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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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: