Henry T. Byford

“ This wild island scenery was entirely different from the peaceful color crowded views that we had enjoyed on our little excursion along the islands of Panama Bay to Toboga. One afforded a peaceful, sensuous sort of enjoyment; the other filled us with wonder and admiration.
After having been out in the open sea for a short time, the ladies became uncomfortably quiet, and likewise Doctor Frank, who could always be relied upon. The rest of us found it helpful from time to time to gaze steadfastly at the sky, like saints in Madonna pictures; or shut our eyes like opossums in trouble ”

“ The proprietor of the shop was a gentle old German, too good natured and old to learn the technic or meaning of cleanliness. He had cut hair and beards in Germany, the United States and Cuba, and knew all about his business except cleanliness. Cleanliness in barbers is like biblical honesty in business. While having my hair trimmed and my scalp infected by the old fellow, I asked him if he did a better business in Panama than he had done in the United States. ”

“ The mature, temperamental gourmand is a square trotter with a record. He goes straight for the goal and beats the field. He is talkative and good-natured, and not only enjoys good food but enjoys himself and his surroundings while eating. He is greedy from selfishness and a desire to get all there is out of a meal, rather than greedy from any unnatural craving for food. He has the best he can afford. He fees the waiter and gets served first and well, to the disadvantage of others who depend upon the same waiter and always have to wait; he makes waiters of us all. ”

“ In fact, all the world’s a lie, and men and women play their parts therein. The word falsehood is merely the name for a feminine fabric which conceals the hair that nature made to conceal the head. Our customs encourage false hoods, false hair, false teeth and false modesty, for who would marry a person without hood, hair, teeth or modesty? Better dead than without them. Better to have lived and lied than not to have lied at all.
All of the passengers of the S. S. Limón are first-class liars, I mean first-impression liars, like the rest of the world. ”

“ When we reached the hotel it was time for an appetizer, which we dutifully drank in preparation for a tour-de-force dinner. I formerly thought that in the tropics men lived mostly on fruits, rice, light vegetables and, if they worked hard, an occasional egg, taking but little meat or greasy, mixed dishes. But my experiences in Cuba, on the Italian ship and in Panama have taught me that the people eat as heartily, or more so, of greasy food as in northern portions of the United States, where we subsist too much upon our home-made cereals that overfill and underfeed us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And as there was no bell to call for service, the only way of procuring help if one were taken sick in the night, was to grope along the dark corridor and go down the three flights of starlit steps in the courtyard to the office. Hence I began to think that there might be an advantage in having to share a double room with a stranger; for if either one were taken sick the other could go down to the office and wake up the hotel clerk. One’s valuables might not be as safe with a stranger but one’s life would be safer, and who would not prefer to lose his valuables rather than his life? ”

“ I also happened to remember that I had not been accosted by a beggar, either in Colón or Panama. Whether this is due to the fact that all men find work; or to the scarcity of tourists to teach them to beg; or to the small number and want of affluence of the members of the better classes, rendering the profession of begging unprofitable; or whether my observation was not accurate, I do not know. I suspect that what little it costs the poor to live, is easily earned, but not so easily begged. However, when the canal is finished beggars will undoubtedly appear, among other innovations. ”

“ It therefore imports an operatic company from Spain every year for the Christmas holidays, and has a season of operatic and theatrical performances, mimic bull-fights, genuine cock-fights, noisy merry-go-rounds, harmless football and all sorts of Spanish celebrations. All business is suspended and the people give themselves up to a season of carnival such as Latin nations delight in. But the wind blew, the rain came, the earth quaked and the mountains started down toward the sea, carrying away and burying miles of the only railroad track that led from the Caribbean sea to the capital. ”

“ I criticised them for their schedule habit of leaving New Orleans at 8 P. M. in order to loaf about Mobile and visit for two hours at Montgomery. My train could just as well have left at midnight and have given me an opportunity to go to the French opera with Doctor and Mrs. Palmer and have an oyster supper with them afterward, as to pretend to leave at eight, lie waiting for late trains until after nine, then shuffle off like a tramp-train and constantly wake me by standing still. A sleeping car should not try to imitate a bedroom in a country hotel. ”

“ The busy majority care more about what was than what ought to have been. What was is truth; what ought to have been is fiction, and the worst kind.
Many readers will conclude to wait until the United States has finished the reconstruction of the climate and country before going there, and will agree with me in saying that traveling in the tropics, like eating and sleeping, should be done at home. Indeed, the absurdity of the notion that it is necessary to leave home in order to study a guide book, should be taught to our travel-stricken public. ”

“ At dinner, they have boiled pastes under the name of puddings, and the fattest are esteemed the most delicious; all their sauces, even for roasted beef, are melted butter; their turnips and potatoes swim in lard, butter, or fat; under the name of pumpkin pie their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste, never sufficiently baked; to digest these substances they take tea almost instantly after dinner, making it so strong that it is absolutely bitter to the taste, in which state it affects the nerves so powerfully that even the English find it brings on more obstinate restlessness than coffee. ”

“ I concluded that candlelight would be of more service to malarious mosquitoes than to me. In Chicago I should have suffered great inconvenience at having no light in my bedroom, but having accepted the situation in Panama and having broken up the light habit, I was quite as happy without it. Happiness did not consist in having private illumination to enable me to see myself go to bed, but in being able to do without it. Unhappiness consists mainly of imaginary wants. ”

“ But his big body had acquired momentum and had to go, and he swung suspended by his hands over the water, with his umbrella sticking to him and his coat tails flying, until the boat rose up beside him and he was pulled into it. A man with less physical strength and presence of mind would have splashed down into the waves to frighten sharks and spoil our excursion to Limón. The insurance agent, however, did not even lose his umbrella, which was not insured and which he held up in triumph and exultation as soon as the danger was over. ”

“ Whenever a popular man in one of the outlying districts got tired of work he would throw down the ploughshare and say to his numerous friends, “Come, boys, let’s go and tell the president what to do next. If he doesn’t want to do it next, why we’ll do it. If those little blue-coats in the patio don’t tumble over to our side, we’ll knock them over, and run the government on business and patriotic principles, and put the idle money of the treasury in circulation.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ On our way home from Panama, Doctor Frank, who had been seasick during the whole of the voyage down, said:
“They can say what they please about the tropics, I am never going there again. Zur Hoelle with the tropics! They were made for negroes; let the negroes have them. I have said it.”
I confess that for the time being I agreed with him. The full-blooded negro improves and thrives and finds his wants satisfied in the tropics, and will never thrive elsewhere. When the tropical negro wants a rest he takes a siesta, and is rested. ”

“ Even the saloons and the hospitals were out of ice. Our last stop was at the hotel, a good-sized frame building that backed up to the seashore and was delightfully cooled by the sea breeze. The front garden of about three acres was the most beautiful mass of foliage I have ever seen. Excepting the wide paths, it was almost a solid mass of loaded orange trees, towering royal palms, foliage plants eight feet high, flowering trees, and other plants of the richest green, yellow, orange and variegated coloring. ”

“ I will venture to say that if a prize were proposed for the scheme of a regimen most calculated to injure the stomach, the teeth and the health in general, no better could be invented than that of Americans. In the morning at breakfast, they deluge their stomach with a quart of hot water, impregnated with tea, or slightly so with coffee, that is mere colored water ”

“ Ancón Hospital had at the time less than a hundred patients, two thirds of whom were negroes, and over half of whom were employees of the canal commission. To be laid up in those clean, well-kept wards and be waited upon by those tidy, cheerful nurses must have been a great luxury to the poor black devils. To die there would be enjoying themselves to death, no matter where they finally went to. ”

“ I dreamed of a place where there was no killing for sport, no premature dying from disease, no gambling with lottery tickets, no scale of unearned wages, no rivalry for luxury and no system of imposition upon the weak by the crafty. ”

“ Two hundred years ago the citizens made their Creator ashamed of them by succumbing to a band of exhausted and half-starved buccaneers. Sir Henry Morgan and his men nearly perished of hunger in trying to cross the isthmus while Don Juan Perez de Guzman, president of Panama, was praying and eating, and keeping tab on Morgan’s progress and his own prayers, instead of pleasing God by killing pirates. God is not always pleased with mere praying. ”

“ Another man, who has not yet committed suicide, said that woman’s face was the most beautiful thing in the world—he had not seen them all.
All of the officials and local celebrities excepting President Amador, Mr. Wallace and Mr. Barrett were in the habit of stopping at the hotel on their way, or out of their way, home after business hours, or on their way from home after dinner, thus rendering the hotel corridor and barroom quite animated, and, of course, quite interesting to a stranger; so I went down-stairs to seek solace and safety in a crowd. ”

“ We have hitherto been longing for dry land, but now that we are liable to be put on it to live in the town where the nights are hot, muggy and mosquito-ry, where there is a complete ice famine, much malaria and a few cases of yellow fever, we are content to remain on the steamer. The captain says that the sea is the only place to live on, and from the tropical, semi-infernal standpoint his view is the right one. Freight-ship accommodations have become a luxury, which proves that luxury is merely a point of view. Everything is luxury to some, nothing is luxury to others. ”

“ The only way to determine whether you want an insurance policy or a book or a picture or a fortune from the agent or promoter, is to get away from him or her for forty-eight hours, and sleep over the problem twice. The impressions of the agent’s sonorous or perhaps insinuating voice will then have become weakened, and you will find that you do not want either an insurance policy, a book, a picture or a gold mine. ”