This ship at the pier was the first full-rigged merchant ship we had seen during the cruise—most merchantmen seeming now to be rigged as barks or barkentines—and was, even in spite of its black cargo, a beautiful sight. There is something in the look of a ship—its mass of rigging, its straight yard-arms, well set up, its black, drooping sails, half-furled, its inexplicable riddle of shrouds and stays and braces and halliards and sheets—that always stirs my soul mysteriously. Black as this vessel was, prosaic as was her cargo, unsightly the hands that loaded her, she was a picture. By right, she should have carried teas, and spices, and silks, and jewels; but she was worthy of admiration despite her humble calling.
Once on land, we realised, looking up the long, black hill ahead of us, and feeling the heat from a blazing sun directly overhead, that the walk would be a hard one, and that we must go slowly, in order to make it with any degree of comfort; but walk we must, or stay on the beach.
The pitch was in evidence immediately. Reefs of hard asphalt ran through the sandy beach into the sea. The hill was covered with asphalt, and down near the shore it lay in great wrinkles, where, when the road was being made, it had overflowed and taken to the hedgeway. It was apparent under the grass and weeds, around the roots of trees, and in the banana groves; in fact, there was pitch everywhere, black, oozing, and dull.
II.
Up the hill laboured the little procession of red-faced adventurers, in all conditions of negligée. The large lady from Kansas puffed and sweated and mopped her face; the doctor vowed we would die of sunstroke; the mother and her daughter, from Boston, made the ascent as their ancestors had stormed Bunker Hill, with features rigid and teeth set; our neighbour at table, who had been thrice around the world, wondered what on earth we would think of Manila in the summer-time if we called this hot; our jolly, delightful friend from New Haven laughed us all the way up the hill, and said he was suffering with the cold; the German baron, under his green umbrella, passed us with the superb stride acquired from his sturdy ancestors and his military training; down the hill back of us straggled on the rest of the company: the little women, the tall women, the lean ones, the fat ones, urged and supported by long-suffering husbands and brothers and friends who mopped and fanned furiously.
There were hats of all descriptions: white East Indian helmets built of pith and lined with green, deliciously light, cool things; and all conceivable shapes of Puerto Rican hats, of a pretty, fine white palm “straw,” very much like the Panama; and hats from Haïti; and French hats from Martinique; and then there were Puerto Rican sailor hats, one of which I wore with great pride. Our shoes were the heaviest we had, and our clothing the oldest and lightest available.