Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main

by J. W. Boddam-Whetham

From the sea Colon had looked pretty and mysterious; gauzy vapours floated over the town, and all we could see were the outlines of palms, a few roofs, and behind the surrounding forest the dim shadows of the distant hills. We landed, and with the vanished mists all romance disappeared. We stepped from the shelter of the roofed wharf, and in the dirty, decayed village that lay before us beheld Colon, or the city of Aspinwall as it is called by the Americans.

The principal street runs along the shore, and its shambling frame-houses with verandahs and balconies are of the most tumble-down description. Drinking saloons predominate, and the various stores and shops are stocked with a miscellaneous assortment of goods, such as shells, calico, coral, toilet articles, parrots, hats, pale ale, boots, oranges, bananas, and ready-made clothing. The untidy tenement houses, the dirty lanes, the swamps, and the apparent effort to make life in the tropics as uncomfortable as possible, give an impression of squalid poverty. Nor are the inhabitants unsuited to their dwellings; from the sallow German Jew who dispenses iced drinks across a dirty counter, to the slippered negro who beats a gong at meal time in front of a wretched eating-house, all are unkempt and unclean. The officials and their houses are too few in number to counteract the general atmosphere of unpicturesque decay, and both they and their well-appointed offices render the native unsightliness more conspicuous by contrast.

After arriving in Colon the principal aim is to get away as soon as possible. “Thank goodness it isn’t a full stop,” was remarked by a perspiring passenger, whose extreme heat must account for the want of brilliancy in his joke. The Panama Railroad Company facilitates this object by starting a train for Panama as soon as the passengers’ luggage has arrived from the steamer. As the main street is the terminus of the railway, the entire population assembles to bid farewell to their only source of income. Then may be seen a motley crowd, each member of which is endeavouring to extract some coin or other from the pockets of their late guests. Black porters appear at the last moment with some trifling article that they have taken care their employer should forget; jet-black Africans, Jamaica negroes, half-castes, yellow Peruvians, naked children, both black and brown, all endeavour to sell some article or other, either cakes, fruit and sweetmeats, or fans, coral, and smoking-caps of palm-fibre. Nor are the passengers themselves of less varied nationalities, as the steamers from New York and St. Thomas have brought emigrants, business men, pleasure-seekers, fortune-hunters, and travellers from all parts of the world.

Here is an entire German family, from the grandmother to the baby in arms, and not one of them can speak other language than their own; there are some Mexicans carrying on a rapid conversation in mixed French, English, and Spanish, with the negro fruit-sellers, and those five ladies, who have paid such a tender adieu to the captain of the American Mail Steamer, are tourists—probably you will learn that they are not travelling viâ Panama on account of its cheapness, but for the sake of the sea-voyage. Then there are several commercial travellers, each of whom thinks it correct to wear one of the fibre smoking-caps and chaff the crowd in “h-less” English. Those rosy-cheeked damsels, with flower-decked hats and general gaudy aspect, are Irish servant-girls who have left New York to seek a fortune in San Francisco. On leaving the wharf I had passed two of these maidens, who were looking at the beautiful statue—the only beautiful thing in Colon—of Columbus and the Indian. Said one to the other, “Sure an’ its Mr. Aspinwall himself, the man who built the town.”

At last, amid a faint cheer, or rather a hoot of derision, the train moves slowly off, and we pass almost at once from the so-called civilization into the primeval forest. Perhaps we were a very ignorant set of passengers, but strange to say none of us—and some had crossed the Isthmus before—knew to whom the railroad or the land belonged. Some said both land and road belonged to England, others to America, and a few that both belonged to Colombia, who leased it to the United States. Afterwards we found out that the Panama Railway is American, by contract with the Government of New Granada,[116] to whom the land belongs.

With the history of the survey, and the building of the road, the world is familiar from the time when in 1850, “two American citizens leapt, axe in hand, from a native canoe upon a wild and desolate island, (Manzanilla), their retinue consisting of half-a-dozen Indians, who clear the path with rude knives,” up to the 27th of January, 1855, when, “at midnight in darkness and rain, the last rail was laid, and on the following day a locomotive passed from ocean to ocean.” The undertaking was intrepid, the expense enormous, and the loss of life tremendous. Pestilential vapours, reptiles, poisonous insects, fevers, incessant rains, working waist deep in water, insufficient food and shelter, all combined to sweep off thousands of the labourers. Americans, English, Irish, French, Germans, Austrians, natives of India, South America and the West Indies fell victims to the malarious climate, but misery and suffering seems to have fallen most heavily on the Chinese. Of these, one thousand had been brought to the Isthmus by the Company, and though as much care as was possible was taken with their health and comfort, yet before a month had elapsed almost the whole of them became affected with a suicidal tendency, and scores ended their existence by their own hands. The memory of these sad details throws a shadow over the interesting journey of forty-seven miles from ocean to ocean, where each advancing step has only been gained by the sacrifice of a human life.

The traveller will gain some idea of the deadly swamps directly the train has crossed the artificial isthmus—(for Colon is situated on the little island of Manzanilla)—which connects the island with the mainland. Dense mangrove thickets border the waters, both of the sea and swamp, the stems of those near the sea being loaded with clusters of small oysters. White egrets and an occasional roseate spoon-bill grace the banks with their presence, and the black forbidding water of the marshes is redeemed by the starry crinums and aquatic plants which grow in great luxuriance.

After passing Mount Hope, where the cemetery of Colon is situated, we are deep in the forest jungle. Cassias, pleromas, and all kinds of feathery-leaved shrubs mingle with giant cedros, ceibas, and locusts, and all are knitted together by the purple convolvulus, or by the chains of some thick-stemmed liane. Most conspicuous are the palms with their crimson clusters of fruit hanging like tassels below the green crown, and the red and yellow blossoms of the helianthus. Fleet-winged heliconias dart among the shrubs at the forest edge, and in the shady glades, which sometimes break the monotony of the jungle, silver-blue morphos and yellow and orange pieridæ flit heavily along. Now and then a flock of parroquets wheels rapidly in the air, or a black and yellow troupial pipes from a high tree top, but birds are not numerous, with the exception of the ugly “black witches,”[117] that treat the passing train with the utmost contempt. To those who have been accustomed to travel through tropical forests only, after toilsome journeys on foot or on mule-back, it is an agreeable sensation to glide—although there certainly is a good deal of jolting—swiftly through the luxuriant vegetation in a comfortable railway carriage. And yet it was strange, in the trip I have been speaking of, to witness the indifference with which most of the passengers viewed the many pretty scenes. Some did not see them at all, but played whist during the whole journey, others slept, and not a few improved the occasion by deliberately drawing up the wooden blinds, so that nothing outside should disturb their attention whilst they read. “Look at the grave-stones!” screamed one of the passengers, who hitherto had been impervious to the novel scenery. When the information was gently broken to her that the small stone-like columns were not grave-stones, but merely pillars to support the wires of the telegraph,[118] she was quite disappointed.