To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.