CHAPTER III
After Bananas and Alligators
A Rough Ride—Wild Scenery along the Reefs—A Devoted Wife—A Recommendation for the Prevention of Divorces—A Guide with the Sleeping Sickness—An Exhilarating Ride on a Platform Car—The Big Banana Plantation—About Bananas and Plantains—Jamaica Negroes as Laborers—Beautiful Scenery—The Great Ambuscade of the Little Revolution—Loading at Night—On a Reef all Night—Danger, Modern and Ancient—Saved by Accident Insurance—Return to Almirante Bay—The Hunt Organized—An Excursion to the Chanquinola River through the Canal—A Twelve-mile Plantation—Tropical Birds—The Toucan, the Greatest of Degenerates—Scratching the Alligator’s Back—The Reason why I Am not an Alligator Hunter—How the Trip to the Tropics Was Saved from Being a Failure—Work in the North and Loafing in the Tropics—Canal Officials and Soldiers.
The S. S. Brighton had to go into the Chiriqui Lagoon to gather fruit from two large banana plantations, and then return to Bocas del Toro to complete its load, thus making an excursion which promised us not a little entertainment. As our ship was too large to pass through the small channels between the islands that separated Almirante Bay from the main lagoon, it would have to enter through Bocas del Tigre and thus be four hours on the way, three of them in the open sea.
We started a little before noon taking with us Doctors Swigart and Osterhout, who did not hesitate to go, although they knew that we were to return by night and that there were no vacant bunks in the ship. Mr. Reid, a civil engineer who had to make a business trip into the interior, and his wife, who had to see him off, were acquainted with one of the members of our party, and added to our entertainment by engaging passage in our boat. They had lived long in the land of the banana, and thus knew everything we wished to know. Doctor Osterhout took his telescope and delighted himself and us with excellent views of the islands and breakers which were never out of sight. Although he had lived in the neighborhood ten years, he seemed even more enthusiastic over the scenery than we were. At least he was enthusiastic until we got into the open sea, when he suddenly lost interest; he said that the sea air always made him sleepy, and forthwith rolled himself up in a blanket and lay on a bench with his back toward us, and stayed there until we had passed through the Tiger’s Mouths into the quiet waters of the lagoon.
It was a pretty sight to steam along in full view of the islands thickly covered with tropical trees and bordered by submerged reefs which converted the sea for half a mile out into curling and splashing foam. In places the waves struck the abrupt shores and leaped twenty or thirty feet into the air to descend in snowy showers. The telescope brought the shore quite near and enabled us to realize the intensity, activity and grandeur of the perpetual dashing, receding, returning and shattering of the waves on the shore, and the immensity of the fields of seething foam. This wild island scenery was entirely different from the peaceful color crowded views that we had enjoyed on our little excursion along the islands of Panama Bay to Toboga. One afforded a peaceful, sensuous sort of enjoyment; the other filled us with wonder and admiration.
After having been out in the open sea for a short time, the ladies became uncomfortably quiet, and likewise Doctor Frank, who could always be relied upon. The rest of us found it helpful from time to time to gaze steadfastly at the sky, like saints in Madonna pictures; or shut our eyes like opossums in trouble; or lean back and draw deep breaths, like prize fighters in distress; or talk ourselves into a state of tolerance to woe, like stoics in books, in order to pull through. But we managed, nevertheless, to derive some benefit from the fifteen miles of continuous animated panorama, and at last arrived at Bocas del Tigre. We entered the lagoon and, presto, wind and waves and woes were gone, and we were alive and well again, including Doctor Osterhout. Mrs. Reid had been, as was her custom, very sick, yet she had insisted upon accompanying her husband as far as the boat went. She had deliberately chosen, even against his wishes, to undergo several hours of sickness in order to spend them with him. Surely the mind of woman is inscrutable, and her ways are beyond the ways of men. Praised be her courage and devotion and cheerfulness. Woman was made to set man a good example, although man was not made to follow it. Men are apt to remember Eve as she was, and forget woman as she is. Possibly the comparative isolation of a life in a foreign country where there was neither social nor public entertainment, but an abundance of hardship and inconvenience, had drawn them closer together than the average husband and wife. In any case I would suggest a residence in some half-civilized foreign land by those who, after having been married a few years, imagine they deserve a divorce. If such a residence were made a legal qualification for a divorce, happy marriages might be more common and our courts less crowded.
Mr. Reid and Doctor Swigart spared no pains to entertain us; but after we had entered the lagoon Doctor Osterhout outdid them, and thus atoned for having gone to sleep in our forlorn company. He had found some one to entertain, and was not to be deprived of the opportunity. He was a type of our genial and hospitable Southerner, and gave us more interesting information about plantations, bananas, negroes and internecine wars than if he had been a guide paid to tell us all that there was and was not.
The little settlement at which we stopped presented much of the varied charm and beauty which had characterized all of the tropical seaport towns I had so far seen. The company had built a pier about one hundred yards long upon which the narrow-gauge platform cars were brought to be unloaded directly into the ship.
Doctor Swigart persuaded the company to put a platform car at our disposal for a ride over the eight miles of railroad that traversed the plantation of 800 acres. Chairs were placed upon the car, an engine attached behind, and away we sped at the rate of twenty miles an hour through a sort of artificial lane that had been cut through the forest jungle, and which, by the encroachment of the foliage, had become so narrow that the branches projecting from the sides often touched us. We went around curves at such a speed that each one had to hold on to the chair of his neighbor in order that those sitting at the sides might not be tipped off. Occasionally we would pass an opening and get a better view of the high forest trees, among which were rubber trees, cedar trees, trumpet trees and other magnificent-looking trees and plants that were beyond even Doctor Osterhout’s elastic nomenclature. At one large meadowlike opening we saw a herd of sturdy-looking cattle grazing peacefully in a meadow upon which a picturesque little slaughter-house had been built for their convenience. The company did its own slaughtering and thus provided their employees with good fresh meat. After riding for a couple of miles we came to the banana trees, which also grew close up to the rails. Every few hundred yards side-tracks ran out at either side enabling the laborers to load directly on the cars and sent the fruit out on the piers to the steamships.