To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

Gran Hotel Centrál was the only second-class hotel in Panama—there was no first-class one. It is a four-story stone house built around a square patio, or court, about fifty feet in diameter, and is situated on a corner of one of the streets that enter the Plaza Centrál. Around the patio on the three upper floors run verandas upon which all inside rooms open. The two sides of the house that front on the plaza and street have an outer row of front rooms on each floor parallel with a row of inner ones from which they are separated by a corridor. The outer rooms are long and narrow with the window at one end, overlooking the street, and the door at the other end opening into the corridor. The inner rooms have no windows, but have doors at each end, single ones opening into the corridor and folding doors on the veranda in the patio. Fresh air can enter through the doors only. The stairway is out-of-doors in the patio, and the landings on the verandas.

DIAGRAM OF MY ROOM AND THE INSIDE ROOM ACROSS THE CORRIDOR

Each room contained two beds, and the price was four dollars a day in gold for a bed and six dollars if one person engaged the whole room. However, as two guests were not put in one room until there was one in each, it was safe to pay for one bed only, except upon unusual occasions when there was a great crowd of visitors in town. But the best way to travel on the isthmus is to have a traveling companion to occupy the other bed. One’s wife would do, only the isthmus traveling would probably not do for her. The Tivoli, which has since been erected on Ancón hill, may do for ladies but it is American and therefore uninteresting. Hotel Centrál had a sort of monopoly of the business, since the others were either tenth class or unclassible, and there were no good furnished apartments to let in town. I heard of one boarding-house, but that was already full of permanent boarders. In looking for rooms I found but one real estate agent, an American, and I could not understand how he made a living without having anything for rent or sale except church ruins.

When I arrived, all second and third-story outside rooms had at least one occupant, and as I refused to occupy one of those inside windowless rooms in which I would have to sleep with the doors open, I was lodged three flights up, under the mansard roof. It was up near the sun, but commanded a good view over the trees of the park and caught the breeze when there was one. It was well that I had already seen the best hotel in Colón, or I should have been shocked by the rooms of Gran Hotel Centrál, and my visit to Panama would have been spoiled. The furniture consisted of two single iron bedsteads with dirt-stained mattresses of certain age; a small, worn-out, dingy washstand, such as are sold at auction after having been discarded from the servants’ bedrooms of Chicago boarding houses; a plain wooden bureau of the same character, and a small, square, rough table which served both as a center table and writing desk. There were neither closets nor wardrobes, nor hooks for the disposal of clothes. The second bed might have served as a prostrate clothes-press if the mattress had looked less infected, or if its stains had been covered and concealed. The floor was of plain, unpolished, foot-worn wood. In front of each bed was a network of dirt held together by a small piece of antique ingrain carpet. However, I was finally settled and satisfied, for I had the chamber boy nail to the wall a board frame holding five or six small hooks to serve as closet and wardrobe. A candle was also furnished, but no provision made for a light in the corridor. And as there was no bell to call for service, the only way of procuring help if one were taken sick in the night, was to grope along the dark corridor and go down the three flights of starlit steps in the courtyard to the office. Hence I began to think that there might be an advantage in having to share a double room with a stranger; for if either one were taken sick the other could go down to the office and wake up the hotel clerk. One’s valuables might not be as safe with a stranger but one’s life would be safer, and who would not prefer to lose his valuables rather than his life?

In the daytime, there was a quick way of communicating with the office, which had survived the centuries. A bell boy, who was also the chamber boy, messenger boy, etc., was on each floor listening for the sound of a gong in the court. When the office wanted to communicate with one of the floors, the clerk stepped to the corner of the court, or patio, and sounded the gong once, twice or three times, according to the floor he was calling, and shouted up the message or information to the boy. In the same way the boy could call the clerk and shout a message down to him. In busy times the gong sounded frequently, and as it was loud enough for the combination bell boy, chamber boy and man-of-all-work of each floor to hear, wherever he might be, it must have proved a great annoyance to occupants of the inside rooms who wished to take a midday siesta or retire early. But Napoleon slept soundly on battlefields, which, I suppose, were more noisy than this patio.

The plumbing was all in one corner of the building and fortunately could be reached only by a walk along the open air veranda around the court. It consisted of two toilet and two bath-rooms on each floor, one of the bath-rooms with a tub and the other with a shower. The plumbing system was old and imperfect, and would have been condemned in any real American city.

I have given all of this detail out of kindness to the landlord, that the guests may know beforehand what to expect and not give him the trouble I saw a lady guest give him before she accepted the inevitable.

But I was at my journey’s end, had recovered from the shock caused by the accommodations offered me at the Washington Hotel at Colón, and had resolved to enjoy a rest. And this resolve was the key to the situation, for after I had ceased to expect anything better I learned that I could perform the functions of eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, exercising, sight-seeing and faultfinding with about the same satisfaction as if in the most luxurious apartment. When one has nothing to do but lounge, luxuriate, find fault and get sick, then sumptuous apartments help to make life endurable. But as I was busy much of the time, I easily dispensed with modern luxuries, which are bad habits.

The temperature was 95 degrees F. in the shade at 1 P. M. and any pickaninny would have known enough to come in out of the sun. But I had experienced that temperature in the less humid and more bracing atmosphere of Chicago, and so I did as people do in Chicago during temporary hot spells, viz., went about actively and courted sunstroke and general tissue disorganization instead of taking a siesta. I took a walk on the Bóvedas, which is a promenade on the sea wall about a quarter of a mile long. Here it is quite cool in the evening and early morning, but as there are no trees it is scorching hot at midday. I also wandered about among the quaint old buildings and church ruins, and should have enjoyed it but for the extreme depression caused by the heat and humidity.