I landed the next morning at San Carlos, at the mouth of the San Juan River. There was nothing of interest here except an ancient Spanish fortress and J. C. Kennedy.
“They built the fortress back in 1600-and-something, or maybe it was 1700-and-something,” explained the latter. “I know it was just before I came here.”
Mr. Kennedy, a little white-haired Irish-American, who now owned a shoe-shop and pegged away himself for exercise, had twice been chased out of Nicaragua by the old tyrant, Zelaya.
“But I don’t know as I blame him so much,” he said. “I had a factory making ammunition for the revolutionists.”
III
From San Carlos the San Juan River led eastward toward the Caribbean. Once seriously considered by the American government as a possible site for the canal finally constructed at Panama, it was at present so shallow that only small launches could navigate it.
One was now waiting, with a scow lashed to its side.
I sailed with it at midnight, along with some forty other passengers, mostly women and children, all of us tightly packed into whatever spaces remained among the bags, boxes, and bales of a heavy cargo. There was neither comfort nor privacy. The Latin-Americans, with characteristic vanity, had all embarked in their very best clothes. Now that they had parted from their friends, and wished to change into garments better suited to a long voyage, they faced a disconcerting problem.
The women cried out: “Gentlemen, please look the other way!”
A host of infants whined and fretted. Every one turned and twisted about in an effort to find a position conducive to sleep, until the launch suggested a cheese alive with squirming maggots.