There were eighty-one first-cabin passengers, one hundred and nineteen in the second cabin,--for the two had not been consolidated on the Doraine as was the case with the harried trans-Atlantic liners,--and approximately three hundred and fifty in the steerage. The first and second cabin lists represented many races, South Americans predominating.
The great republics in the lower half of the hemisphere were cut off almost entirely from the Old World so far as general travel was concerned. The people of Argentine, Brazil and Chili turned their eyes from the east and looked to the north, where lay the hitherto ignored and sometime hated continent whose middle usurped the word American. A sea voyage in these parlous days meant but one thing to the people of South America: a visit to an unsentimental land whose traditions, if any were cherished at all, went back no farther than yesterday and were to be succeeded by fresh ones tomorrow. At least, such was the belief of the Latin who still dozed superciliously in the glory of his long-dead ancestors. Not having Paris, or London, or Madrid, or Rome as the Mecca of his dreams, his pilgrimage now carried him to the infidel realities of the North,--to Washington, New York, New Orleans, Newport and Atlantic City! He had the money for travel, so why stay at home? He had the money to waste, so why not dissipate? He had the thirst for sin, so why famish?
There were lovely women on board, and children with and without the golden spoon; there were men whose names were known on both sides of the Atlantic and whose reputations for integrity, sagacity, intellect, and,--it must be confessed,--corruptness, (with the author's apology for the inclusion); doughty but dogmatic university men who had penetrated the wildernesses as naturalists, entomologists, mineralogists, archaeologists, explorers; sportsmen who had forsaken the lion, rhinoceros, hartebeest and elephant of Africa for the jaguar, cougar, armadillo and anteater of South America; soldiers of fortune whose gods had lured them into the comparative safety of South American revolutions; miners, stock buyers and raisers, profiteersmen, diplomats, priests, preachers, gamblers, smugglers and thieves; others who had gone out for the Allies to buy horses, beeves, grain, metal, chemicals, manganese and men; financiers, merchants, lawyers, writers, musicians, doctors, dentists, architects; gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, skeptics and infidels,--in short, good men, bad men, beggar men, thieves.