at Puerto Cortez, lying at Colon and so we
feel safe. We may now be said to be absorbing local color. That is
about all we have done since we left Amapala. And if it were not that
you are all alone up there, I would not mind it. I would probably
continue on. We know it now as we do London or Paris. We can
distinguish sea captains, lawyers in politics, commandantes, oldest
residents, gentlemenly good for nothings, shipping agents and
commission dealers, coffee planters and men who are "on the beach" with
unerring eye. We know the story of each before he tells it, or it is
told by some one else. The Commandante shot a lot of men by the side
of a road during the last revolution, first allowing them to dig their
own graves and is here now so that he can pay himself by stealing the
custom dues, the lawyer politician has been to Cornell and taken a
medical degree in Paris and aspires to be a deputy and only remembers
New York as the home of Lillian Russell. The commission merchants are
all Germans and the coffee planters are all French. They point with
pride to little bare-foot boys selling sea shells and cocoanuts as
their offspring, although they cannot remember their names. The sea
captains you can tell by their ready made clothes of a material that
would be warm in Alaska and by them wearing Spanish dollars for watch
guards and by the walk which is rolling easily when sober and pitching
heavily toward the night. The oldest resident always sits in front of
the hotel and in the same seat, with a tortoise shell cane and
remembers when Vasquez or Mendoza or Barrios, or Bonilla occupied the
Cathedral and fired hot shot into the Palace and everybody took refuge
in the English Consulate and he helped guard the bank all night with a
Springfield rifle. The men who are on the beach have just come out of
the hospital where they have had yellow fever and they want food. This
story is intended to induce you to get rid of them hurriedly by a small
token. Sometimes out of this queer combination you will get a good
story but generally they want to show you a ruined abbey or a document
as old as the Spanish occupation or to make you acquainted with a man
who has pearls to sell, or a coffee plantation or a collection of
unused stamps which he stole while a post-office employee. Our chief
sport now is to go throw money at the prisoners who are locked up in a
row of dungeons underneath the sea wall. The people walk and flirt