All the passengers wore white and the ship itself was painted white. Everything was white except the faces and the hands of the colored stewards. They were mostly a dark mahogany. These black men, several of whom were from Dutch Guiana, gave perfect service, and one of them, my waiter, brought in every dish at dinner in a sort of cake walk step, keeping time to the records which another sedulously watched and changed whilst we ate.
The passengers, when they were not playing quoits, played cards. Their only conversation was of ships and men in the Canal Zone, of life they knew and others didn't, the sort of exclusive talk into which it is difficult for an outsider to enter. Nevertheless I obtained much useful information about the Isthmus and the jungle, though none could tell me of Balboa, except that he must have climbed the hill called Mount Balboa, up which picnic parties now go on Sundays to eat their luncheon. That hill of course was only named in honor of Balboa, yet it is strange how even denizens of the Zone will tell you it is the one he climbed.
As for the jungle outside the ten-mile-wide strip of United States territory, they told me many stories—of shooting expeditions, of men who never came back, of men who were liars who said they had penetrated into the interior. I learned for the first time of the "Forbidden Country" which is held against all comers by the Indians whose forefathers Balboa and his men fought and enslaved. I heard of the lost treasures which lie in that country; sacred treasures of Indians, lost treasures of the conquistadores, hidden loot of pirates of the Spanish Main, almost all now guarded by supernatural powers and the ghosts of those who once owned them.
The adventure of going into the jungle and climbing Balboa's peak began to take on a more parlous hue.
"Why not go to it by aëroplane?" I was asked. "The Colombia aërial post from Panama would take you without getting your feet wet." Quite an idea! It must be a beautiful sight from an aëroplane—the two oceans rolling gently towards one another, the attenuation of the two continents to the Isthmus, and the silver thread of the Canal.
With such thoughts the last day was fraught, and when I carried my knapsack out on the dry clean dock of Colon harbor, that quiet, unflurrying, unflurried place, I was much amused by the difference between a gilded imagining and bare reality. The Spanish Main is indeed changed to-day where the Stars and Stripes flies over it. There are perfect arrangements for the convenience of travelers—no haggling porters, touts, sharps, money changers, no bewildering noise, no excitement, but instead a laconic Customs officer chalking bags and trunks, a gateway, and a few horse cabs ready to take you anywhere for a shilling.