“Ah, it is not near, señor.”
“About a hundred miles, perhaps?”
“Sí, señor, just about that.”
“Isn’t it rather about three hundred?”
“Pués, sí, señor, perhaps just about that.”
There the matter had stood when we sailed.
Once arrived in Cartagena, however, we found that a toy train left next day for Calamar on the Magdalena and that a second-class ticket to Honda, wherever that was, cost $2000! We had barely crammed ourselves into two seats of the little piano-box car next day when Hays started up with a snort and thrust the morning newspaper across at me. Done into English the item that had drawn his attention ran:
“SOME ONE
who merits our entire confidence, informs us that yesterday there were in the city, taking photographic views of our forts and most important edifices, two foreign individuals who wore clothing of military cut of the cloth called khaki, and felt hats with wide brim. This costume, as it has been described to us, is that of the army of the United States! Can these really be American soldiers, or has a great outward similarity caused the suspicious imagination to see that which in reality did not exist? We cannot assure it!”
We had hardly aspired to be taken for a hostile invasion from the dreaded “Colossus of the North.” It was characteristic of Latin-American thinking processes for the paragrapher to fancy that spies—for such the item covertly dubbed us—would appear in uniform. We had yet to learn, however, that the makers of newspaper, and of public opinion, in so far as it exists, in South America would often rank in our own land as irresponsible and poorly trained school-boys.