On the ninth day we reach Aspinwall in the Republic of Granada.
The President of New Granada is a Central American named Mosquero.
I was told that he derived quite a portion of his income by
carrying passengers' valises and things from the steamer to the
hotels in Aspinwall. It was an infamous falsehood. Fancy A.
Lincoln carrying carpet-bags and things! and indeed I should rather
trust him with them than Mosquero, because the former gentleman, as
I think some one has before observed, is "honest."
I intrust my bag to a speckled native, who confidentially gives me
to understand that he is the only strictly honest person in
Aspinwall. The rest, he says, are niggers--which the colored
people of the Isthmus regard as about as scathing a thing as they
can say of one another.
I examine the New Grenadian flag, which waves from the
chamber-window of the refreshment saloon. It is of simple design.
You can make one.
Take half of a cotton shirt, that has been worn two months, and dip
it in molasses of the Day & Martin brand. Then let the flies
gambol over it for a few days, and you have it. It is an emblem of
Sweet Liberty.
At the Howard House the man of sin rubbeth the hair of the horse to
the bowels of the cat, and our girls are waving their lily-white
hoofs in the dazzling waltz.
We have a quadrille, in which an English person slips up and jams
his massive brow against my stomach. He apologizes, and I say,
"all right, my lord." I subsequently ascertained that he
superintended the shipping of coals for the British steamers, and
owned fighting cocks.
The ball stops suddenly.
Great excitement. One of our passengers intoxicated and riotous in
the street. Openly and avowedly desires the entire Republic of New
Grenada to "come on."
In case they do come on, agrees to make it lively for them. Is
quieted down at last, and marched off to prison, by a squad of
Grenadian troops. Is musical as he passes the hotel, and smiling
sweetly upon the ladies and children on the balcony, expresses a
distinct desire to be an Angel, and with the Angels stand. After
which he leaps nimbly into the air and imitates the war-cry of the
red man.
. . . .
The natives amass wealth by carrying valises, &c., then squander it
for liquor. My native comes to me as I sit on the veranda of the
Howard House smoking a cigar, and solicits the job of taking my
things to the cars next morning. He is intoxicated, and has been
fighting, to the palpable detriment of his wearing apparel; for he
has only a pair of tattered pantaloons and a very small quantity of
shirt left.
We go to bed. Eight of us are assigned to a small den upstairs,
with only two lame apologies for beds.
Mosquitoes and even rats annoy us fearfully. One bold rat gnaws at
the feet of a young Englishman in the party. This was more than
the young Englishman could stand, and rising from his bed he asked
us if New Grenada wasn't a Republic? We said it was. "I thought
so," he said. "Of course I mean no disrespect to the United States
of America in the remark, but I think I prefer a bloated monarchy!"
He smiled sadly--then handing his purse and his mother's photograph
to another English person, he whispered softly. "If I am eaten up,
give them to Me mother--tell her I died like a true Briton, with no
faith whatever in the success of a republican form of government!"
And then he crept back to bed again.
. . . .
We start at seven the next morning for Panama.
My native comes bright and early to transport my carpet sack to the
railway station. His clothes have suffered still more during the
night, for he comes to me now dressed only in a small rag and one
boot.
At last we are off. "Adios, Americanos!" the natives cry; to which
I pleasantly reply, "ADOUS! and long may it be before you have a
chance to Do us again."
The cars are comfortable on the Panama railway, and the country
through which we pass is very beautiful. But it will not do to
trust it much, because it breeds fevers and other unpleasant
disorders, at all seasons of the year. Like a girl we most all
have known, the Isthmus is fair but false.
There are mud huts all along the route, and half-naked savages gaze
patronizingly upon us from their doorways. An elderly lady in
spectacles appears to be much scandalized by the scant dress of
these people, and wants to know why the Select Men don't put a stop
to it. From this, and a remark she incidentally makes about her
son, who has invented a washing machine which will wash, wring, and
dry a shirt in ten minutes, I infer that she is from the hills of
Old New England, like the Hutchinson family.
. . . .
The Central American is lazy. The only exercise he ever takes is
to occasionally produce a Revolution. When his feet begin to swell
and there are premonitory symptoms of gout, he "revolushes" a
spell, and then serenely returns to his cigarette and hammock under
the palm-trees.
These Central American Republics are queer concerns. I do not of
course precisely know what a last year's calf's ideas of immortal
glory may be, but probably they are about as lucid as those of a
Central American in regard to a republican form of government.
And yet I am told they are a kindly people in the main. I never
met but one of them--a Costa-Rican; on board the Ariel. He lay
sick with fever, and I went to him and took his hot hand gently in
mine. I shall never forget his look of gratitude. And the next
day he borrowed five dollars of me, shedding tears as he put it in
his pocket.
. . . .
At Panama we lose several of our passengers, and among them three
Peruvian ladies, who go to Lima, the city of volcanic eruptions and
veiled black-eyed beauties.
The Senoritas who leave us at Panama are splendid creatures. They
learned me Spanish, and in the soft moonlight we walked on deck and
talked of the land of Pizarro. (You know old Piz. conquered Peru!
and although he was not educated at West Point, he had still some
military talent.) I feel as though I had lost all my relations,
including my grandmother and the cooking stove when these gay young
Senoritas go away.
They do not go to Peru on a Peruvian bark, but on an English
steamer. Off to Acapulco.