To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

Upon our return to Bocas del Toro we discovered that we were in need of a new supply of provisions. We had smoked the cigars, the ladies had consumed the sherry, Doctor Brower had drunk the water and the liquor had evaporated. Hence we resolved to make a night raid upon the company’s warehouse.

The darkness was intense and it began to rain again, and as there were no street lamps, we had to find our way by the light of memory. This guided us successfully both to the warehouse and to the mud puddles, the first of which was unfortunately closed and the latter open. However, the local doctors, our good genii, who always appeared whenever we “rubbed” up against difficulty and wished for anything, went off into the dark and hunted up the agent and found him eating. After he had finished what must have been a many-course dinner he finally appeared; but as he was not the custodian of the keys he started out to locate the negro who was, leaving us standing at the warehouse door in darkness and drizzle, and in hopes that negroes dined earlier and less protractedly than managers. When the negro at last arrived he also went away in search of a candle, for there was no provision for lighting the warehouses. The absence of lighting apparatus and the prohibition of smoking in the building served as a substitute for an insurance company and a fire department. When the candle finally came, its light was practically lost in the large salesroom, and the salesmen, who were the only beings that knew where the goods were kept, were not there. But we did not care to wait for the salesman to eat and be sent for; waiting and eating didn’t seem to expedite matters. So we proceeded to hunt in the dark for the needles in the haystack, for the candle showed but one thing at a time, and that was after it had been brought about near enough to set it on fire. However, Doctor Brower found and purchased a box of one hundred bottles of White Rock, and Doctor Senn found plenty of Pommard, although Pommard was not what was wanted.

By this time we young men were tired of waiting for what could not be found and, leaving the older ones marching single file around and about between the counters and shelves by the light of a candle, like a catacomb party without a guide, we waded across the muddy street toward a light that proved to be in the window of a Chinese provision store, and obtained what we wanted in a minute. We called for some Jamaica Tropicales, which were the only good cigars retailed over the counter in the Panama Republic. They were always uniform in quality as far as our experience went, and when the Chinaman put a half box of them on the counter we quickly transferred them to our pockets and called for more. But instead of opening a new box, he reached under the counter, gathered a couple of handfuls of cigars and placed them in the box out of which we had bought the others. This, of course, made us suspicious, since Jamaica cigars must have been imported in boxes. Nevertheless, when compared with one I had left from a fine lot I had bought at Washington Hotel, I could not detect any difference. If the cigars were imitations they were works of imitative art that did credit even to a Chinaman, and were valuable as such. So we bought freely of them and felt still more certain of their genuineness because he charged us twenty-five cents in Panama silver instead of twenty cents, and would not listen to our offers to buy much more freely for twenty cents. We were, however, glad to pay the extra five cents as it was a sort of guarantee that they were genuine. We knew that an imitation never costs more than the original. Finding the cigars so orthodox, we called for sherry, and as it was labeled exactly like that we had bought before, we purchased some and went out in the rain and mud rejoicing.

We were soon back on shipboard, and when we had finished our dinner I sat down to enjoy one of my fresh Tropicales. To my surprise, it did not have the flavor it should have had, and became worse with each puff. I threw it away half smoked, for what I smoke on shipboard must be all right, or it is all wrong. I again compared those I had bought with the good one I had brought, and there still seemed to be no difference. They looked so good that I felt like keeping them to look at whenever I was tempted to smoke. But that would have been selfish, for I had learned that Doctor Senn had not been able to find any cigars in the dark warehouse, and was longing for a good smoke. I also knew that anything that looked like tobacco would be acceptable to him, just as boiled leather made grateful soup for Morgan’s buccaneers when they were starving on their way across the isthmus. So I presented my Chinese works of art to him. He accepted them gratefully without dreaming of questioning their quality, and smoked them on faith during the rest of the stormy voyage, a remarkable tour de force at such a time. He had the faith that performs miracles and perfumes tobacco. During a storm a cigar seemed to steady him as a pole steadies a tight-rope walker. While the ladies were praying for fine weather, and the men sighing and groaning for it, Doctor Senn smoked for it, and got it. He made his own weather. To him storms and showers became unsubstantial externals and went up in smoke. Neither strong cigars nor mountain waves affected him nor disturbed the even tenor of his ways. He took them as they came and called them good. Indeed but few men are gifted with his powers of endurance nor his even temper in times of storm and distress. I was his roommate and, altogether, heard him sigh only twice while in the stateroom, and these sighs were probably merely little suppressed gusts of impatience at the choice of the ship he had made, and the ingratitude of the company’s officials in turning him out of his room after he had filled the ship for them with first-class passengers.

I have thought it worth the while to mention this Chinese cheat for the benefit of those who remain at home and can not get their experience at first hand. It is necessary to be careful in buying wines and liquors and other less popular goods of them, to see that they are properly labeled and in unbroken packages. However, there is even then an opportunity of being cheated, for although the Chinese on the isthmus have not the facilities for putting up goods in imitation of those imported in packages, some of the white merchants are reported to be carrying on a large business in the substitution of goods. One firm in Colón is said to have paid a single bill of $1,200 for counterfeit labels to be put upon goods of their own bottling. This is shocking to us North Americans, who have recently passed a law against false labeling.

Of course, the Chinese are apt to buy these falsely labeled articles and sell them in good faith. Hence it is also better to get everything one can not judge of for himself from reputable business houses, although one may have to pay more. I remember that when Doctor Senn and I stopped at a Chinese store in Colón and asked for the best sherry in the country the Chinaman offered us a bottle for seventy cents in gold. We were too aristocratic to buy such cheap stuff, although the label looked genuine, and we refused to take it. We hunted up a well-known wholesale and retail importing house and bought a bottle for a dollar. I afterward examined the label and it was exactly like the label on the Chinaman’s seventy-cent bottle, and like the one on the bottle I bought of the Chinaman at Bocas del Toro for seventy cents. The wine tasted the same and was the same in every respect but one, viz., the price. We knew also that it was imported wine for we were not buying it in the United States.

At last we were all aboard the Brighton: bananas, plantains, pineapples, oranges, wines, cigars, land-lubbers, land ladies and all, and started merrily for home. We were glad to get out of the mud and rain, and soon were off, and out in a rough sea.

The next morning we awoke to find the ship rocking like a cradle. We had prepared ourselves to feast, but found ourselves ready to fast. Feasting is often a preparation for fasting. This fact is in keeping with the advice of the greatest mathematician and gravest philosopher in the business world, viz., the modern insurance agent, who says that in health we should be continually preparing for sickness and death. Feasting does it.

All day long we had a succession of squalls and tropical showers, drenching the canvas of our steamer chairs and converting the upper deck into a rendezvous of cold shower baths. The ladies staid in bed while the men wandered disconsolately along the wave-swept deck from the stuffy staterooms to the dreary dining-room. With the aid of appetizers some of the more determined ones managed to go to meals, nibble a little and hurry out on deck where the ever-waiting wave seldom failed to give a douche and get a d——n.

As Doctor Senn was not seasick, he was kept busy waiting on the ladies. There was no stewardess on board, but I am sure no stewardess could have been more willing for pay to do what he did out of kindness of heart. The ladies suffered not for iced sherry nor for egg-nogs and under his care, got better whenever the weather moderated. He proved to be a ladies’ man in the best sense of the word. The steward, who was not a ladies’ man, was kept busy in the dining room and pantry most of the time but, acting as the doctor’s assistant in preparing things, he managed to be of some occasional use besides putting on and taking off table food that was not tasted. Whether the doctor enjoyed the honor thrust upon him of waiting upon the ladies, or whether he was clandestinely annoyed, no one could assert or deny, for he did it with the same dutiful cheer that he ate, slept, smoked and worked, one or more of which he was doing all the time.