When we were nearly ready to start, I met the captain and asked him if he had plenty of mineral water, wine, beer, Scotch whiskey and stomach bitters on hand, for there were many Chicago doctors aboard. He said he believed he had none of these in his medicine chest, for he had not expected to have more than a passenger or two, and the crew was quite healthy and did not require any medicines. I then sought Doctor Senn, our party leader, and told him of the fate that threatened the ship. He was speechless for a moment but rallied quickly and said:
“We must have these things. Let us go and buy some. Let us go immediately. One can live longer without food than without drink.”
So we hunted up a wholesale grocery and liquor store, and each bought a bottle of sherry, a bottle of Black and White and half a dozen bottles of claret. We met the captain in the store also buying MEDICINES. But we were afterward more pleased that we had put in our own stock, for there are two kinds of ship wine, one good enough to go down, the other good enough to come up. He had bought what he considered good enough to come up.
We finally cast loose at noon, one hour late, and did not get our eleven o’clock breakfast until half past two. To wait until half past two, after having trotted about almost constantly since seven, on a cup of coffee and a roll, perspiring profusely and worrying intensely for fear we might not get stowed away at all, and then suffering a shock at the sudden discovery at the last moment of the neglected state of the commissary department of the ship, was an appropriate initiation to what was in store for us. There were about eighteen of us to be fed by a steward who was not accustomed to serve more than one or two who usually served themselves; and the question was, how many of us would get anything at all? The ladies were undoubtedly “in for it,” in more ways than one. No boudoir comforts, hair dressers, manicures and ladies’ maids for them.
We all, however, got our breakfast down in time to have it churned by the trade-wind, which was in the ship’s quarter and which played with our little boat like a gentle, purring cat with a captive mouse. Doctor Senn and I carried iced sherry to the ladies who began to say, “Oh my!” and “Oh dear!” and “Goodness! I wish I were home,” “I’m so sick,” etc.
Pretty soon I began to sympathize with them and took a taste of the sherry myself, and lay down on my steamer chair and left the ladies to the care of Doctor Senn.
At six o’clock most of the gentlemen tasted of the dinner, and most of the ladies didn’t. But we all got to bed early and without any discoverable mishaps, consoled by the knowledge that soon after daybreak we would be in the sheltered waters of Bocas del Toro. Our little bunks had boards, plain boards, for springs, with thick comforters for mattresses and straw bags for pillows—genuine sailor luxuries. But we were glad to stay in them and on them. I wondered how it must seem to a person who had become accustomed to such a bed by years of service, to put up at a first-class hotel. I suppose that he would feel insecure and would wake up every few minutes in the night with a sensation of falling through space, and would have to feel of the soft mattress to be sure that something solid was under him.
In the morning the sea was quite rough, but I managed to get on deck just as we steamed triumphantly between the foamy reefs into the tranquil bay. Beautiful Bocas del Toro! Welcome Almirante Bay! Islas Tropicales! Haven and heaven of the seasick and suffering!
The large bay was enclosed by luxuriant tropical islands with their white fringes of foamy reefs, and the town looked bright and beautiful beneath the tropical sun and deep blue sky. Numerous little naphtha launches darted about in all directions giving a sense of festivity to the scene. At last we had found something worth coming to see. The tropics were out in all their splendor, and we forgot the other things. Had we taken the Preston we should not have seen Bocas del Toro, for her loading place was Port Limón, which I did not care to see again. Limón had fine piers, a beautiful garden and a new hospital, a trinity of artificial attractions whose origin and pedigree went back to bananas, but here were the beauties of Nature as they came from the hand of their creator.
Bocas del Toro is the chief seaport town of Panama after Colón and the City of Panama, if not before, and is the center of the banana shipping business of the republic. It is situated in the Almirante Bay, which is the northern end of the Chiriqui Lagoon, but is completely separated from the main lagoon by islands and reefs between which small boats only can pass. The channel leading into the bay is called Bocas del Tigre (Tiger’s Mouths), and the channel into the main lagoon, fifteen miles farther south, is called Bocas del Drago (Dragon’s Mouths), appropriate names for these wild and dangerous passages as we were soon to learn by experience. The lagoon between these passages is shut off from the sea by a row of islands and reefs placed closely together and surrounded and connected with breakers that reveal the hidden rocks and shallows. Beyond and south of these reefs and Bocas, the lagoon extends into the mainland, forming a body of water forty-five miles long by fifteen wide. It is a magnificent bay and is, I believe, to have a U. S. naval station, for which it is an ideal location.