An attempt had been made to supply footing for pedestrians. Bags of sand had been thrown down, some rocks, a very few boxes and boards. Then our feet struck something soft and yielding, and we found we were walking over hundred pound sacks of flour marked as from Chili. There must have been many hundred of them. A man going in the opposite direction sidled past us.
"Cheaper than lumber," said he briefly, seeing our astonishment.
"I'd hate to ask the price of lumber," remarked one of our ship's companions, with whom--and a number of others--we were penetrating the town. This man carried only a very neat black morocco satchel and a net bag containing a half dozen pineapples, the last of a number he had brought from the Isthmus. The contrast of that morocco bag with the rest of him was quite as amusing as any we saw about us; though, of course, he did not appreciate that.
We walked on flour for a hundred feet or so, and then came to cook stoves. I mean it. A battalion of heavy iron cook stoves had been laid side by side to form a causeway. Their weight combined with the traffic over them had gradually pressed them down into the mud until their tops were nearly level with the surface. Naturally the first merry and drunken joker had shied the lids into space. The pedestrian had now either to step in and out of fire boxes or try his skill on narrow ledges! Next we came to a double row of boxes of tobacco; then to some baled goods, and so off onto solid ground.
We passed many people, all very intent on getting along safely. From the security of the shed stores the proprietors and an assorted lot of loafers watched proceedings with interest. The task of crossing the street from one side to the other, especially, was one not lightly to be undertaken! A man had to balance, to leap, to poise; and at last probably, to teeter back and forth trying to keep his balance like a small boy on a fence rail, until, with an oath of disgust, he stepped off into the slime.
When we had gained the dry ground near the head of the street we threw down our burdens for a rest.
"I'll give you ten dollars for those pineapples!" offered a passerby, stopping short.
Our companion quickly closed the bargain.