To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

However, I took the matter coolly during the time of danger, and also afterward when I learned that there had been danger, for I was a student of statistics and knew that men are ten times as safe on a ship as on land and that more accidents occur to people in their homes than while riding on the cars. Bankers suffer twice as many accidents as policemen, and carpenters nine times as many. Railroad conductors are considered good risks by the accident insurance companies, and commercial travelers the very best. In fact, statistics prove that there is danger everywhere. There is danger in crossing a street, danger in opening a window and in shutting a door, danger in bathing and danger in taking off a coat. There is even danger in sleeping, for many accidents take place during sleep, and most people die in bed.

I felt thankful that we were not living in the times of ancient Rome where danger and death were the rule, and survival was accidental, if we may credit an account of the conditions once prevalent there given by one evidently who knew what he was writing about.

“Owing to the great noise in the streets, none but the rich could sleep, while most invalids died from want of rest and well people from suicide or accidents. A stream of carriages was continually passing in the narrow and crooked thoroughfares, and the drivers were perpetually engaged in noisy disputes and foul abuse of one another. If you were in haste, your passage was obstructed by the crowd. If you loitered, a rich man’s litter, borne aloft on stout shoulders, jostled you aside; those behind pressed upon your back; one man would dig into you with his elbow; another with a sharp pole; your shoulder would be struck by a joist, your head by a beam, and a cask would bark your shins. Your legs were bespattered with mud, on all sides you were trodden on, and the nail of a soldier’s boot would stick in your toe. The cooks scattered the burning coals as they hurried by with their patrons’ meals, and your clothing was torn into shreds. One wagon loaded with a fir tree, another with a huge pine, shook the streets as they advanced, the rear ends waving to and fro, felling the people right and left. Another wagon was loaded with stones from the quarries of the Apenines, and when the axle broke the mass was precipitated on the people. Who could find his scattered limbs or gather up his carcass thus ground to powder? Then there were the dangers of the night when broken crockery, thrown out of lofty windows, made dents in pavements and skulls. Indeed, there were as many fates awaiting you as windows where you passed. You might thank your lucky stars when they threw only the contents of the basins and pots upon you. Rash was he who went to supper without first making out his will. Or your life was put in jeopardy by some drunken and ill-tempered fellow who picked a quarrel with every first person he met. He took care to avoid the scarlet cloak and the long train of attendants, the many lights and the brazen lamp, but you whom the moon alone attended he assassinated. Or you met a worse fate if you fell into the hands of the soldiers, driven by a mob and legging it about the streets, and who would crack your head as if they were cracking a joke, and thus revenge themselves on the pursuing mob.”

Thus in ancient Rome they needed insurance and only had assurance, while nowadays we have insurance but only need assurance. In modern life danger is minimized and insurance magnified. I was quite heavily insured against accident, and my observation and experience had been that the heavier the insurance the slighter the danger, and the slighter the danger, the heavier the insurance. This is the policy of the companies. The only difficulty about insurance is to get enough to entirely avert danger. It is a subject for statistics. Statistics never lie to insurance companies, for they have policy holders to make good and an advertisement system to make policy holders.

Those who did not carry much insurance were considerably frightened, particularly after the danger was over and they learned of it, and even to this day they talk with bulging eyes of the might-have-been disaster. Accident insurance, therefore, should be carried for the comfort it affords both before and after the dangers are past, as a remedy for nervousness. You go into danger with a prospect of making your family the present of a snug little sum of money, and are thus braver and more cheerful; that is, if you are a married man. A bachelor may be brave, but death for him has no cheerful side. He has to depend upon life.

Mrs. Reid, in trying to spend more time with her husband, was fortunate enough to be left behind. She thus would have two or three more happy days with him before the next ship would come for bananas, and she would then return at night according to the regular custom. She would, of course, have to take her chances with the reefs if the night should happen to be dark; but who would hesitate to choose between a slight death risk at night and certain deathly sickness by day? I think it quite likely that her husband did not allow her to risk the passage of the Tiger’s Mouths in such a night.

We bore up pretty well during the trying three hours at sea, all but Doctor Frank and the ladies. Doctor Osterhout was again taken with one of his drowsy, unsociable spells soon after we got out in the open sea; he lay down on the bench and covered his head, as usual, and was not heard from again until we entered the tranquil waters of Almirante Bay just in time for the eleven o’clock breakfast. He seemed to have the faculty of awakening whenever he wanted to eat or talk.

Doctor Senn had been hinting enthusiastically about an alligator hunt, so the local doctors organized an excursion up the Chanquinola River, which ran through the company’s plantation. The plantation, according to Doctor Osterhout’s information, contained 1,000 acres of land and was twelve miles long; but he did not say how wide that would make it. The reader can easily figure out the width for himself, or if he can not, let him get one of his boys or girls who is going to school do it for him—they are fresh in mathematics. The river is about 1,200 feet wide and quite deep, but as its mouth is completely closed to navigation by reefs, the company had dug a channel about twenty feet wide and eight miles long connecting it with Almirante Bay.

A steam launch having been placed at our disposal, we steamed across the bay to the mainland, which was several miles from Bocas del Toro, entered the connecting channel, and were soon gliding through the jungle. On our left the forest came to the water’s edge; on the right a narrow pathway had been cleared for pedestrians. Without this cleared way pedestrians would not have been able to reach the different stations along the canal. A fine rain was falling a large part of the time, but Doctor Senn and Doctor Osterhout sat upon the awning with their legs dangling down over the edge, shooting birds and looking for alligators. The rest of us sat or stood comfortably under the awning and, thus protected, enjoyed the novel scenery. The most interesting part was watching the tropical birds of many sizes, shapes and colors that flew incessantly from one part of the impenetrable wilderness across our path to settle down in another, some remaining on the trees where we could get a better view of them as we passed, others disappearing in the jungle as suddenly as they had appeared. We saw cockatoos, parrots, toucans and a great variety of small birds, which, taken together, might be said to be almost as numerous as sparrows about our Northern houses and gardens. Although Doctor Senn killed a large number of them as they flew by, we could seldom get one because they fell into the tangle of the dense underbrush.