As we steamed quietly along, I had time to examine the new arrivals. Squatted in little groups or families, each group had all its property, piled or stowed in some fashion, amidst them, consisting of bundles of all shapes and sizes, crockery, parrots and parroquets, quantities of eggs and live poultry, fruits such as are usually consumed in tropical countries; bananas, mangoes, cocoanuts, water-melons, bad oranges, and vegetables; but what was most valued and cared for, clearly the grand object of the visit, were numbers of gamecocks, all trimmed, according to the most approved fashion, and tied by the leg, either to the bedding or, failing anything else, to the person of the owner. These Carthagenian blacks are evidently of mixed descent; most likely a sprinkling of Spanish blood flows through their veins. The men, of small stature, are lithe, sinewy, and extremely active; the women have a decided tendency to become fat; one or two of them had attained to such a state of obesity, that walking was next to an impossibility. The children are the most singular little frights imaginable; guiltless of garments, they seemed all eyes and stomach, arms and legs being merely trifling unessential appendages; a singularity of form that may, I presume, be traced to the habit of consuming such vast quantities of innutritious vegetable food.
We reached Colon (or Aspinwall, as the Americans have named it) in due course, and landed about midday. The outfit being enormously heavy, some time had necessarily to be occupied in landing; and as the afternoon train was about to start, it was deemed the wiser course to send the men and officers at once to Panama, where Her Majesty’s ship ‘Havannah’ was waiting to take us to Vancouver Island—the Commissioner and myself remaining at Colon, with a sergeant and small working-party, to bring on the baggage. All the attendant miseries of unshipping such a heterogeneous medley of packages as we had on board was finished at last, and our equipment safely stowed away in the goods-vans of the Panama Railway Company.
An invitation from the manager of the railway to the Commissioner to sleep at their messhouse was by him gladly accepted; a favour not extended to myself, so I had to take up my quarters at the ‘Howard House.’ Now the ‘Howard House’ was managed precisely on the same plan as a travelling wild-beast show; the entire attraction was on the outside. The bar-room, brilliantly lighted, and glittering with gilt, glass, and gaudy ornaments, was open to the street; an array of rocking-chairs, before the pillars supporting the verandah, enabled the luxurious lounger to sit with his heels higher than his head, and in smoky abstraction contemplate his toes. The barman, all studs and shirt-front, hardly deigned to answer my request for a bed, but, pointing to the entry-book, said, ‘Waal, you’d better sign.’ My name duly inscribed on the page of a huge and particularly soiled book, a key was handed me, adorned with a brass label, attached to a chain of like material, with No. 10 on it. ‘Guess, stranger, I want a dollar—and you jist look here: there are two beds, so if anyone comes along, he’ll jist have to room with you.’ This I decidedly objected to. ‘Waal, can’t help it nohow; thar ain’t no other room.’ ‘If I pay for both beds,’ I replied, ‘surely I can have it all to myself?’ This was at length agreed to, the money paid, and at an early hour I turned in, to enjoy a good sound sleep ashore.
Excepting two miserable, hard, curtainless beds, an old rickety chest of drawers, and a couple of chairs, the room was destitute of furniture; but spite of all discomfort, mosquitos, and other pests, felt if not seen or heard, I fell fast asleep, soon to be roused again by a loud knocking at my door, the sound of numerous feet scuffling hurriedly up and down the passage, and a very Babel of voices. Hardly awake, my ideas were in a jumbled sort of chaos as to the cause. Fire, burglars, riots, a house-fight, were all mixed in strange confusion, until an angry voice, that appeared to come through the speaker’s nose, yelled, rather than spoke, ‘Say, ar you agwine to open this door? Our women want them beds for a lay-out, and jist mean to havin em, anyhow.’ ‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘they want the spare bed I have paid for.’ Of course I refused—who would not?—and, dragging the old chest of drawers against the door, defied them to do their worst.
In the angry parley that ensued, I discovered that a steamer had just arrived from New York, en route to the new gold-diggings in British Columbia, with 1,500 passengers, who, rowdy-like, demanded everything. Threats of administering the summary law of Judge Lynch—of firing their six-shooters through the door, and riddling me like a rat in a hole—together with sundry hard names (it is better to imagine than mention), were heaped profusely on my devoted head. As it appeared to me quite as unsafe to surrender as to remain in my fortress, I determined on holding out to the last.
Fortunately, daylight soon came, and with it the shrill whistle and clanging bell, announcing the departure of a railway-train. Peeping cautiously through the window, I saw, to my intense delight, a long train specially put on, and the rowdies just ready to start. I watched them scrambling in, and as the engine with its freight dashed into the tropical jungle, I emerged from my room and the ‘Howard House’ with all possible speed, completed my toilet at the barber’s shop, breakfasted with the Commissioner at the Company’s messroom, and thus ended my night in Colon.
The agency and mess establishment of the Panama Railway Company are really delightful residences, overshadowed by cocoanut trees, and surrounded by perfect bijous of gardens entirely reclaimed from the swamps: the papaw, the banana, blossoming creeping plants, fruit-bearing vines, and curious orchids, all growing together, a wild tangle of loveliness, yielding beauty, fruits, and shade. The cool verandah, and cane-chairs from China, together with the comfortably-furnished interior, gave ample proof that the products of a tropical country may be used to good account, as additions to our northern ideas of a substantial home.
One of the most singular flowers growing in this pretty garden was an orchid, called by the natives ‘Flor del Espiritu Santo,’ or the ‘Flower of the Holy Ghost.’ The blossom, white as Parian-marble, somewhat resembles the tulip in form; its perfume is not unlike that of the magnolia, but more intense; neither its beauty nor fragrance begat for it the high reverence in which it is held, but the image of a dove placed in its centre. Gathering the freshly-opened flower, and pulling apart its alabaster petals, there sits the dove; its slender pinions droop listlessly by its side, the head inclining gently forward, as if bowed in humble submission, brings the delicate beak, just blushed with carmine, in contact with the snowy breast. Meekness and innocence seem embodied in this singular freak of nature; and who can marvel that crafty priests, ever watchful for any phenomenon convertible into the miraculous, should have knelt before this wondrous flower, and trained the minds of the superstitious natives to accept the title the ‘Flower of the Holy Ghost,’ to gaze upon with awe and reverence, sanctifying even the rotten wood from which it springs, and the air laden with its exquisite perfume? But it is the flower alone I fear they worship; their minds ascend not from ‘nature up to nature’s God;’ the image only is bowed down to, not He who made it. The stalks of the plant are jointed, and attain a height of from six to seven feet, and from each joint spring two lanceolate leaves; the time of flowering is in June and July.
We were to have a special train (the cost of crossing the isthmus was something enormous—the actual amount I do not now remember); and as we were most desirous to see as much of the country as possible, an open goods-truck was appropriated to our use, in which we could stand, and have a full peep at everything as we steamed along. Whilst the train was getting ready, I took a turn over the Company’s wharf and round the town.
The Wharf, built on piles driven into the coral reef, extends about a thousand feet in length, and forty in width, with a depth of water at its landing-end sufficient to float the largest ship. The piles are from the forests of Maine, and have to be coppered above high-water-mark, to resist the destroying power of a boring worm (Teredo fimbriata), that would otherwise destroy them in a very few months. The Freight Department is a handsome stone structure, three hundred feet long by eighty wide, through the arched entrance to which is a triple line of rails.