The Colombian and Venezuelan Republics I CHAPTER I THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA T was in the midsummer of 1873 when I saw the probability it could not have been seen at a more unpropitious season nor under more unfavorable circumstances. The "sickly season" had already set in, somewhat earlier than usual; there had just been a local "revolution" with all its attendant disorders; and the whole Province seemed to be on the verge of anarchy, financial ruin, and moral bankruptcy. I have visited that locality many times since; have been an eye-witness of its many subsequent changes for the better; have kept in pretty close touch with it during the past quarter of a century; and some of the happiest years of my life have been spent among the Colombian people. But I shall probably never be able to get entirely rid of my first unfavorable impressions of the Colombian isthmus; and, despite all its many recent improvements and its prospective importance, I doubt whether its Atlantic side will ever look quite so charming on close inspection as it does some leagues distant from the upper deck of an ocean steamer. That was the way it impressed me twenty-seven years ago, and it is the way it impresses the stranger to-day. Our vessel was the old Henry Chauncy, a clumsy, wooden "side-wheeler " of a past era and generation. She was on her final voyage before giving place to the modern iron keel with screw propeller. With the fairest of weather, and without accident of any kind, we had been nine whole days and nights out from New York, touching only at Kingston, Jamaica, for about an hour. The same trip is now made by one of the modern "greyhounds" of the ocean in about half that time, at a reduced cost, and with much more comfort to the passengers. About eight o'clock in the morning of the tenth day out, the watchman at the forecastle called out, "Land!" There was the usual rush forward by the passengers, glass in hand, to see what was to be seen. What we saw was something resembling a twisted green ribbon, barely perceptible, at the junction of sea and sky; something which some poetic genius on board called a "microscopic shadow on the outer hem of space." As we drew nearer, this dim outline gradually broadened and deepened; and very soon it assumed the form and proportions of an indented shore of crescent shape, clothed in that bright emerald green peculiar to the American tropics during the "rainy season." By ten o'clock we were safely anchored in the harbor, only a few rods from the northern or Atlantic terminus of the trans-isthmian railway. Our poetic conceptions of the place, excited by the distant view some hours ago, now began to vanish rapidly and forever; for we were face to face with what was then perhaps the filthiest, the unwholesomest, and most disorderly and repulsive hole of a place in all Christendom. One of the passengers — a gentleman of culture and position - hired a negro porter to carry his trunk from the steamer to the railway station less than two hundred yards distant. The price agreed upon was fifty cents, which was all the fellow had asked. When he got within less than a dozen paces of the station, he threw down the trunk and demanded five dollars! The owner remonstrated, mildly but firmly. In less than five minutes he was surrounded by a threatening mob of negroes and half-breeds, all yelling and cursing at the top of their voices. To prevent a riot, one of the resident consuls advised the gentleman to pay the five dollars, which he did, "with curses not loud but deep." I relate this incident as merely illustrative of the disorders then prevailing at the little seaport town which all Anglo-Americans called Aspinwall, but which all Colombians as persistently called Colón. This confusion as to the name of the place had a capricious origin, by the way; and, trivial as it now seems, it once led to a somewhat vexatious diplomatic controversy. Away back in the early fifties, when the Panama Railway Company (an American corporation) made their final survey of the route, the Atlantic terminus was located in a swamp a little southward of Old Navy Bay. No white man had ever attempted to live there, and the reptiles and red monkeys had never been disturbed in their possessions, even by the Indians. But now that this malarious and inhospitable spot was to be the site of a seaport town, it had to have a name. Several names were proposed, but none seemed to "stick." Finally, when the road was nearing completion, a banquet was given by the managers, at which were present as honored guests all the native local officials, and also several members of the Colombian cabinet who had come all the way from Bogotá to participate in the general jubilee. Champagne flowed freely, and amid the hilarities some one proposed to call the prospective new town " Aspinwall," in honor of the first president of the road. The motion was promptly seconded and unanimously adopted, and the best speech of the occasion was made by Dr. Parádes, then Colombian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Some years afterwards, when, by constitutional amendment, the name of the country itself was changed from New Granada to Colombia, dissatisfaction arose with the name of Aspinwall, and the Congress of the Republic changed it to Colón in honor of the discoverer of the continent.1 This was all well enough. Nobody disputed the right of the Government to give names to towns and cities within its own domain and jurisdiction. Besides, the name selected was by no means inappropriate. But the blunder consisted in the failure to notify the new name to the outside commercial world or even to the officers of the railway company. So it continued to be called Aspinwall by everybody except Colombians, and even they sometimes wrote it " Aspinwall-Colón." Finally, in 1872, when our diplomatic agent at Bogotá applied for the usual exequatur for a newly-appointed consul at Aspinwall, he was politely told there was "no such place as Aspinwall in Colombia; " but that if the name Colón were substituted in the consul's commission, there would be no difficulty in obtaining the desired exequatur. This created surprise at Washington, and for a while Mr. Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State, was disposed to construe the attitude of the Bogotá government as discourteous. But satisfactory explanations soon followed, and ever since then Colón has been accepted as the legal name of the place, though some thoughtless people still write it "ColónAspinwall." 1 Cristobal Colón is the Spanish for Christopher Columbus. But to return to the isthmus itself. As we lay at anchor by the wharf, the scorching rays of the sun had already drawn up the mists and vapors of the forenoon into great banks of cloud, which hung heavily on the mountain sides, or floated in broken fragments over intervening swamps and watercourses. It was easy to trace the serpentine course of "the deadly Chagres" through the mountain fastnesses by the dense volume of white vapor which hovered just above the surface. Very soon these floating masses of steam (for they were little else), began to cohere and darken the sky, and in a few moments the sun was completely obscured. Then came a gust of damp chilly wind, followed by a blinding flash of lightning and a deafening roar. The next moment the whole vapory mass came down in perfect torrents. I had witnessed many midsummer thunderstorms on our Gulf coast, but never before had I seen anything like this. The water seemed to come down, not in a community of well defined raindrops, but in solid sheets, which soon covered the already wet and smoking earth to the depth of many inches. This downpour continued without cessation for about an hour, and then ceased altogether, quite as suddenly as it had begun. The sun now shone out with such dazzling brightness and power as to almost benumb the senses. The heat was intense beyond description. Very soon the hot, murky vapors began to rise in dense and sickening folds from the fever-laden earth. The lagoons and watercourses smoked like so many cauldThe perspiration streamed from every pore of the body. Bathe and shift your clothing never so often, you were always wet and clammy. A strange feeling of suffocation came over you as you attempted to inhale the wet, poisonous atmosphere; and one was made to think of the "Carboniferous period," when the earth was rons. |