S. S. Barracouta — Off San Juan
February 21, 1895.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
Today I believe is the 21st. We are out two days from
Corinto off San Juan on the boundary of Costa Rica and lie
here some hours. Then we go on without stopping to Panama
arriving there about the 25th. On the 28th we take the
steamer to Caracas. We will be at Caracas a week and then go
straight home. But in the meanwhile we will have got one mail
at Colon when we go there to take the boat for Caracas and
glad I will be to get it. We have had a summary of the news
in the Panama Star and a bundle of Worlds telling
all
about the trolley strike and that is all except Dad's cable at
Tegucigalpa that we have heard in nearly two months. I am very
sorry that the distances have turned out so much longer than
we expected and that we had that unfortunate ten days wait for
the steamer. I know you want me home and I would like to be
there but I do not think I ought to go without seeing Caracas.
It helps the book so much too if one runs it into South
America for no one in the States thinks much of Central and
does not want to read about it. At least I know I never did.
We have had a most amusing time with the two phonograph chaps.
One of them has been an advertising agent and a deputy sheriff
and chased stage coach robbers and kept a hard ware store and
is only twenty-five and the other has not had quite as much
experience but has been to Princeton, he is
23. The mixture of narratives which change from tricks of the
hard-ware trade to dances at Buckingham Palace and anecdotes
of Cliff House supper parties at San Francisco are very
interesting. I am going to write a book for them and call it
"Through Central America with a Phonograph" or "Who We Did,
and How We Done Them." We sing the most beautiful medleys and
contribute to the phonograph. I had to protest against them
announcing "Her Golden Hair was Hanging Down her Back" by
Richard Harding Davis and Somerset kicked at their introducing
"God Save the Queen" as sung by "His Grace the Duke of
Bedford" which they insist in thinking his real title and his
name; if he would only confess the truth. You cannot have any
idea of how glad I am that I took this trip, just this
particular trip, not for any interest it will be to the gentle
reader but for the benefit it has been to me. All the things
I was nervous about have been done and should I get nerves
again as I suppose I always will in one form or another I can
get rid of them by remembering how I got rid of them before
during this most peculiar excursion. For though I and we all
told the truth about being well, we were in a most trying
place at times and the ride we took and the sail to get away
from possible fever was very much of a strain. I do not see
how Griscom kept up as he did for he was an invalid and very
nervous when he started. But he showed great sporting blood.
It was much better having three than two and he furnished us
with much amusement at which he never complains. His
artlessness and his bad breaks which keep us filled with
terror make the most entertaining narratives and he tells them
on himself and then keeps on making new ones. One night Jeffs
came down with
fever through bathing in the mountain streams, a practice
which did not hurt us but which natives of the country cannot
do in safety, and I confess I was scared. Jeffs pulled
through in a few days. It was odd that the man who had lived
here eleven years should have been the only one to give up
throughout the whole trip and he was a good sport, too.
I will have the Central American stories all done or
nearly so by the time we reach New York which is one of the
comforts of this over abundance of sea voyages. I have the
lottery story nearly written and am wondering now if Bissell
will let me publish it. Would it not be a good idea to have
Dad, if he knows him, explain about how I went South to write
it and just what it is and get his official sanction or shall
I write or get the Harper's to write when I get back. The
lottery people in joke offered $10,000 if they could write
the story themselves. And sometimes I wish they would for it
is the hardest kind of work. I do not want to advertise their
old game and yet I cannot help doing it, in a way. We put in
at Punta Arenas and I found a woman looking at us with an
opera glass and shortly after she sent out to say she knew me
and that she wanted me to come up. It seemed I met her in
Elizabeth, New Jersey with Eddie Coward where she was playing
in private theatricals. Since then as a punishment no doubt
she has lived here and her husband is Minister of the Navy
with one gun boat. This trip is very hot and I sleep on deck
and look up at the stars and the light on the jib and the
smoke spoiling the firmament. It makes you feel terribly far
away from the centre of civilization in front of the fire and
you all trying to make out where we are at. I hope you know
more about it than we do,
It is the worst country for getting about that I ever heard
of. It has revived my interest and belief in all such
beautiful things as buried treasures and hidden cities and
shooting men against stone walls and filibusters. There are
not many of these stories but every man tells them differently
so they have all the freshness of a new tale. There is no ice
on this boat or lemons or segars. It is the first time so
they say that it has happened in twelve months, but after this
it must be better. At Panama they fine the ice man $1000
every day his machine breaks and so we have hopes. I feel so
very, very selfish off down here and leaving you all alone and
it makes me lose my temper more than usual when all these
delays occur but I promise to be good hereafter and we will be
together soon now by the end of March sure and I hope you will
not miss me too much, as much as I miss all of you. Sometimes
I wish you could see some of these islands and the long
shadowy sharks and the turtles, there are thousands of turtles
as big as tubs just floating around like empty bottles, but I
have never on the whole taken a trip when I so seldom wished
that the family were around to enjoy it. It used to hurt me
during the Mediterranean trip but there is not much that would
please you in this outfit. I like it because I am satisfied
to go dirty for weeks at a time and to talk to the engineer or
the queer passengers and to pick up stories and improve my
geography but I do not think the scenery would compensate
either Nora or you or Dad for the lack of necessities and
cleanth. When we were crossing the continent I don't
believe I had a spot on me as big as a nickel without three
bites on it, all sorts of bites, they just swarmed over you
all sizes, colors and varieties. They came
from dogs, from the sand, from trees, from the grass, from the
air. The worst were little red bugs that lay under the leaves
called carrapati's and that came off on you in a hundred at a
time. And there were also "jiggers" that get under your nails
and leave eggs there. Some times we could not sleep at all
for the bites and you had to carry a brush to brush the
carripats off every time you passed through bushes. It's the
damnedest country I was ever in now that I have time to think
of it. The other day I was going in to bathe and the sand was
so hot that I could not get to the breakers and so I went
yelling and jumping back to the grass and the grass was just
one mass of burrs, so I gave another yell and leaped on to a
big log and the log was full of thorns. That's the sort of
country it is. And then after you do make a dash for the surf
a shark makes a dash for you and you don't know what you are
here for anyway. It had its humorous side and it was very
funny, especially as it never turned out otherwise, to see the
men scamper when the sharks came in. They never scented us
for ten minutes or so and then they would swim up and we would
give a yell and all make for the shore head over heels and
splashing and shrieking and scared and excited. There would
always be one man who was further out than the rest and he
could not hear on account of the waves and we would all line
up on the beach and yell and dance up and down and try to
attract his attention. But you would see him go on diving and
playing along in horrible loneliness until he turned to speak
to some one and found the man gone and then he would look for
the others and when he saw us all on the shore he would give
one wild whoop out of him and go falling over himself with his
hair on end and his eyes and mouth wide open. I saw one shark
ten feet long but we would have died of the heat if we had not
bathed so we thought it was worth it. That's over now because
we cannot get any more sea bathing. Just around Panama.
Finest
place seen yet.
RICHARD.
