CHAPTER IV
Port Limón
Christmas Eve—Heat as a Stimulant—Essentials to a Good Sleeper—Sheltering Reefs—Flying-Fish—Port Limón—View of the Island and Town from the Ship—A Sailing Vessel—The Piers—Fruits—Sharks—Christmas Festivities of San José—The Great Flood—Accidents on the Railway—The Graveyard Washout—Two Weeks of Travel to go a Hundred Miles—Ashore—Almost an Accident—Difficult Landing—A Negro with an Irish Brogue—Other Negroes—A Cockney Accent—U. S. Accent—Sun Baths and Shower Baths—The Rainy Season—No Thunder—An Earthquake—Its Wasted Energy—Population of Limón—-The Fruit Company—The Stores and Business Houses—San Joséans Caught at Limón by the Washout—Boarding the Boat—Freight-ship Luxury—Arrival of the Italian Ship—Christmas Dinner on Board—Government Piers—The Warehouse of the United Fruit Company—Other Houses—Clean Streets—The Colored Inhabitants—The Race Problem—Vultures—The Cockpit—The Cock Fight—A Used-up Victor—The Market—Tough Meat—Saloons—The Hotel and Garden—A Cockatoo—Highballs—Dear S. S. Limón—Escape from Malaria, Mosquitoes and Yellow Fever.
Extracts From Letters.
Off Port Limón, on S. S. Limón.
10:30 A. M. Saturday, Dec. 24, 1904.
This is Christmas eve, or will be when it is. It required quite a little will power for me to come into the smoking-room where there is no breeze, in order to write and swelter, and swelter and write, and thus do two things at the same time on the same day. I feel like one bird being killed by two stones.
You, of course, can have no conception of the effect of this tropical heat upon the nervous energies, for heat is a stimulant, and therefore not in your line. I formerly imagined that it was a pleasant experience to be under the influence of a stimulant, but now know that it is not. It does not make it a bit easier to do what you do not wish to do. I wonder if science is really correct in calling heat a stimulant, or if the idea is merely an opinion of scientists who, like women, are forever changing their minds, and who have but little experience or sympathy with stimulants?
By night my head is weary from thinking about how happy people are who live on land, so I promptly fall asleep and stay asleep for seven or eight hours. The three essentials to a good sleeper are present, viz., a relaxed mind, a comfortable stomach and warm feet. The combination is not to be had at home where the brain, stomach and feet can not get together.
We were all day Monday from 10:30 A. M. to 6 P. M. in getting out of the Mississippi River (120 miles or thereabouts) and had smooth sailing on Tuesday, giving every one a chance to eat three times. On Wednesday we all dieted three times, being tossed by a troublesome trade-wind which was to last a week. But it is the unexpected that is always happening. By noon we ran behind some sheltering reefs off Yucatan and were suffering only from hunger—which is more easily cured than seasickness.
The sun was shining and innumerable flying-fish were sporting about the boat. Instead of sailing through the air as I had seen them represented in books, they seemed to keep their winglike fins in a constant flutter, like the wings of hummingbirds, and shone brightly in the sunlight as they sped over the waves for forty or fifty feet. When they shot up out of the water they reached a height of two or three feet, went ahead for a short distance, and gradually sank nearer and nearer to the water until buried in a rising wave. After gaining the height acquired by the first impulse as they emerged, they did not seem able to rise any higher, but occasionally one would strike the crest of a wave at the end of its flight and give itself an upward turn, and would thus get a fresh start and take another flight, somewhat shorter than the first. The large number of them, and their liveliness and apparently intense enjoyment of the air and sun bath, produced a decidedly exhilarating effect upon us and added to the joy of not being seasick. But alas! Great happiness never lasts. The next morning, Thursday, we were in the open sea again among the swells.
And the swells still continue on the sea as well as in Port Limón, where we have been anchored since yesterday afternoon. The coast line is straight and there are no breakwaters for the protection of ships, except an island by the name of Uvita, which is situated about a quarter of a mile from the shore. Our ship, two freight steamers and a sailing vessel are anchored behind it. The island appears oval in shape and has, I should say, a surface of about six acres. There are reefs at either end upon which foamy breakers are constantly curling and which, with the dense tropical forest that covers it, constitute an animated and pleasing picture. From the ship the town also looks beautiful, nestling among the cocoa palms and other trees that line the shore, and forming a pretty fringe to the densely wooded, rising background.
The sailing vessel, which is a large schooner, came in shortly after we did, and it was an interesting experience to see her handled by three or four men. She came toward us riding at full speed before the wind with all sails set. She let down some of them as she came near us, swung slowly around our stern, let down more sail, pointed up toward the wind, then let down all sail and dropped anchor just as she got into position beside us at a conveniently safe distance. The quickness with which so few men executed these numerous details at the right moment, and the accuracy with which the ship was maneuvered, with nothing but the wind as a motor, caused me to realize that there was as much nicety in managing a ship as in removing an appendix.
If there is no bay at Limón there are at least fine piers. The ships remain at anchor until the sea is calm, then move up beside the piers and take on their loads. Coffee and bananas seem to be the principal exports, although about all kinds of tropical fruits are, or can be, raised in Costa Rica. Oranges and pineapples are plentiful, but our Northern apple, which has almost as great a variety of flavors as all of the tropical fruits put together, is an exotic and a luxury.
We saw a shark foraging about the ship this morning. Usually nothing but the back fin came in sight as he swam along the surface, although occasionally he would show his nose. The sailors are fishing for him, but so far have not had a bite, and I am deprived of an exciting description. But few in my place would allow the opportunity to pass, bite or no bite. The captain says that the popular notion that sharks turn on the back or side when they bite or take anything into the mouth is a mistaken one. He and others have seen them grab things without turning. They do not always take time to turn on the side. Like other animals they bite at things in any old way. But if a shark wishes to seize a large object that is floating on the surface, he may, if in no hurry, turn sidewise in order not to have to lift his head out of water over the object. Or if he wishes to bite a man’s leg he must turn sidewise in order not to bump his nose against the leg and thus prevent the mouth, which is quite a distance behind the nose, getting here. But that he habitually turns on his back or side, like a playful kitten, in order to eat or commit murder is one of those romantic notions that people who like to be deceived like to believe. Information that is novel or absurd attracts attention and spreads widely, and is slow to be corrected by reason and accurate observation. Natural science still has many entertaining absurdities to eliminate from its teachings.
But now that I am within sight and touch of the land of promise, the beautiful Costa Rica, I find myself in a sad plight. I can not get in. I sailed from New Orleans a week earlier than the other delegates in order to spend the holiday week at San José, the capital of Costa Rica and the Paris of Central America, and practice my Spanish and participate in the revelry. The beautiful city is located up in the highlands nearly 4,000 feet above the sea level and has a mean yearly temperature of 68 degrees F., the extremes being 50 and 80 degrees. Although it has neither a good troupe of actors nor of singers, it has the finest theater on the continent. It therefore imports an operatic company from Spain every year for the Christmas holidays, and has a season of operatic and theatrical performances, mimic bull-fights, genuine cock-fights, noisy merry-go-rounds, harmless football and all sorts of Spanish celebrations. All business is suspended and the people give themselves up to a season of carnival such as Latin nations delight in. But the wind blew, the rain came, the earth quaked and the mountains started down toward the sea, carrying away and burying miles of the only railroad track that led from the Caribbean sea to the capital. This occurred four days ago, and two feet of water is still running over the great railroad bridge, which is 620 feet long and 220 feet above the bed of the well-named Reventazon River (Big Buster River). The wind and rain did about the same thing last year and, finding that it was easy, repeated its performance this year, only in a more thorough manner.
The last train that came down from San José had to run through water that reached almost to the firebox of the engine, and stop occasionally to chop up huge tree trunks that overlay the track. A train taking up the imported actors and singers engaged for the Christmas festivities at San José has not been heard from, and as all telegraphic communication between the port and the capital is interrupted, it is not known whether the players are now acting for a living or swimming for their lives. A trainful of workmen, sent up to see what could be done to clear the track, was caught in a land slide and buried, engine, men and all.
Nine inches of rain fell at Limón night before last and carried the muddy water of the river out into the sea for five miles, coloring it a light yellow. As we came here we entered this yellow sea before we sighted Limón, and were in it fully an hour before we arrived in port. Trees, bunches of bananas and other debris are floating about, and although the stream that empties into the sea at Limón was a small one, they say that it is now large enough to float a ship. A portion of the graveyard here was also washed out, the flood carrying tombstones from one grave to another and mixing up the bones. However, as far as the living are concerned this is not a calamity, but a blessing, for the town has received the washing it needed to prevent the development of pestilence. The buried negroes don’t know the difference, nor do the living care. The dead are having a good drying off down below and the living expect to get one.
My fellow passengers, all of whom are bound for San José, will have to wait for a passing ship to take them to Colón, then cross the isthmus by rail to the city of Panama, and wait there for a steamship to take them up the west coast to Punto Arenas where they can wait for a train to San José. Whether they will have to stay there very long or not, depends upon the amount of washing out there has been on the Pacific side. As the steamers make many stops on the Pacific coast and do not run very often, the passengers will be on the way between one and two weeks, according to their luck in catching a boat and a train, instead of making the overland trip of 103 miles in a few hours by rail, as they had expected to do.
As for me I will lose the fine Christmas weather in the mountains and the round of novel entertainments in the Paris of Central America, and be obliged to spend two weeks instead of one in the hot city of Panama, which is at sea level, within eight degrees of the equator, and within two or three degrees of blood heat.
3:30 P. M., Dec. 24, 1904.
We have been ashore. The United Fruit Company sent out a row boat in which we climbed over the swells for about a quarter of a mile as the falcon flies, but over half a mile as the row boat climbed up and coasted down. Getting from the lowered stairway of the ship into the small boat was a test of good jumping, good judgment and good luck. The waves as seen from the deck of the ship did not appear over three feet high from trough to crest, yet the little boat beside the ship sank at least five feet from the step platform and rose up to it again.
The insurance agent had an excess of confidence in himself, as all successful insurance agents must have, and went down the steps first, to show us how. But for once his judgment of risks was poor. As he jumped at the boat, it sank out of reach and moved from under him. Luckily he had a business education, which teaches men never to give up what they have once laid their hands on, and he kept hold of the railing of the stairway. But his big body had acquired momentum and had to go, and he swung suspended by his hands over the water, with his umbrella sticking to him and his coat tails flying, until the boat rose up beside him and he was pulled into it. A man with less physical strength and presence of mind would have splashed down into the waves to frighten sharks and spoil our excursion to Limón. The insurance agent, however, did not even lose his umbrella, which was not insured and which he held up in triumph and exultation as soon as the danger was over. The ladies saw the performance and could not be persuaded to leave the ship, as their lives were not insured. Some one spoke of sharks, and they shuddered.
Upon arriving at the pier we were rowed to the landing place, where again good judgment and gymnastics were required in order to jump on the lower platform before the boat would sink away, and where good luck and agility were necessary to enable one to get up on the pier before the next wave broke over the steps leading up to it.
The first dock hand we saw was a coal-black negro with an Irish brogue which he used freely. It was a precious combination and gave me a new sensation. I was sorry that I could not take the combination with me as a curio. Nearly all of the negroes about the pier were Jamaicans and had a quaint accent and inflection of voice that was musical and pleasant to listen to. One of them had acquired a cockney accent and shocked and instructed us by calling a dollar a “crony” (corona), a highball “a eyeball” and a baked potato “a biked potighto.” I never realized before how characterless and commonplace our United States pronunciation really is. It lacks the bizarrerie of the native London article which has been called by Don G. Seitz “a queer jargon of misplaced aspirates and vowels interspersed with drawls and growls.” We have to invent Americanisms and rhetorical barbarities in order to outdo them.
While ashore we had hot baths in our own perspiration followed by cool shower baths in the rain, the frequent repetition of which finally drove us back to the ship. The rainy season is supposed by the calendar to last from May to November, but the calendar is a theorist, for we have been having rain from one to five or six times a day, varying from brief sun-showers to copious rainfalls. On the Caribbean side it rains both in the rainy and dry seasons, there being only about two months in the year of dry weather. The rain, however, cools the atmosphere and the earth, and renders the lowlands near the coast quite comfortable compared with the Pacific side, where the seasons are more sharply differentiated, and there is more dry weather. Although I have seen many showers I have heard no thunder on the Caribbean. The showers come and go with such rapidity that apparently they have no time to thunder. Possibly the hot air over such warm water is so uniformly laden with moisture that electricity does not easily concentrate except at great heights and is only heard on great occasions. But it is just as well not to hear it, for it is Southern in temperament and revolutionary in its methods, and is apt to radically change the existing order of things.
Limón had an earthquake five days ago at midnight. It frightened everybody and sent people skipping around in their muddy back yards clad in flowing white raiment like angels errant, but it did them no harm. The following lines are copied from the local newspaper: “At midnight on Monday the entire city was thrown into a state of alarm by a severe shock of earthquake, the like of which had never been experienced in Port Limón by the oldest inhabitants. Several private houses and shops suffered, etc.” At present earthquakes are useless generators of energy, but if they could be stored up and used to shake school boys and servant girls out of bed on cold mornings they would become popular.
Limón has about 3,000 inhabitants, largely negroes from Jamaica, and is the only Costa Rican port of entry on the Atlantic side. It is practically a North American town, however, being supported by the banana business of the United Fruit Company. Near the wharves is the main building of the company containing the offices and stores. Here merchandise of all kinds can be bought, from that which is put into the stomach to that which is worn on the back. The greater part of the goods, however, come from the United States and, as the Costa Rican duties are high, one pays about double our retail price at home. The town has a good-sized hotel, a bank, a well-stocked drug store, two or three steamboat agencies, a few small stores for the negroes, and numerous saloons of high and low degree. The large stores and agencies, as well as all things that pertain to politics, are conducted by Costa Ricans, many of whom live at San José and come down to Limón frequently to look after their interests. Several San Joséans came down just before the washout to attend to business for a day or two, and will now be obliged to wait here two or three months or make the trip down to Panama and up the Pacific coast with some of our S. S. Limón passengers—a just punishment for neglecting the holidays for business.
If I had arrived several days earlier and had gone to San José before the washout, I should have had to return by way of the Pacific coast, missing the Medical Congress and arriving home about two weeks after the end of my journey. Thus the storm saved me, and was a fortunate occurrence after all.
It is also fortunate that the floods have almost stopped the moving of bananas from the plantations down to the shore, and that the sea is too rough for the ships to take on their loads. The S. S. Limón will thus be obliged to remain at anchor behind the island for a day or two, and the captain will be able to keep us as boarders until Monday when a big Italian passenger ship arrives. We have hitherto been longing for dry land, but now that we are liable to be put on it to live in the town where the nights are hot, muggy and mosquito-ry, where there is a complete ice famine, much malaria and a few cases of yellow fever, we are content to remain on the steamer. The captain says that the sea is the only place to live on, and from the tropical, semi-infernal standpoint his view is the right one. Freight-ship accommodations have become a luxury, which proves that luxury is merely a point of view. Everything is luxury to some, nothing is luxury to others.
7 A. M., Dec. 26, 1904.
The Italian steamship, our friend in need that is to take us to Colón, has arrived and will depart this afternoon.
Yesterday we had an enjoyable Christmas dinner which was seasoned by the fact that we had gone through the hollowing out process of getting into the tropics by sea, and by the fear that we had more emptiness to endure before another opportunity for indulgence would present itself. I often think that the well-known and often-sought sea-appetite is largely due to a making up for missed and lost meals. We had barley soup, fish, roast turkey, cold meats, canned peas, canned corn, sliced tomatoes, strawberry preserves, plum pudding, Washington pie, cheese, fancy cake, oranges, apples, nuts, raisins, grapes and champagne. After we had filled the available space in our bodies with this conventional conglomeration, to whose noxious influence the custom of ages has rendered the human family more or less immune, the captain took the insurance agent and myself on shore to see the Christmas festivities.
While climbing the waves in the row boat on the way to the landing I noticed how well the government piers were built, the posts being protected by copper sheeting and the edge of the platform surrounded by heavy iron girders. These iron girders were, however, a sad trial to the ship captains, for in bad weather they injured the sides of the ships, and made it almost necessary to wait for a calm sea in order to move up for a load. The Costa Ricans, of course, put these girders on their piers to make them last longer and, having a monopoly of the business, found it profitable to accommodate themselves instead of their customers.
The warehouse of the United Fruit Company, which stands near the shore, is a handsome two-story rectangular building composed of windows and verandas, the upper story being fitted up as lodgings and lounging quarters for the employees. The principal streets have been filled in and macadamized, and were washed entirely free of loose dirt and gravel by the recent rains, with the result that the surface looks like rough concrete, and is as clean as if it had been scrubbed with scrubbing brushes by a corps of housemaids. All of the houses except two or three of the five or six business buildings are one and two-story frame skeletons, and are thus practically earthquake proof. They could be rocked like dry-goods boxes without being harmed or rendered more dilapidated; and if they were rocked over they and their inhabitants could be replaced at but little expense.
The negroes here are much blacker than those in the United States, many of them having skin as black and lusterless as soot. Their complexions are seldom spoiled by white blood. They are the real thing. They are better natured, more manageable and more interesting than our mulattos, who are neither one thing nor the other, although in the United States they claim that they are both things and have in them the best blood of both races. Slavery was the crime of the South, but it was perhaps a pardonable one in all except one feature, viz., the mixing of the races. That act was the sin, and the result is our race problem—a curse. The white blood of the mulatto longs for its own, and the black blood of the genuine negro is taught to long for what is not its own.
Vultures hopped about the back yards and perched upon the housetops ready to eat up the garbage as fast as thrown out. Stagnant water and dirt abounded, but it seemed to agree as well with the natives as with the big birds. The sun’s heat reminded us of the heat of some of our Northern steam-heated houses, and our handkerchiefs were kept busy drying our faces and necks. So when we found a score of negroes gathered in the shade about a cockpit we went into the shade to cool off.
The cockpit was a round space about ten feet in diameter surrounded by six slender wooden posts supporting the roof and forming a part of a low wall about three feet high—high enough to keep the fighting cocks within, but not to obstruct the view of the sports. The surrounding space was shaded by large trees but not enclosed, being merely a back yard to which a wide passage between two houses led. There was no admission fee, the spectators or “betters” standing around the pit betting on their favorites.
In the fight we saw a medium-sized Spanish rooster, belonging to the establishment, disable a large one of the same breed with the second stroke, and kill it with the third. The entertainment was short, but not sweet. A lance about two and one-half inches long had been fastened to one of the legs of each bird, the lances being about as wide and long as the small blade of a large penknife, slightly curved and acutely pointed. At the second jump the lance of the small rooster pierced the body of the larger one, who immediately turned sidewise and sank down. The victor seemed to understand the action of the wounded bird and was inclined to leave it alone, but the owners set them at it again. The wounded bird made another great effort, but his abdomen was this time pierced by the penetrating lance of the victor, which stuck fast and held him down beside his prostrate victim. The owner pulled them apart, upon which the wounded bird jerked his leg and wing convulsively two or three times and expired.
I think that it was an easy death for a fighting cock, although not as easy as having his neck wrung. He certainly had a much easier time than the victor of the previous fight, in which artificial spurs had not been used. The hero stood on a pile of boards nearby without a feather on his head, neck and thighs, and with his bared skin swollen and as red as raw beef. He had conquered in a long fight, but in the process had undoubtedly had a half hour of the most severe and exhausting punishment. Yet he stood up and looked proudly about him, like a fighting cock still, unconscious of his loss of beauty and of usefulness—too naked to fight and too tough to be eaten.
Having seen enough to satisfy our barbarous instincts, and cool off our enthusiasm but not our bodies, we continued our walk and soon came to a large centrally located market such as exists in nearly all Southern towns. Here we saw negroes carrying in freshly killed beef to be sold the next morning at daybreak, for, on account of the scarcity of ice, the butchers have to sell their meat almost as soon as killed. This probably accounts for the unseasoned toughness which is the chief distinguishing characteristic of tropical beef, although tough beef is sometimes found in the temperate zones. We afterwards passed several saloons in which the white young men of the town were playing cards, and stopped in one of them and drank nauseating luke-warm orangeades. Even the saloons and the hospitals were out of ice. Our last stop was at the hotel, a good-sized frame building that backed up to the seashore and was delightfully cooled by the sea breeze. The front garden of about three acres was the most beautiful mass of foliage I have ever seen. Excepting the wide paths, it was almost a solid mass of loaded orange trees, towering royal palms, foliage plants eight feet high, flowering trees, and other plants of the richest green, yellow, orange and variegated coloring.
We passed through the hall into the back yard, which bordered on the seashore, and sat for a while on the wide porch enjoying the sea breeze and watching a tame cockatoo; a red, yellow, orange, green, black and blue parrot, fully a yard in length from the tip of his yellow beak to the end of his blue and cardinal colored tail. I often wonder if we Americans are not descendants of the beautiful and loquacious parrot instead of the gibbering monkey, for our women are so ornamental, and swearing comes so natural to our men.
While sitting and chatting we had to do the appropriate thing and take a couple of highballs, for we were joined by some real Costa Ricans, who take whiskey and White Rock at stated intervals for their health, particularly when they come down to visit these hot lower regions. When the time came to go we drank another highball. I left out the whiskey, for I knew that I had to climb into the boat; but the others, including the temperate captain, took the universal poison as the Scotch dispense it. They had the advantage of long practise and experience. My book knowledge did not help me in practice.
After exercising a great deal of sober good judgment and juvenile agility, we got safely in and out of the row boat and finally on board our dear S. S. Limón. We were glad to be again on the boat, which was clean, cool and provided with ice and icebox meat, and were fortunate in not being obliged to spend the night in the old dilapidated worm-eaten hotel, which was full of mosquitoes and hot air, and had undoubtedly sheltered and shrouded many a case of yellow fever in the past.