Spent ten hours on a small cabin launch going up the Panuco River and
the Tamesi with which it junctions. At the ranch on Don Juan del Rio we
stopped to bathe. It was very hot and very beautiful. We passed miles
and miles of banana plantations and Indians in their frail overloaded
“dugouts” who signalled to us to slow up for fear our “wash” would
swamp them. Arm chairs and awnings were prepared for us, but with
colored glasses to protect my eyes, I preferred sitting up in the
ship’s bow all day in full glare of the sun. It beat down upon me, it
burnt me, mercilessly, splendidly. I felt as if all the cold and fogs
of England’s winters that had seemed so long, all the spring-times of
England that had failed, all the summers of England that had been a
disappointment, and all the autumns that had eaten damp into the marrow
of my bones, were being burnt and branded and cauterized.