We returned to the Washington Hotel and had a cool, pleasant drive for a couple of miles along the shores in the opposite direction. A drive on a tropical beach is always a treat. Although the road may not be well kept it is usually hard and dry, the sea air exhilarating and the luxuriant foliage alluring. We passed the Railroad Company’s Hospital, a small frame building standing on posts over the water’s edge, which was said to accommodate over one hundred patients, but did not look that capacious. I was told that it was poorly supplied with materials and facilities, although this difficulty has, of course, been remedied now that Uncle Sam has finally become interested in tropical hygiene. After seeing the surviving evidence of the French sanitary work as shown in the Ancón Hospital, the sanitarium on Toboga Island and the construction of Christobal, it occurred to me that the French had given much attention to sanitation as it was then understood, and had spent much money upon it, while the United States was not even providing sufficient medicine. Our legislators were waiting for more deaths and the application of the big stick before conferring independent authority upon the doctors. The American citizen is intelligent in all things but health and disease. But he makes up in opinion what he lacks in knowledge. It is for him to decide when doctors are right and when wrong, and which are right and which wrong.
DE LESSEPS PALACE AT CHRISTOBAL
The road terminated abruptly at the entrance of a small shallow bay. Here we alighted and walked a few hundred yards along the edge of tangled woods to a little palm grove where the shore made an abrupt turn. About a hundred feet out from the water’s edge a circular empalement twenty feet in diameter had been constructed for catching turtles. Between the turtle trap and shore was the bathing place selected by the negro driver, and as no one was about we were soon frolicking in the water. The bottom was sandy and the place left nothing to be desired as a place to get wet in except a little more water. It was waist deep only. We did not venture far beyond the empaling for fear of sharks and because the water did not get much deeper, but managed nevertheless to obtain considerable refreshing exercise and enjoyment.
When we at last started for shore we saw two ladies and a gentleman standing in the palm grove with their backs toward us and looking up toward the tops of the trees. They had evidently been stopped by us and did not know what to do or where to look. As the road led along the edge of the water they could not get by with dignity and we could not get out with dignity; and they did not seem to know that our dressing quarters were within a few feet of their backs, where we could not dress with dignity.
Upon looking around to see about moving a little farther away from shore in order to allow them to pass, we saw a slight commotion of the water and a speck of black disappear from the surface.
“Not that way,” said Frank, “I believe that was a shark. And the ripples seem nearer.”
We stared at each other as nonchalantly as possible, expecting at any moment to lose a leg.
“Well, which is it, boys,” I said, “the ladies or the sharks?”
“The ladies for me,” said Frank, who was fat and juicy and would have been the first choice of either a shark or a lady.