The miniature train, ambling away in a morning unoppressive in spite of the tropical sunshine, wound through a thin jungle, sometimes climbing, more often stopping at languorous, staring, thatched villages, in a region suffering from drought but of fertile appearance. By and by the jungle gave way to what might almost have been called prairie, slightly rolling and used only for grazing. Toward noon, beyond some swampy land, we clattered into the carelessly whitewashed town of Calamar, drowsing on the sandy bank of the Magdalena, here a half mile wide. Even before we jolted to a halt, the car filled with a struggling mob of beggars, shrill-voiced boys, and tattered men, eager, in their indolent tropical way, for some easy errand. Such unwonted energy soon evaporated. The population was of as mongrel a mixture as the yellow dogs that slunk about in the shade of trees and house walls, and appeared to hold identically the same attitude toward life.
At length, in the cool of the following evening, the “Alicia” began to plow her way slowly upstream. She was a three-story craft with a huge paddle-wheel at the stern, her lower deck crowded with unassorted freight, domestic animals, engines and wood-piles, with deck hands, native passengers, pots and pans and unattractive habits. Among the most conspicuous of the latter were those of an open-air den that served as general kitchen. Twice a day a small tub of rice, boiled plantains and some meat mystery, all cooked in a single kettle, was carried out on one of the barges alongside, where it was fallen upon not only by the lower-deck passengers but by the even darker-skinned deck hands, dressed in what had once been trousers and the wear-forever shirts so popular in this region. A few owned spoons and others a piece of cocoanut shell, but these were no handicap to the majority, armed only with the utensils of nature. Little had we suspected the meaning of “second-class” on the Magdalena!
Luckily the English agent of the line had been so shocked at sight of our tickets, particularly, perhaps, in the hands of Hays, who was in appearance the hero of any of our modern romantic novels stepping bodily forth from the cardboard of any of our popular illustrators, that he had ordered the steward to overlook the color thereof and treat us as cabin passengers. On the upper deck the steamer was open from stem to stern, a dining table stretching along her center and the sides lined by frail, box-like “staterooms.” The little canvas cots, narrow as the charpoys of India, used alike by passengers and the unlaundered youths that passed for stewards, were dragged to any part of the craft that suited the whims of the sleeper. Our drinking water was the native Magdalena, sometimes carelessly filtered through a porous stone. There was even a shower-bath—when the paddle-wheel was elevating enough of the chocolate-colored river water to permit it to “function”—but it generally took most of the morning and all the stewards to find the misplaced key.
Frequently for days at a time there were only the two of us to occupy the cane rocking-chairs that embellished the upper foredeck. Here day after day we watched the monotonous yellow bank unroll with infinite slowness, like a film clogged in the machine. The country, flat, considerably wooded, and characterless, stood only a few feet above the river, its soil sandy, though not without fertility, with occasional clearings and many immense spreading trees. Here and there on the extreme edge of the stream hung a few scattered thatched villages, all apparently engaged in the favorite occupation of doing nothing, living on the few fruits and vegetables that grew themselves and drinking the yellow Magdalena pure.
At such times there was nothing left but to while away the languid hours in perfecting our plans for the journey ahead. For once I had chanced upon a traveling companion who had actually started when the hour of departure came, and who bade fair to pursue the expedition to the bitter end. Leo Hays had first seen the light—such as it is in Missouri—six months later than I, but had overcome that initial handicap by deflecting the sun’s rays in many a varying clime. The schools had early scowled upon him—or he upon them—and he had retaliated by gathering in his own way much that schools have never hoarded away in their impregnable warehouses. The gleaning had carried him far afield, in social strata as well as physical distance, but it had left him unburdened with the bric-a-brac of life so dear to the bourgeois soul. Wasteful of money and the petty things of life, he was never wasteful of life itself. He was of those who look at the world through a wide-angle lens. There is a breadth of vision gained in an existence varying from “hobo” printer and editor in our pulsating Southwest to sugar estate overseer in the Guianas, from the forecastle to the Moro villages of the Philippines, that makes a formal education seem cramped and restricted by comparison. To those who did not know the Canal Zone in its halcyon days a mere corporal of police demanding of himself the ability to converse intelligently a half hour on any subject from astronomy to Norse literature, from heraldry to Urdu philosophy, may seem a fantastic figure. To the experienced “Zoner” it is commonplace.
On Sunday morning the entire village of Zambrano, headed by its curate and dressed in every imaginable misfit of sun-bleached gaiety, swarmed on board and subjected us to a leisurely detailed examination that gave us the sensation of being museum exhibits. The “Alicia” was soon off again and we came to the conclusion that the town was migrating en masse. A few hundred yards beyond, however, we tied up to the bank once more and waited a long hour while all Zambrano took leave of the priest. Every inhabitant under fifteen kissed his hand, which each of the women pressed fervently, some several times over, after which the men approached him in procession, padre and layman throwing an arm about each other’s neck and slapping each other some seven times each between the shoulder-blades. It was only the customary Colombian abrazo and the formality of seeing the curate a little way on his journey. Meanwhile our half-Indian boy captain stood smilingly by, twisting the two tiny sprigs of mustache that gave him so striking a resemblance to a Chinese mandarin turned river pirate. He was far too good a Catholic to cut short the leave-taking even had he guessed that anyone on board chaffed at the delay. The day was much older before we crawled out into the middle of the stream again. But no man journeys up to Bogotá hastily. The Land of Hurry was behind us.
When we addressed him, the priest answered us courteously enough, then dropped the conversation in a manner to suggest that he did not care to pursue it further. Like his fellow-countrymen in general he seemed to have no hunger for knowledge, no notion that he might learn from others. The attitude of all the upper-deck passengers was as if an edict had gone forth to dislike Americans. Individually none had any grievance against us, collectively they seemed banded together in a species of intellectual boycott, which none of them vented to the extent of losing his reputation for politeness. Their manner suggested pouting children, unwilling to declare their fancied grievances and fight them out like men.
There were a half dozen of us at table that evening, with the priest in the place of honor at the head. The meal passed without a spoken word, at racehorse speed. It recalled a placard I had seen in a Texas restaurant on my journey southward: “Eat first, THEN talk,” and amid the opening chorus Hays’ memory harked back to a sign that once embellished a Bowery institution: “Soup should be seen and not heard.” That we paused for speech between mouthfuls seemed to fill our companions with a mixture of disgust and amazement. It was perilous, too, for ragged, barefooted waiters more numerous than the diners, hovered over us, quick to snatch away the plate of anyone who dared raise his head. How unlike the sociable meals of Spain was this silent wolfing!
Their own parents could not have distinguished one meal from another. The soup was always of the general collection variety, the two vegetables incessantly the same; the beef varied from the hopelessly tough to the suspiciously tender; for the system on the river steamers of the Magdalena is to slaughter a steer on the lower deck the first morning of the voyage and serve it twice daily until passengers are unanimous in leaving their plates untouched, then regretfully to lead another gloomy, raw-boned animal forth to slaughter. Yet no one could have complained on the score of quantity. We no longer wondered at the sallow flabbiness of those about us in spite of their life in the open air.
The voracious engines of the “Alicia” required more halting than movement. Barely had we left the faint lights of Calamar astern when we tied up for hours before a woodpile in the edge of the jungle, and never did a half day pass without a long halt to replenish the fuel. The sight of a bamboo hut or a cluster of thatched shacks crouched in a little semicircular space gouged out of the immense forest was sure to bring a shrill scream from the whistle and in the soft air of evening we crawled up to a tiny clearing where perhaps thirty cords of wood lay awaiting a purchaser. They were heavy slabs some three feet long, the piles separated by upright poles into divisions called burros, the conventional load, perhaps, of one ass. On the utter edge of the bank hung a miserable little hut swarming with dogs and equally unwashed human beings. There were the usual endless manoeuvers to a mooring, then the entire crew went ashore on the heels of the captain, armed with his measuring stick. He and the woodsman, a sturdy, bashful fellow, gave each other the customary greeting pat on the shoulder, then stood a long time, each with a hand on the woodpile, discussing the details of the imminent financial transaction.