Of the whole party a Mr. Mears alone, who was travelling with his wife, escaped unharmed.
The hotel we had selected was undergoing a complete restoration, and was very merry with the noise of whistling carpenters, who kept time with their hammers.
The best accommodation we could procure was a small whitewashed room at the furthest end of the courtyard; in this room were two small stretcher beds, without mattresses or covering of any kind, and as times went, we were fortunate in procuring these, for Panama was very full. There were no servants in the hotel; there was seldom anything to eat, and when there was, the cooks were drunk and mutinous and refused to cook. After six o’clock the fires were put out, and the cooks went away altogether until the next morning, when they would stroll in early or late, just as suited them.
I was laid on a stretcher bed, and fortunately for me the doctor who attended me was clever in his profession, and gave me no medicine. After a day or two I commenced bleeding at the mouth as the others had done, and a sad time my wife must have had, as she sat by my bedside and wiped away the hot blood as drop by drop it trickled from my lips, watching me die, as all thought then I should do.
During this time I felt no pain, and although I never lost my consciousness, I was in that dreamy state in which I could embrace no fixed idea; my reflective faculties were lost to me, I never thought whether I was to get up again or die. I wished to be left alone in that undisturbed enjoyment which one can fancy a dog feels as he lies in the sun winking and blinking at humanity.
When at last I recovered and could sit up, I found that all my companions of the Dee had died. I soon got ravenously hungry, and then came the worst part, for I was restricted to a very small allowance of food. I was so yellow that I became quite vain on the subject, and my chief delight for a long time was to contemplate myself in the glass. It is customary to say of a man with the jaundice, that he is as yellow as an orange; an orange paled by my side, and my skin was of so bright a hue, that to have given me a coat of gamboge would have been to paint the lily.[33]
It seemed that we had brought the yellow fever with us to Panama, or rather it appeared at the time of our arrival, and it was now spreading with great rapidity. Cholera also broke out, and deaths from one or the other of these causes became very numerous.
The people being panic-struck, a great rush was made for the Californian boats, of which there happened, at this time, to be very few.
So soon as I was able to move, there was but one small screw steamer in port, and as the place was daily becoming more unhealthy, I secured, by great favour, a cabin in her.
Nothing could excuse the state in which this ship put to sea, not even the panic; for she was not only ill-found in every respect, but was so crowded with passengers, that it was not until it was ascertained that there was scarcely standing-room for those on board that she tripped her anchor.