University of Virginia Library

2. II.
THE ISTHMUS.

On the ninth day we reach Aspinwall in the Republic
of Grenada. The President of New Granada
is a Central American named Mosquero. I was told
that he derived quite a portion of his income by
carrying passengers' valises and things from the
steamer to the hotels in Aspinwall. It was an infamous
falsehood. Fancy A. Lincoln carrying carpetbags
and things! and indeed I should rather trust
him with them than Mosquero, because the former
gentleman, as I think some one has before observed,
is “honest.”

I intrust my bag to a speckled native, who confidentially
gives me to understand that he is the only
strictly honest person in Aspinwall. The rest, he
says, are niggers—which the colored people of the
Isthmus regard as about as scathing a thing as
they can say of one another.

I examine the New Grenadian flag, which waves

from the chamber-window of a refreshment saloon.
It is of simple design. You can make one.

Take half of a cotton shirt, that has been worn
two months, and dip it in molasses of the Day &
Martin brand. Then let the flies gambol over it for
a few days, and you have it. It is an emblem of
Sweet Liberty.

At the Howard House the man of sin rubbeth
the hair of the horse to the bowels of the cot, and
our girls are waving their lily-white hoofs in the
dazzling waltz.

We have a quadrille, in which an English person
slips up and jams his massive brow against my stomach.
He apologizes, and I say, “all right, my
lord.” I subsequently ascertained that he superintended
the shipping of coals for the British steamers,
and owned fighting cocks.

The ball stops suddenly.

Great excitement. One of our passengers intoxicated
and riotous in the street. Openly and avowedly
desires the entire Republic of New Grenada to
“come on.”

In case they do come on, agrees to make it lively

for them. Is quieted down at last, and marched off
to prison, by a squad of Grenadian troops. Is musical
as he passes the hotel, and smiling sweetly upon
the ladies and children on the balcony, expresses a
distinct desire to be an Angel, and with the Angels
stand. After which he leaps nimbly into the air
and imitates the war-cry of the red man.

The natives amass wealth by carrying valises, &c.,
then squander it for liquor. My native comes to me
as I sit on the veranda of the Howard House smoking
a cigar, and solicits the job of taking my things
to the cars next morning. He is intoxicated, and
has been fighting, to the palpable detriment of his
wearing apparel; for he has only a pair of tattered
pantaloons and a very small quantity of shirt left.

We go to bed. Eight of us are assigned to a
small den up-stairs, with only two lame apologies for
beds.

Mosquitoes and even rats annoy us fearfully.
One bold rat gnaws at the feet of a young Englishman
in the party. This was more than the young

Englishman could stand, and rising from his bed he
asked us if New Grenada wasn't a Republic? We
said it was. “I thought so,” he said. “Of course I
mean no disrespect to the United States of America
in the remark, but I think I prefer a bloated monarchy!”
He smiled sadly—then handing his purse
and his mother's photograph to another English person,
he whispered softly, “If I am eaten up, give
them to Me mother—tell her I died like a true Briton,
with no faith whatever in the success of a republican
form of government!” And then he crept
back to bed again.

We start at seven the next morning for Panama.

My native comes bright and early to transport my
carpet sack to the railway station. His clothes have
suffered still more during the night, for he comes to
me now dressed only in a small rag and one boot.

At last we are off. “Adios, Americanos!” the
natives cry; to which I pleasantly reply, “Adous!
and long may it be before you have a chance to Do
us again.”

The cars are comfortable on the Panama railway,
and the country through which we pass is very
beautiful. But it will not do to trust it much, because
it breeds fevers and other unpleasant disorders,
at all seasons of the year. Like a girl we
most all have known, the Isthmus is fair but false.

There are mud huts all along the route, and half-naked
savages gaze patronizingly upon us from their
door-ways. An elderly lady in spectacles appears
to be much scandalized by the scant dress of these
people, and wants to know why the Select Men
don't put a stop to it. From this, and a remark she
incidentally makes about her son who has invented
a washing machine which will wash, wring, and dry
a shirt in ten minutes, I infer that she is from the
hills of Old New England, like the Hutchinson family.

The Central American is lazy. The only exercise
he ever takes is to occasionally produce a Revolution.
When his feet begin to swell and there are premonitory
symptoms of gout, he “revolushes” a spell, and
then serenely returns to his cigarette and hammock
under the palm trees.

These Central American Republics are queer concerns.
I do not of course precisely know what a
last year's calf's ideas of immortal glory may be, but
probably they are about as lucid as those of a Central
American in regard to a republican form of
government.

And yet I am told they are a kindly people in the
main. I never met but one of them—a Costa-Rican,
on board the Ariel. He lay sick with fever, and I
went to him and took his hot hand gently in mine.
I shall never forget his look of gratitude. And the
next day he borrowed five dollars of me, shedding
tears as he put it in his pocket.

At Panama we lose several of our passengers, and
among them three Peruvian ladies, who go to Lima,
the city of volcanic irruptions and veiled black-eyed
beauties.

The Señoritas who leave us at Panama are splendid
creatures. They learned me Spanish, and in the
soft moonlight we walked on deck and talked of
the land of Pizarro. (You know old Piz. conquered
Peru! and although he was not educated at West

Point, he had still some military talent.) I feel as
though I had lost all my relations, including my
grandmother and the cooking stove, when these gay
young Señoritas go away.

They do not go to Peru on a Peruvian bark, but
on an English steamer.

We find the St. Louis, the steamer awaiting us at
Panama, a cheerful and well-appointed boat, and
commanded by Capt. Hudson.