U. S. S. “Yankton.” May 4th. 3.30.
Awhile ago I staggered up the hatchway, a pale creature in damp white linen, to once more behold the sky, after three cribbed and cabined days. A pilot’s boat was rapidly approaching us on the nastiest, yellowest, forlornest sea imaginable. I felt that I could no longer endure the various sensations animating my body, not even an instant longer. Then, suddenly, it seemed we were in the southwest passage of the great delta, out of that unspeakable roll, passing up the “Father of Waters”—the abomination of desolation. Even the gulls looked sad, and a bell-buoy was ringing a sort of death-knell. Uniformly built houses were scattered at intervals on the monotonous flat shores, where the only thing that grows is tall, rank grass—whether out of land or water it is impossible to say. These are the dwellings of those lonely ones who work on the levees, the wireless and coaling stations, dredging and “redeeming” this seemingly ungrateful land, stretching out through its flat, endless, desolate miles.
The water is yellower than the Tiber at its yellowest, and no mantle of high and ancient civilization lends it an enchantment. The pilot brought damp piles of papers on board, but I can’t bear to read of Mexican matters. Whether Carranza refuses flatly our request to discontinue fighting during the mediation proceedings, or a hasty New York editor calls Villa “the Stonewall Jackson of Mexico,” it is only more of the same. My heart and mind know it all too well.
I have a deep nostalgia for Mexico; even for its blood-red color. Everything else the world can offer will seem drab beside the memory of its strange magic.
A radio came from Mr. Bryan at six this morning requesting N. to observe silence until he has conferred in Washington. But N. had already made up his mind that silentium would be his sign and symbol. Unless we get in at the merciful hour of dawn he will be besieged by reporters. A word too much just now could endlessly complicate matters for Washington.
We are slipping up broad, mournful, lake-like expanses of water. From time to time a great split comes, and it seems as if we had met another river, seeking another outlet. More white and gray houses show themselves against the tall, pale-green, persistent grasses and the yellow of the river. They are lonely, isolated homes, wherein each family earns its bread in the sweat of its brow by some kind of attendance on the exacting “Father of Waters”—mostly, trying to control him.
6.45 P.M.
We have just slipped through quarantine like a fish. Our own extraordinary orders and two or three telegrams from Washington, with orders not to hold us up, made it an easy matter. We saw the Monterey, which had arrived in the morning, with six hundred and twenty-three passengers aboard, moored at the dock. The women and children were to sleep in screened tents on land. Many of them were refugees from Mexico City itself, and they cheered and waved, as we passed by, and called “O’Shaughnessy! O’Shaughnessy!”
The refugees, according to the copy of the Picayune the health officers left us, are loud in praise of Carden, saying their escape is due to him and not to the State Department, and giving incidental cheers for Roosevelt. Dr. Corput is a martinet; but though he was hot and decidedly wilted about the collar when his six-foot-two person came into the saloon where we were dining, he looked highly competent. It will be a bright microbe that gets by him. He, with his yellow flag, is lord and master of every craft and everything that breasts this river.
The whole question of guarding the health of the United States at this station is most interesting. It is one of the largest in the world, but is taxed to its utmost now by the thousands of refugees from Mexico, most of them cursing the administration, as far as I can gather, during the hundred and forty-five hours of travel since leaving Mexico. The quarantine station itself, under the red, late afternoon sun, looked a clean, attractive village, supplemented by rows of tents. There are immense sterilizers in which the whole equipment of a ship can be put, huge inspection-rooms, great bathing-houses, and a small herd of cattle. It is sufficient to itself. Nothing can get at the inmates, nor can the inmates, on the other hand, get at anything. I should say that the wear and tear of existence would be materially lessened during the one hundred and forty-five hours. The great ships that pass up now are laden with people who have been exposed to every imaginable disease in the Mexican débâcle. You remember the small-pox outbreak in Rome, and how that microbe was encouraged! Well, autre pays, autre mœurs. The Indian, however, thinks very little more of having small-pox than we think of a bad cold in the head.