Theodore Winthrop

“ It seemed as if the glowing sunlight of the day had penetrated the earth, had been garnered up, and was now diffused through the chastened air, like the tender memory of a dazzling passion. Consecrate to love should be such nights ”

“ Personally I have never met with anything but civility, and even kindness; their easy dilatoriness must be treated philosophically. Of course the poco tiempo style of management does not suit a Yankee. ”

“ White sheep are said to eat more than black ones because there are more of them, and as sunrise does not enter into the daily experience of the civilized world, it is generally conceded to be rather an inferior, sleepy sort of a display. If I had been under the dominion of this popular fallacy, this sunrise would have given a new view of the subject.
Thanks to a fresh night-breeze, we had made lively progress during my torpidity, and were still bowling along finely with a shore wind on the quarter. The foretopsail was still the trial of the Padron’s life. ”

“ The canoes that do the coast market trade of Panama are made mostly in Darien, hollowed by tool and fire from the trunks of enormous tropical trees. Ours, a fair type of the class, was about forty feet long, seven beam, round bottom, and very little keel; she consequently rolled like a hollow log, as she was. She carried two stumpy masts, with ragged square-sails and a small foretopsail. This last kept the Padron in a very uncomfortable state ”

“ It is not his place in life to become a tool of civilization, of a civilization unknown and uncared for; he need not spend an existence in toil that the proletariat of distant France may eat brown-bread ”

“ Such boats make voyages of more than one hundred miles up and down the coast, and bring to Panama pigs, turkeys, chickens, eggs, rice, maize, plantains, pumpkins, yams, olives, potatoes, candles, cocoanuts, chica, cheese, &c. They carry a considerable number of native passengers, going up to sell their own stuff. Picturesque craft themselves, their arrival makes the beach near the market-place lively and picturesque as a sea-shore of Claude. ”

“ The people of a thoroughfare country undoubtedly always deteriorate, and the transit to California has had a bad effect on the natives. Money is lavished among them; they have few artificial wants to supply, and, having no other way of spending, consequently consume it in riotous living. ”

“ The natives, as happy a set. as the coast Indians of North America, eat their simple fare of plantains and yams with laugh and joke. They are happy in few wants. The Padron was an excellent specimen of his race, a fine, honest, clear-eyed fellow, with delicate features. ”