Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

Abandoned Machinery

The influence of the gold standard of Panama will be helpful to commerce, though it will not in itself cause the several Republics which are on a silver or a paper basis to change to gold. But they will be benefited by being neighbors to financial stability. Uniformity of exchange will be promoted, and the inconveniences of travellers will be lessened. The fact that the currency of the United States is legal tender in the Panama Republic will help merchants and shippers at home, who heretofore have had to make their transactions entirely on the basis of the English pound sterling or the French franc.

In an outline of the general subject some attention should be paid to the inevitable overflow of energy and capital after they once become engaged in building the waterway and in supplementary projects. No one who understands the constructive American character doubts that the capitalists and contractors enlisted in the work will fare forth to seek other fields. It happens that coincident with the beginning of the Canal construction by the United States, the West Coast countries are entering upon definite policies of harbor and municipal improvements and other forms of public works, including railway building. There is also the new era of the mines. The industrial impulse is one of the immediate economic effects of the Canal. It appeals to the American spirit. It will find a quickening response. In subsequent chapters I therefore venture to indicate its field of activity, with such suggestions as may be of practical worth.

CHAPTER II

TRAVEL HINTS

Adopting Local Customs—Value of the Spanish Language—Knowledge of People Obtained through Their Speech—English in Trade—Serviceable Clothing in Different Climates—Moderation in Diet—Coffee at its True Worth—Wines and Mineral Waters—Native Dishes—Tropical Fruits—Aguacate and Cheremoya Palatal Luxuries—Hotels and Hotel-keepers—Baggage Afloat and Ashore—Outfits for the Andes: Food and Animals—West Coast Quarantines—Money Mediums—The Common Maladies and How to Treat Them

TO live as they live; to travel as they travel;—that is about all there is to living and travelling in South America and on the Isthmus.

All the customs will not be adopted by Northerners, nor all the habits followed. More comfort will be demanded and more cleanliness. But the general fact holds that the people living in any country have acquired by experience the knowledge of what is required by climatic and other conditions in regard to food, drink, dress, shelter, and recreation. There is reason for all things, even for the adobe tomb dwellings of the aboriginal Indians of Bolivia, or the mid-day siesta of the busy merchant of Panama.

First of all, it is desirable to know the language. Spanish is the idiom of South America, with the exception of Brazil. At the outset let me say that the chance traveller who wants to go down the coast or even take an occasional trip into the interior can get along with his stock of English. In all the seaport towns are English-speaking persons, merchants or others. On the ships English is as common as Spanish, and in some of the obscurest places the tongue of Chaucer may be heard. In one of the most out-of-the-way and utterly forsaken little holes on the coast, I found the local official who was sovereign there teaching his boy arithmetic in English. He had been both in England and in the United States, and while his own prospects now were bounded by the horizon of the cove and the drear brown mountain cliffs that shut it in, he was determined that his son should have a wider future. There are also many young South Americans who have been educated in the United States and some of whom are met at almost inaccessible points in the interior.

I state this so that no one who contemplates a journey may be turned away from it by any supposed difficulty in getting along through inability to speak the prevailing idiom. He can do very well. Yet with all his faculties of observation alert he will miss much through his ignorance of the readiest mode of conveying and receiving thought. To know any country it is necessary to know the people, and the people are only known through the medium of their speech. Their customs are better understood, their limitations are appreciated, and their strivings for something better, if they have any, are interpreted sympathetically. The paramount local topic becomes a living theme into which the visitor can enter understandingly and add to his stock of knowledge.