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._
[Illustration: MAP OF PANAMA]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I
TO PANAMA
CHAPTER 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
[Illustration: 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.