For a day after our arrival on the Arcturus we waited in Colon while
the crew shifted coal from one bunker to another because it was getting
so hot in the forward one there was fear of its catching on fire.
And on the very first day while the rest of the crowd were ashore
seeing the city of Colon, which is at the Atlantic entrance of the
Panama Canal, I went with Serge, the Russian taxidermist to a little
beach across the bay. We took nets with us and were lucky to catch some
wonderful butterflies, several very bright blue fish and some unusual
shells.
Next day we started through the Canal early, and steamed along up to
the first lock. This is one of the finest and highest of all the locks,
Gatun, and here also is the great spillway, which empties out into the
Atlantic Ocean from Gatun Lake. The concrete walls and the little
railroad engines which pulled us through the locks all seem so simple
and like toys that you can hardly believe they would be able to take a
big ship through. For there are only one or two men to be seen the
whole time and one in an engine house turns a handle and the locks
open, fill with water, take us in, lift us up, and then set us out upon
a higher level into another lock, or the lake. The little engines have
cogged wheels and run along up and down the grades like tractor
engines.
In some of the locks we saw garfish, like eels a little, with long
sharp beaks or bills in front of their heads. And at many places along
the bank of the river or lake we saw big crocodiles lying out in the
sun.
In the afternoon we were in Panama, a city built by the Spaniards when
the first city of Old Panama was destroyed by the great English Pirate,
Morgan. We drove out to this old city six miles away. There are only
ruins there now, but the walls of the old cathedrals still stand, and
the square tower can be seen very far away. Morgan attacked the
Spaniards here after he had crossed the Isthmus with a few hundred men.
His men were nearly starved and were worn out with the hard work to get
across but they were determined to take this city for there was much
gold and jewels here and the pirates wanted to win it. Also the
Spaniards were afraid of them and after a first defeat in the open
plains outside the city, they ran away.
In the sea wall around the new city of Panama there is a prison, and at
one time there were terrible torture chambers and undersea dungeons
there in which the early Spaniards kept their prisoners. It is called
Chirique Prison.
Next morning we were sailing along on the calm Pacific Ocean which
Balboa discovered in 1513 from a high peak on the Isthmus of Panama. By
night time we had put over the big Peterson trawl net and had brought
in many small fish ... salpas and many kinds of tiny deep sea fish.
Everybody ran to see what was in the net and looked at things through
microscopes and immediately sat down to identify them and classify
them. One person taking the little fish-like ones, another the jelly
fish, another shrimps and Uncle Will, the director, taking anything
that was very unusual or a new species.
The next day when the big net was put over, we caught a lot of
different things, tiny fish, glacous, salpa and others. At night the
deep net again brought in new ones and many of the first ones again
except that many of these specimens were bright red. It is queer but
many of the deep sea things are red like the shrimps, or else have the
power to change to red, like a small squid which was white one minute
and bright red the next, when he seemed to get angry and scurry around.
One of these very little fish, named argyropelecus has lovely silver
sides, beautiful colors, and small spots which shine and almost
sparkle.
Another fish, less than an inch long, oneirodes, is the only specimen
ever to have been seen alive. It was still wiggling a little bit when
the net was brought up. Most of these fish die when they are brought to
the surface, for under the water there is a great pressure on them and
when this is released by coming to the surface they explode or all come
to pieces.
One night we were on the gangway, Uncle Will, Ruth Rose, Serge and
myself and all of a sudden a great big squid came up and made a kind of
“Ha—aa.” He tried his best to take hold of the net with which Serge
tried to grab at him, and put his huge tentacles out of the water. He
was a sickly whitish color. When we brought the smaller ones caught in
a trawl net into the aquarium later however they changed color several
times, turning from this whitish to a bright red as quick as could be.
Squids can squirt out an inky liquid which discolors the water so that
they cannot be seen by their enemies. This is used in making sepia ink.
For an hour or two in the afternoon I had my line over and at sunset
time it hooked a 32-pound dolphin fish, a coryphinea. He was fifty-six
inches long, a lovely bluish green color, yellow tail, green back and
blue sides. During the day we had seen many of them swimming two or
three feet beneath the surface around our bow, and darting right near
under the pulpit. The crew had had one hooked but lost it; and Dr. Cady
also had one hooked.
In pulling it up over the boom there was great fun and excitement for
it was heavy, slippery and three men helped before landing it.