To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

Limón has about 3,000 inhabitants, largely negroes from Jamaica, and is the only Costa Rican port of entry on the Atlantic side. It is practically a North American town, however, being supported by the banana business of the United Fruit Company. Near the wharves is the main building of the company containing the offices and stores. Here merchandise of all kinds can be bought, from that which is put into the stomach to that which is worn on the back. The greater part of the goods, however, come from the United States and, as the Costa Rican duties are high, one pays about double our retail price at home. The town has a good-sized hotel, a bank, a well-stocked drug store, two or three steamboat agencies, a few small stores for the negroes, and numerous saloons of high and low degree. The large stores and agencies, as well as all things that pertain to politics, are conducted by Costa Ricans, many of whom live at San José and come down to Limón frequently to look after their interests. Several San Joséans came down just before the washout to attend to business for a day or two, and will now be obliged to wait here two or three months or make the trip down to Panama and up the Pacific coast with some of our S. S. Limón passengers—a just punishment for neglecting the holidays for business.

If I had arrived several days earlier and had gone to San José before the washout, I should have had to return by way of the Pacific coast, missing the Medical Congress and arriving home about two weeks after the end of my journey. Thus the storm saved me, and was a fortunate occurrence after all.

It is also fortunate that the floods have almost stopped the moving of bananas from the plantations down to the shore, and that the sea is too rough for the ships to take on their loads. The S. S. Limón will thus be obliged to remain at anchor behind the island for a day or two, and the captain will be able to keep us as boarders until Monday when a big Italian passenger ship arrives. We have hitherto been longing for dry land, but now that we are liable to be put on it to live in the town where the nights are hot, muggy and mosquito-ry, where there is a complete ice famine, much malaria and a few cases of yellow fever, we are content to remain on the steamer. The captain says that the sea is the only place to live on, and from the tropical, semi-infernal standpoint his view is the right one. Freight-ship accommodations have become a luxury, which proves that luxury is merely a point of view. Everything is luxury to some, nothing is luxury to others.

7 A. M., Dec. 26, 1904.

The Italian steamship, our friend in need that is to take us to Colón, has arrived and will depart this afternoon.

Yesterday we had an enjoyable Christmas dinner which was seasoned by the fact that we had gone through the hollowing out process of getting into the tropics by sea, and by the fear that we had more emptiness to endure before another opportunity for indulgence would present itself. I often think that the well-known and often-sought sea-appetite is largely due to a making up for missed and lost meals. We had barley soup, fish, roast turkey, cold meats, canned peas, canned corn, sliced tomatoes, strawberry preserves, plum pudding, Washington pie, cheese, fancy cake, oranges, apples, nuts, raisins, grapes and champagne. After we had filled the available space in our bodies with this conventional conglomeration, to whose noxious influence the custom of ages has rendered the human family more or less immune, the captain took the insurance agent and myself on shore to see the Christmas festivities.

While climbing the waves in the row boat on the way to the landing I noticed how well the government piers were built, the posts being protected by copper sheeting and the edge of the platform surrounded by heavy iron girders. These iron girders were, however, a sad trial to the ship captains, for in bad weather they injured the sides of the ships, and made it almost necessary to wait for a calm sea in order to move up for a load. The Costa Ricans, of course, put these girders on their piers to make them last longer and, having a monopoly of the business, found it profitable to accommodate themselves instead of their customers.

The warehouse of the United Fruit Company, which stands near the shore, is a handsome two-story rectangular building composed of windows and verandas, the upper story being fitted up as lodgings and lounging quarters for the employees. The principal streets have been filled in and macadamized, and were washed entirely free of loose dirt and gravel by the recent rains, with the result that the surface looks like rough concrete, and is as clean as if it had been scrubbed with scrubbing brushes by a corps of housemaids. All of the houses except two or three of the five or six business buildings are one and two-story frame skeletons, and are thus practically earthquake proof. They could be rocked like dry-goods boxes without being harmed or rendered more dilapidated; and if they were rocked over they and their inhabitants could be replaced at but little expense.

The negroes here are much blacker than those in the United States, many of them having skin as black and lusterless as soot. Their complexions are seldom spoiled by white blood. They are the real thing. They are better natured, more manageable and more interesting than our mulattos, who are neither one thing nor the other, although in the United States they claim that they are both things and have in them the best blood of both races. Slavery was the crime of the South, but it was perhaps a pardonable one in all except one feature, viz., the mixing of the races. That act was the sin, and the result is our race problem—a curse. The white blood of the mulatto longs for its own, and the black blood of the genuine negro is taught to long for what is not its own.

Vultures hopped about the back yards and perched upon the housetops ready to eat up the garbage as fast as thrown out. Stagnant water and dirt abounded, but it seemed to agree as well with the natives as with the big birds. The sun’s heat reminded us of the heat of some of our Northern steam-heated houses, and our handkerchiefs were kept busy drying our faces and necks. So when we found a score of negroes gathered in the shade about a cockpit we went into the shade to cool off.