On our way through the French quarter Doctor Frank tried in vain to get a single word from the guy about “the past grandeur and romance” or the “legendary lore,” or about the history of the places. The guy had never studied history nor read the newspapers, and had not even learned to speak a little piece about either history, legend, romance or “rot.” He could not even tell a lie. He pointed his finger at a few business houses, pronounced the names of clubs, and showed us the charred walls of a club house that had been burned the day before, and pronounced it the latest thing in ruins. He showed us the house of a rich man, and when we came to the oldest Protestant church he stood up and said, “This is the First Presbyterian Church,” and sat down. When we got back he also showed us the New St. Charles Hotel, and we knew at least that he was giving this last “attraction” its right name.

Should any reader doubt the truth of my words let him ask Dr. J. Frank of Chicago, whose stomach was full after his five days of fasting, and who therefore felt in a mood to be pleased with anything half-way entertaining or reasonable. He will say that I have not told the truth, but only a portion of it, and he will probably complete the recitation of the truth and give it some of the color that belongs to it. He was anxious to learn something about the town, but learned nothing. He would even have been glad to tell the guy a thing or two about historic and legendary New Orleans, or to give him a piece of his mind, if the fellow had been capable of appreciating either thing, or anything. The fellow didn’t know what he saw and probably would not have understood what he heard. Anyway he did not care to see or hear. He was satisfied with himself and his salary, and we had not the heart to interfere with his happiness, as he had with ours.[5]

[5] In justice to the local Manhattan Auto-Car Co., whose office is at 211 St. Charles St., I wish to say that I was again in New Orleans in December 1907, and had a satisfactory ride in one of their vehicles. Our guide, whose name was Ryniger, was as lively and full of information as the one described above was stupid and ignorant. Those who take the trip should select his car.

CHAPTER VII

Traveling North by Way of the South

Off for Chicago—Trying a Southern Railway—The Sleeping-car Mattress, One of the Luxuries of the World—Courting Sleep—Astonishing Discovery of Daylight—Spurious Insomnia—Missing a Cold Bath—A Strange Stranger—Mobile—The Battle House Restaurant—Patriotic Coffee—Delicacy Versus Flavor—Five-cent Café-au-lait—Milk Versus Cream—Central American Bitter Coffee—Cereal Coffee—The Best Substitute—The Stranger and the Conductor—Compelled to Keep a Saloon in His Own House—Hugging a Young Lady—Tears and the Bottle—The Capital of Alabama—Mismanaging a Cigar—Putting His Boots to Bed—More Ice-water—Cakes and Lemons—Breakfast on the Train—An Unaccountable Disappointment—Drowning Sorrow in Drink—The Great American Treating Habit.

After our oyster supper my comrades started for Chicago via the Illinois Central Railway, and as I was committed to the Louisville and Nashville route, we parted company. My train was scheduled to start at 8 P. M., but a train which was to connect with us was indefinitely late, and as we could not safely go backward in the dark in search of it, we had to wait. Finally the expected happened, the loiterer arrived, and we started off at a soothing pace that put me to sleep. At home where I had a comfortable bed, a quiet room and everything my own way, I couldn’t go to sleep like that. In Chicago the pace is too fast. Fortunately I had taken the precaution to ask the porter to call me at six o’clock, that I might breakfast at a genuine U. S. hotel in Montgomery, where the train was to rest from seven to nine.

I awoke and turned over a few times in the course of the night, as one does on sleeping-car mattresses. I did it, however, just to feel how soft and comfortable the mattress was, and to congratulate myself. Any one who does not appreciate a sleeping-car mattress can learn to by taking passage in the S. S. Brighton. Let him ask the purser, steward or any of the officers of one of the small fruit boats about the Pullman mattress. Let him serve on one of them for two or three years and then try the Pullman bed. If I were a Carnegie, a Peter Cooper, or any other conscientious multi-millionaire, living or dead, I would create a fund with some of the money I couldn’t enjoy in Heaven or on earth, for the purpose of enabling all employees of fruit boats to live on land. Why do not the fruit-boatmen strike for better beds? Workmen on land strike for everything they want, and get it; and everybody tolerates the general inconvenience of it. We are all willing to help.

I noticed after two or three waking spells that the train was always stationary, but inferred that it was the stopping that disturbed and wakened me, for I was not accustomed to sleeping without noise and motion. After a time I became convinced that I could not go to sleep without their assistance, and waited impatiently for the train to begin its rumbling and bumping motion. As it did not start I concluded that it had stopped to take a long rest at Mobile, where it was due at 11:40 P. M., and that the time of day was therefore the middle of the night. I felt like blaming the Southern railroads for the way they allowed their express trains to lie around on side-tracks all along the line, waiting to miss connections, instead of hustling to make time and accommodate nervous people. I criticised them for their schedule habit of leaving New Orleans at 8 P. M. in order to loaf about Mobile and visit for two hours at Montgomery. My train could just as well have left at midnight and have given me an opportunity to go to the French opera with Doctor and Mrs. Palmer and have an oyster supper with them afterward, as to pretend to leave at eight, lie waiting for late trains until after nine, then shuffle off like a tramp-train and constantly wake me by standing still. A sleeping car should not try to imitate a bedroom in a country hotel.

I strove to become accustomed to the quiet and to will myself to sleep. I kept turning myself over like a pancake that must sooner or later get done. I turned on my side and tried to snore myself off. But snoring loves an audience, and I didn’t have any. It occurred to me that I was kept awake by the enjoyment of the to me unusual comfort of the bed, so I turned on my side and put my under arm behind me to keep myself from being too comfortable. When I couldn’t endure that position any longer I uncovered my head to be able to hear what was going on, and thus listen myself to sleep, but there were no noises. I threw down the cover and tried to keep cool, but the car was warm. I tried all of the stunts known to insomniacs, from complicated and inverted methods of counting to the solution of problems and the composition of scientific lectures, but they only made me hungry. Apparently I had not eaten oysters enough in New Orleans to last through the attack, so I ate two apples which I happened to have in my overcoat pocket. But eating never did agree with me, and I became more wide awake than ever. In bed I was no better off than an ordinary millionaire. His money could not buy Nature’s gift to the poor, and my science could not produce it. I knew that we were not lying at Montgomery or it would have been daylight and the porter would have called me. Hence I concluded that my arrival in the United States had brought back my old insomnia and that there was no remedy for it but expatriation or a sailor’s life.

Finally I became utterly discouraged at having lost almost an entire night’s rest, for I was too much of a veteran to expect any more sleep that night. So I sat up and pulled aside the window curtain to see if there were any signs of dawn. To my astonishment I let in bright sunlight. The window curtain had fitted so tightly in the window frame that the usual morning ray of light had not penetrated. I had mistaken the shimmer of light about the edges of the curtains for the night lights of the station. I rang for the porter and asked him why it was daylight.

“Dunno, sah,” he answered, “’cept it’s eight o’clock, and we’s waitin’ heah at Mobile foh a broken bridge to git mended.”

All of my insomnia had evidently been since about 6 A. M., and after eight hours of sleep, or two hours more than my average when I am sleeping well. I now knew that I had acquired the insomnia habit, and was destined to be a victim of insomnia no matter how well I slept. A bridge over which we were to pass was disabled, and by waiting until it was repaired, instead of going right along regardless, like a Northern express train, we missed a cold morning bath—being given no chance to choose between the bath and the extra nap. The train ahead of us had taken our bath. But like all dyspeptics who fret before arising, I felt consoled and cheerful after getting up and letting in the sunlight and realizing that the world was still getting on all right.

As the bridge could not be sufficiently repaired for traffic until noon, I concluded to make the best of the situation and hunt up a good cup of coffee. Mobile was the capital of the French possessions in America 200 years ago, long before old New Orleans was born. In the antebellum days Mobile was the hothouse of the Southern aristocracy and is now one of the richest towns in the old South in proportion to its population. I would find a good cup of café-au-lait in Mobile.

While I was making my toilet, a man of about seventy years, with scant white hair and delicate features, entered the dressing-room with a pint bottle of whiskey in his hand, and addressed me cordially.

“Have a drop, stranger?”

“Is it French coffee?” I asked.

“No, it’s Kentucky corn juice. Try some?”

“No, I thank you. I always begin the day with a drink of pure water.”

“And end it with a drink of pure whiskey, eh? I commence with water too, but I can’t take it pure before breakfast.”

After taking a stomachful of equal parts of whiskey and water, he warmed up and became talkative. He told me he had boarded the train at midnight and had awaked in the morning at the same place from which he had started. He said the train had held its own and hadn’t drifted any, and that he had known it wouldn’t; but he had engaged his berth to sleep in and was going to fulfill his part of the contract like a law-abiding citizen.

I told him that this delay was only one of many mishaps that had befallen me, that I had experienced nothing but delays since I had left home six weeks before, and would arrive there nearly a week behind time. I had been singularly unfortunate.

“Young man!” he exclaimed in a startling, sepulchral voice that quivered slightly, like that of an orator giving a cue to the emotion he is about to evoke. “Young man, you don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You’re right,” I answered; “I have had insomnia since six o’clock this morning, and my bearings are a little bit off. I never complain of real troubles, for they are blessings in disguise. They are good for us. Fancied troubles are the blighting ones.”

“Suppose that you had been kept away from your home on account of your health for three months, and were now called home to a dying wife, and couldn’t make any better progress than I have since I started last night? You don’t know what real troubles are, young man.”

Here he took another drink of his poison and I expressed as much sympathy as I could, considering the novelty of the exhibition, and started out in search of my poison, viz., café-au-lait.

I confess that I was considerably surprised at the old-fashioned provincial aspect of the town, and concluded that it was a better place than it appeared to be. Like New Orleans, it had a good harbor, had wealth, was the seaport of a prosperous Southern state, and imported bananas; yet it looked to me very much like a large country town of one business street. It belonged to the older generation of cities, already in a senile stage of existence. But the old aristocrats, who had been too proud to engage in commercial pursuits or to encourage their sons to do so, were nearly all dead, and the town, under the influence of new ideas, was beginning a new life and taking on new growth and development. So I resolved to test her with café-au-lait, and hurried out in search of the Battle House of antebellum fame. I finally found a shabby old building that had seen better days, with an unexpectedly aristocratic-looking restaurant under it full of well-dressed negro waiters, who bowed and scraped and ran on tiptoe as they always do where the tipping system is in vogue. It was the waiters’ way of announcing the fact to their victims. But the poor fellows (the waiters) served them (their victims) with a sort of feverish anxiety, and served them well and swell, and thus almost justified the system. My waiter was not, however, as good a Frenchman in scholarship as in manners, for although he understood my order for an omelette, he did not understand “café-au-lait,” or “coffee with hot milk.” Hot milk was too plebeian—cream was served in his restaurant.

After a long wait my breakfast came. The omelette was good, but the rolls were American biscuit rolls, damp, soft, lukewarm and flavorless. And the hot milk was in a tiny lunch-counter pitcher that held less than two tablespoonfuls. The coffee was clear and unadulterated, and therefore genuine United States made coffee. When U. S. makes coffee that is clear, U. S. thinks she has made coffee. She uses good or bad Mocha and Java in moderate quantity, but in order to make it clear she puts an egg in it which hardens about the grounds before the full flavor has been extracted, and thus much of the flavor remains at the bottom of the pot to be boiled out and developed for the servants and the waste-pail. Then the drinker covers up the taste with rich cream, thinking that the flavor, being covered up, cannot get away. Such coffee is comparatively harmless to the commonwealth, and on that account deserves its popularity. It is one of the few popular things that are harmless.

One of the advantages of café-au-lait is that the proportion of the two ingredients can be varied to suit the taste or idiosyncrasy of the drinker. Those who can not drink strong coffee can diminish the proportion of coffee with milk until but little coffee is used, and those who can not drink full strength milk can reduce the quantity of milk until but little milk is used. The palate will soon become accustomed to what is habitually drunk and may finally be taught to prefer either dilution.

I ate my breakfast and my hunger was appeased; but as I had started out to get a hot drink rather than something to eat, I was not satisfied, and the enjoyment of the meal was incomplete. I do not wish to say anything derogatory to the Battle House restaurant, for the hotel has died since (was burned up) and therefore deserves to be eulogized. In fact, I wish to praise the restaurant on patriotic grounds. It made American coffee and deserves praise for being American instead of French, which in itself is the highest praise I can give. But it did not occur to me to feel patriotic at the time. The temperature, following the “norther,” was 36 degrees F., the most chilling and unpatriotic temperature of the whole Fahrenheit system, and as I went out into the street my thoughts were still upon a good, hot, comforting cup of coffee. I therefore resolved to try again, and finally found a low-down restaurant on the corner of Royal Street near the station and got a cup of their cheap coffee, probably ordinary South American or Central American, which might have been thickened and blackened by a little chicory. It was not as clear and delicate as that of the Battle House, but it had more flavor. I asked for hot milk and when I had diluted the coffee nearly one half, the mixture still had flavor. I could have drunk three or four cupfuls. The charge for it was five cents. The price was the only bad thing about it, and I almost felt un-American at having enjoyed five cents so hugely. I felt humiliated, but I felt good.

The Central American coffee is quite bitter when well made. I was told that in order to develop the bitter flavor the Central Americans burn the coffee beans when they roast them, and thus render it more bitter than natural. This scorching takes away some of its delicacy of flavor and renders it unpalatable to many North Americans, but by using plenty of sugar when it is taken black, or by diluting it with an equal quantity of hot unskimmed milk and using but a small quantity of sugar, its bitterness is modified and it has a richness of flavor that makes it preferable to the so-called Mocha and Java as ordinarily made. It differs from ordinary U. S. restaurant coffee as champagne from cider. But, of course, many prefer cider.

Cereal coffee is possibly a good substitute for young people whose nerves are more easily injured than their stomachs. But for middle-aged and old people it is too heavy, for the amount of starch in it which must be swallowed without mastication tends to produce acid fermentation in the alimentary canal and hasten the advent of gout, which is the goal of all good eaters and drinkers. Cereal coffee has just one excuse for existing, but I’ve forgotten what it is. Old-fashioned chicory has more flavor and is less fermentable, and therefore is preferable for both the young and old. Pure coffee contains no starch and not enough tannin to injure a canary bird, and the stimulation of moderate coffee drinking is not very injurious to people past middle age. The only real contraindication is youth—but youth is always contradictory. Next to the sugar put into the coffee, the most injurious feature is the manner of drinking it, viz., sipping it while eating, and thus washing down food that should be chewed until dissolved and washed down by the saliva.

But the best solution of the whole coffee problem is to sip a glass of hot, slightly salted milk at the beginning and another at the end of the meal, and to eat the meal dry between them. If persisted in to the exclusion of coffee this hot milk habit will after a time take away all desire for coffee drinking, which is a habit of civilization and a very ancient and barbarous one. But many of us who consider ourselves civilized have barbarous tastes and habits, and do not wish to relinquish them. We bequeath the refining of our barbarous tastes to posterity—to our heirs. Let them fight over them, as they do over the other things.

After the train had finally pulled out I heard the sleeping-car stranger telling the sleeping-car conductor of his misfortune and the reason why he had been obliged to stay away from his home, which was in Hyde Park, Chicago. He said he couldn’t stand the cold there, and that it was impossible to get a hot drink within walking distance of his house.

“Just imagine,” he said, “living in Chicago and not being able to get a hot drink; to have to keep a saloon in your own house. There is something wrong about a community that makes every man keep a private saloon.”

“You’re right, sir. There must be something wrong about a city that can not provide saloons enough for its citizens. They must be tea-totalers,” replied the conductor sympathetically.

“Yes, and every one of ’em is tanning his stomach with tea and coffee. Serves ’em right. Let ’em tan it, damn it! By the way, conductor, did you see the fun a few minutes ago?”

“No, what was it?”

“I hugged a young lady, and she didn’t object. Yes, sir, I did it. As I was passing her in the aisle she stumbled against me and I had to hug her to keep from being knocked down. She begged my pardon and I excused her, thinking that honors were even, ha, ha!”

“We’ll be looking for an elopement, next,” suggested the conductor.

“No,” he said, “my tongue is the only thing that would run away with me now.”

After thus dwelling a while in a facetious manner on the details of the romantic adventure, and repeating himself many times, he suddenly remembered what he was there for and began to talk tearfully about his wife, and pulled out his bottle and went into the smoking-room for water. The old man was as young in his feelings as the day he was born—he had a saving sense of humor. Those who are not gifted with a sense of humor are born old; those with it die young. Notwithstanding his troubles, the old man was dying young.

We arrived at Montgomery at 5 P. M. and had to change cars in order to catch the train that had left New Orleans in the morning, twelve hours after we had. By this time the old gentleman was dull and heavy and did not wish to get off. He had paid for his berth expecting the car to go on to Chicago, and insisted on keeping it. He said that he had fulfilled his part of the contract. They put him off, however, and I left the poor old fellow in the station while I went out for a stroll through the main thoroughfare of the picturesque little capital of Alabama in the heart of the South. It is a busy-looking place of about 30,000 inhabitants, with crowded streets and attractive-looking stores that seemed to be doing plenty of business. Following the main thoroughfare, I soon came within sight of the state-house, which showed off to great advantage on the hill at the head of the street. Beside it I found the Confederate Soldiers’ Monument, which was a credit to the state from a confederate point of view. It even created strong feelings of admiration and sympathy in me, a lifelong republican and sinner.

When I returned to the train at half past six the old Hyde Parker, who was forced to keep a private saloon in his own house, came aboard with a full stock of wet goods in his system and a fresh stock in his pocket. He sat in the smoking-room trying in vain to crack jokes and smoke a cigar. His ideas were muddled and he had lost the knack of managing a lighted cigar. He did not put the wrong end in his mouth nor miss his mouth, but he repeatedly dropped it, let it go out twice, chewed the end off, burned his fingers and finally threw it at the cuspidor, missing his aim and scattering the ashes on our feet.

Two young men, who seemed to be commercial travelers, took a kind-hearted interest in him and offered to help him to bed. But the septuagenarian did not know the number of his berth and could not find his ticket. He had left it in his overcoat and did not know where his overcoat was. One of the young men went to the porter, found the overcoat and number, and had the berth made up. He himself had undoubtedly helped and been helped to bed on sundry occasions in the past and was willing and qualified for the deed of sympathy. When he returned the old man was offering to fight three of us. I knew that it was one of the Hyde Parker’s tipsy jokes, but the others, not knowing him as well as I did, took him seriously and insisted upon putting him to bed. They were preparing to use kindly force if necessary. He then started to unlace his shoes in the smoking-room and, upon being told by the astonished young men not to take them off there, he said that he wanted to put his shoes to bed first, and asked how they could get to bed unless he put them there. Realizing that they took him in earnest, he went on in that way for a while before he allowed them to lead him off. He was not too far gone to have a little sport with them.

The next morning when I entered the dressing-room his empty whiskey bottle lay on the washstand under the ice-water faucet, indicating that he had been to the water already, and he sat near the window eating sponge cakes out of a paper bag. He was sober and thoughtful and did not seem to be enjoying his breakfast. I had a few limes left from the stock laid in at Bocas del Toro and was sucking one.

“If you would suck one of these limes,” I said, “it would give a fine lemon flavor to your cake.”

“Lemons don’t taste good, and they don’t agree with me,” he replied with a sort of grimace.

“But I have studied foods and digestions for a quarter of a century, and know what tastes good and digests well. That cake is too sweet. Just try a lime with it.”

“Stranger,” he said, “I have tasted and digested food for nearly three quarters of a century and knew what tastes good before you were thought of.”

“Surely you must have been mistaken all of this time,” I said, “or you would agree with me, for I am a physician and have learned all about taste and digestion. Hereafter, before deciding how a thing tastes, ask me.”

“Well, Doctor, I’d like to know how whiskey tastes.”

“Like poison,” I answered.

“Well, I feel just like taking poison, and the poisoner the better,” he said as he arose and started for the water tank.

I allowed him to poison himself while I went out to the dining-car for breakfast. When I returned I found him smoking a black cigar and looking quite pleasant. The poison had reached its cerebral destination and had overcome the melancholy tension.

He asked me how the breakfast had tasted.

“Why, you have been eating breakfast for three quarters of a century and ought to know,” I answered.

“I’ve lived just long enough, Doctor, to learn that eating breakfast before working for it is a bad habit that follows civilization.”

“I agree with you there. It is a mere matter of taste after all. As a doctor I eat breakfast before I work, not because it is a bad habit, but because I am a doctor, and must know how it acts in order to be able to treat others who do it. I eat to learn.”

“And I suppose they charged you a dollar for the lesson, for learning how it tasted?”

“No,” I said, “this isn’t a dollar car. Meals are served à la carte. You can get all you want for less than a dollar, unless you have an officious waiter who puts on so much style for you that you feel ashamed to take back what is left of your dollar. If you are a grapefruit faddist your breakfast costs a quarter more. Or if you are rich and don’t know any better you can take sweetened grapefruit, breakfast food smothered with sugar, an omelette with jelly, melted butter on toast, coffee sweetened into syrup, griddle cakes served with honey and milk, and Apollinaris to wash it all down, and can spend a couple of dollars and lay up disease for the future, as the lady and gentleman across from me were doing. I had a fine large piece of broiled white fish, with Saratoga potatoes, cornbread, two cups of coffee and a pitcher of hot milk, all for eighty cents, less than double the price of a common restaurant breakfast.”

“You have to pay something to keep the wheels going around,” he remarked.

“Yes, and for the comfort and convenience,” I answered. “It’s worth it. You can get chops for fifty cents, a tenderloin steak for sixty-five cents, or eggs for twenty cents.”

The old man’s eyes opened wider and he began to swallow saliva as I continued:

“They have a fine list of specials on the bill of fare this morning: Spanish omelette, hashed chicken with poached eggs, shad’s roe with bacon, and a lot of dainty dishes at popular prices.”

He put down his cigar and said, “I say, stranger, I’m getting hungry for something good to eat, even if I don’t know what tastes good. I believe I’ll go in and try it.”

When he came back I asked him if he had had a good breakfast.

“Yes, I had breakfast,” he said, and maintained a gloomy silence.

Whether my glowing description had led him to expect too much, or whether the prices were unsatisfactory, or whether he had been taken with one of his facetious attacks and had gotten himself into trouble with the decorous and decorative dining-car conductor, or whether his domestic troubles had gained the ascendency and spoiled his breakfast, or whether a good meal did not agree with him as well as a good drink, or whether it was getting too far past the time for another “smile,” or what not, I could not ascertain. So I left him alone with his full stomach and empty bottle and went to my seat in the sleeper.

When I returned a little later he was saying to two men who were smoking with him:

“Gentlemen, I can’t help speaking of it. I have been buried in the pine woods for three months and am now going home to bury my wife. Oh, it’s hard! Where’s the porter? I must have another drink.”

We tried to dissuade him and refused to join him, but he got his drink in spite of our efforts.

“It’s hard, gentlemen. I remember how when my mother died, my father called my brother and me to him and said, ‘Boys, your mother is dying. She’ll never sit at the table with us again, never again.’ And to think that now I am going home to tell my boys the same thing. Oh, it’s hard! I must have another drink. I can’t stand it.”

His voice was broken with emotion and his eyes full of tears as he tried to persuade us to take a drink with him, but he had to take one alone. We had no excuse for getting drunk. We could not say, Joliet like, “Drinking is such sweet sorrow, that I shall keep on drinking till it be morrow.”

By noon he had taken five drinks that I knew of, besides having finished his own bottle before breakfast, and was again telling jokes. He had a specific remedy for grief.

The old man was a true American in his feelings and actions. He had hesitated about paying a dollar for a breakfast on wheels with its flying luxuries, and was not ashamed to be frugal in his diet, yet had spent more than a dollar since breakfast for drinks, and had offered to “treat” like a prince. And the fact that he was on his way home to the bedside of a dying wife was not sufficient even temporarily to break up his drinking habit. Surely we Americans are creatures of habit, especially of the treating habit, which leads to the drinking habit. We are the most hospitable people in the world. In other countries people treat and entertain for a purpose; we do so without a purpose.

CHAPTER VIII

Did You Have at Pleasant Trip?

Home at Last—Too much Tropics—The Hold-up—Explaining about It at Home, per Telephone, at the Hospital, at the Office—The Time of My Life—An Exhausting Office Hour—Easier to Stay at Home—A Formulated Answer—Its Nauseating Repetition—Talking It over with Another Victim.

I arrived at home late in the afternoon tired out mentally by six weeks of discomfort and change of habits, and weakened physically by bodily inactivity and continuous tropical heat. Even the enjoyment of the medical meetings was associated with loss of sleep and overwork of the digestive organs, and did nothing to rest the mind or invigorate the body. I was in that excitable state of mind that usually accompanies an impoverished state of blood in active people. And when my wife asked me if I had had a pleasant trip I had to go into considerable unpleasant detail to enable her to ask me why I went.

By the time I had divested myself of the dust and dilapidation of travel, my son, who was as large as I, but not as old, came home and startled me with the information that he had been held up by two footpads at eleven o’clock the night before on the corner of Drexel Boulevard and Forty-sixth Street.

“How dared you?” I exclaimed. “And within half a block of home. How did you do it?”

“Oh, it was easy enough. I ran up against the muzzle of a pistol and they did the rest.”

“But you should not have done it—you are too young. I am two and a half times as old as you, and I haven’t done it yet. I never ran up to two footpads on a deserted boulevard at 11 P. M. One should always reserve such experiences for the future. Don’t you know that it’s dangerous to get frightened in that way?”

“Oh, I wasn’t frightened. They were frightened. They were in such haste to run away that they only took my carfare and pocketbook.”

“So they took your carfare, your last nickel. It was a mean trick. They ought to have been shot.”

“No; they were quite decent and friendly. When I asked them to give back my fraternity meal ticket, which was all my pocketbook contained, they said ‘Sure!’ and handed it out to me. They did not even take my fraternity pin which was in plain sight.”

“Good for them! Fraternities originated among thieves, as fraternity methods indicate. They showed, however, that there is something good about fraternities by sharing your pocketbook with you. I suppose that they also returned your watch?”

“No; they didn’t find it for I do not carry my fob by night. In their hurry they forgot to feel of the watch pocket in my pants.”

“Don’t say pants, Heath; say trousers. Or, if you will talk Dago, say pantaloons. Pants and panties are undignified abbreviations. One would think that you had been fraternizing with footpads all of your life.”

“And they did not discover my ring, which was concealed by my glove.”

“Well, my son, now that you have accomplished your object in coming home so late of nights, I hope that you will consider that you have no further excuse for making the street pavements work by night as well as by day. And I trust you will also profit by the example of your fraternal footpads never to do things in a hurry, even when you are doing wrong. How did you get away from them?”

“They told me to hand over my bills. But when they learned that receipted bills were the only kind I had, they told me to run. I said ‘Sure!’ and ran. And they ran in the opposite direction as fast as they could. I ran to Forty-seventh Street and saw a policeman as far away as I could see toward Fiftieth Street, walking toward me.”

“Well, I congratulate you,” I said, growing calmer as I realized that he had had a useful experience, one that is not vouchsafed to every college boy. “You are smarter than your father; your business horizon is not bounded by the payment of bills. You came out ahead in your bargain with the footpads; you gave them a nickel and they gave you a meal ticket. Keep on getting the better of people and you will die rich. I discovered the method too late to adopt it as a principle. If I had my life to live over again, I would take a lesson from you. But don’t forget to profit by this experience, viz., to wear gloves when you wear a ring, and to spend all but your carfare before coming home at night.”

He then asked me if I had had a nice time while away. After I had explained to him that I had not derived as much of a sensation from my six weeks and hundreds of dollars as he had from his five minutes and a nickel, my younger son arrived and asked me the same question, and thus made another explanation necessary.

Dinner was then ready. After dinner my married daughter called up my wife by telephone and asked her if I had had a pleasant trip. My wife answered:

“Oh, yes; but he is very tired. Traveling is so tiresome, etc., etc.,” and thus evaded a direct answer. She couldn’t tell a lie, and she wouldn’t tell the truth.

A little later Doctor Doering called me up and asked me if I had had a pleasant trip. I explained in detail how storms at sea and the inevitable and invariable miscalculations and misconnections of Southern travel had interfered more or less with the accomplishment of the objects of my medico-social holiday enterprise.

The next morning I stopped at the Woman’s Hospital and met Doctor Martin, the great medical handshaker, at the hall door. He stepped up to me with a radiant accentuated smile, shook me thoroughly and said:

“Why, hello, Byford! Did you have a pleasant trip?”

He had me by the hand and is stronger than he looks. Hence I could not quickly get away, and proceeded to explain that I had seen the place where it was thought that the canal was going to be dug, and where it was thought that the meeting of the Medical Congress had been held, and was more or less satisfied with my trip, particularly with the getting back end of it.

After a few other evasive answers, applauded by genuine shakes, I escaped from his grip and ran almost into the arms of the housekeeper. She stopped a minute, looked at me with animated eyes and an expansive smile and said:

“Why, Doctor Byford, how do you do? Did you have a pleasant trip?”

“Why—y-yes, very pleasant—that is—considering that I had to be away from the hospital and my work. Very pleasant, but quite warm and sunshiny, thank you.”

I escaped up stairs, but Doctor Steele stood grinning at the top. “Why, how are you, Byford? Did you have a pleasant trip?”

“Yes, of course. It was a great success and I got back safely. I met the Panama women and the Panapa men and saw the site of the Panamañana canal and many other strange sights.”

I hurried away toward the wards as if very busy, although I had but one patient in the hospital. She was there when I left for Panama, and had apparently waited, womanlike, to ask me the question, for there seemed to be nothing else the matter with her. But she paid me for my answer and was welcome to it.

Before I could escape from the building Doctor Paddock caught sight of me in time to stop me. He slowed up for a good talk, and exclaimed in his hail-fellow-well-metest manner:

“Why, Byford, how are you, old fellow? Did you have a pleasant trip?”

I threw up my right hand in Patrick Henry style and cried as I rushed by him toward the door:

“Did I? I had the time of my life, the very time of my life! Ha, ha!”

I shot out of the door, lost my footing, and slid all the way down the icy iron steps, reckless of life and limb, and was off for my office. It is strange how one will forget one’s dignity and risk one’s life for things and people that don’t pay. One should never lose one’s patience, or one’s equilibrium in a hurry.

At the office the young lady attendant greeted me effusively (more so, I thought, than the mere fact that I had come to keep my regular office hour really called for), and wanted to know if I had had a pleasant trip.

“The time of my life; the very loveliest time of my life,” I said, and locked myself in my private room.

On account of having returned later than I had announced, I had an unusually large number of patients that morning. Each one delayed me at the end of the consultation by politely and kindly asking the question. Evidently they considered it a sort of tail or tale to the consultation, as a dessert belongs to a dinner or a wag to a dog.

Before I had gotten through with my patients Doctor Isham caught a glimpse of me as I ushered one of them out, and rushed into me and shook my hand with the spontaneous cordiality of true politeness. He said that he did not wish to take up my time while patients were waiting, but just wanted to ask me if I had had a pleasant trip.

“Why, sir,” I said jubilantly, “I just had the time of my life, that’s all. Banquets, highballs and fancy balls enough to drown us and bury us and decorate our graves. The Panamanians spent $25,000 on twenty-five of us in four days, and seven of the twenty-five were from Chicago. Chicago got a third, and probably more. In short, we had a hot time. If you don’t believe it, go to Panama next Christmas and find out.”

After thus beating time for a while longer I got him out. When I had taken the “dessert” with my last patient I felt quite exhausted, for, as I have intimated before, life in the tropics thins the blood and softens the muscles, and thus had diminished my powers of endurance. While there I had not felt the need of good blood and firm muscles, but upon assuming active duties in zero weather I missed them. When, therefore, I started for home I was in a neurasthenic, irritable state of mind. As I passed through the reception-room the sister of the office attendant, who happened to be there, smiled and bowed to me and wanted to know if I had had a pleasant trip.

“What’s that?” I said, less ceremoniously than I intended.

“Did you have a pleasant trip, Doctor?”

“Oh—why certainly. Why not? Do you suppose,” I said gaily, as I backed toward the door, “that I could travel 2,400 miles and spend $25,000 in four days without having a pleasant trip? Just spend $25,000 and travel 2,400 miles in four days and you’ll know what a pleasant trip I had; you’ll have the time of your life. Then every one will ask you if you had a pleasant trip, and you’ll have the time of your life again. Good day.”

And so for several days my life was dominated by this conventionality of polite speech. It would have been much easier to have staid at home than to have gone through what I had, viz., five days of sickness on the S. S. Limón; one night on the seasick Italian steamship; nearly two weeks in the blood-hot city of Panama, dodging mosquitoes and not daring to light the candle in my bedroom, laboriously tucking in the mosquito bar all around every night in the dark, and hiding under it for three hours in the middle of each day; perspiring continuously; bathing in a washbowl; forced to eat and drink two banquets daily, that kept me thin; treating and being treated to highballs half a dozen times daily, that made me sick; being cheated by Chinamen, that made me ashamed; having to see a brave rooster murdered and a tame bull tortured and assassinated; spending a week stowed away in the S. S. Brighton, while rocked by the trade-winds, tossed by a “norther” and bedeviled by insomnia; becalmed for twelve hours between New Orleans and Chicago; losing a bunch of keys, two umbrellas, five handkerchiefs, my railroad ticket, a ten-dollar bill and a necktie fastener; being caught fifty-five times in the rain and once in the water,—and then having to write a book about it. But to be asked forty times a day for forty days, “Did you have a pleasant trip?” cured me of all desire for travel. Travel and travail are of the same origin. The next time I want to go to Panama I will stay at home and read about it, and then talk about it. Let others who care to go, read my book instead. The book isn’t half as bad as the trip, and nobody will ask them about it, and thus they will not be obliged to tell lies about it. In order to clear my conscience for all time, I formulated an answer that I chose not to consider a lie. I replied to everybody thus, “Pleasant trip? Why, I had the time of my life. Read my book about it—’tis just like it.”

But even the repetition of the formula became as nauseating as forty squabs (or squalls) in forty days, and I sometimes made myself ridiculous by inventing uncompromising variations. But finally I learned to be patient, and now feel that my trip to the tropics was worth while, for it finished the development of my character. I have become a man of patience, and say nothing whenever I feel as if I ought to talk back.

I met Doctor Brower on the street one day and asked him if he had had a pleasant trip. He stopped breathing for a second and looked at me queerly, but finally smiled.

“Byford, do you know, I have heard that remark before.”

“Shake!” said I. “Misery loves company. I suppose that you have become a confirmed liar by this time, and are writing a text-book full of lies and bad advice.”

“Well, it’s terribly monotonous,” he answered, “to have to repeat to every one you meet what a fine time you have had. But our trip was not such a very bad one after all.”

“What? Come now, you don’t have to lie to me. You’re overdoing it. Beware of the lying habit.”

“Well, it wasn’t very sweet but it was short. You ought to travel with Doctor Senn to the North Pole, Lake Baikal, Vladivostok, tropical India, and every other God-forsaken place on the footstool. You’d consider this trip an interesting little nightmare to be laughed at and forgotten, when compared with the prolonged punishment of trotting around the globe after Senn, whose legs are made of solid steel. But I’ve done with Senn as a traveling companion. His notion of joy and mine are constitutionally different. Something is wrong with his idea of enjoyment. I can’t diagnose his case because he has no nerves. There’s something uncanny about him. He can’t be discouraged, killed or made seasick. I’ve no patience with him.”

Transcriber’s Notes:

Due to a printer’s error the first two lines of page 66 were repeated (and misplaced) on to the top of page 65. Thus ‘which lay alongside the pier, brought our task however to a most agreeable ending.’ has been removed and a fullstop added to ‘full of passive praise’ at the bottom of page 64. Whether two lines have been lost is unknown as all editions of this work carry the same error.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.

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Table of Contents

- TO PANAMA AND BACK
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE