Captain Harvey, R.N., then in command of Her Majesty’s ship ‘Havannah,’ met us at the terminus; the ship’s boats were in waiting to take both men and baggage on board, so that I saw but little of Panama. My old foes (that waged war against me at Colon), the gold-seekers, were assembled on the wharf, awaiting the small tugboat to take them off to the larger steamer anchored in the offing. To judge from appearances, there were amongst them a goodly sprinkling that would have deemed lynching or riddling a Britisher, a capital joke.
A tropical sun soon makes one thirsty. I wanted ‘a drink,’ and for the first time tasted iced cocoanut-milk; never in my life have I ever drunk anything half as delicious. Don’t imagine that, in the least degree, it resembles the small teacupful of sweet insipid stuff dribbled out from the cocoanut as we buy it here in England. What we eat as kernel is liquid in the young nut, and the outer husk soft enough to push your thumb through. Surely the cocoanut palm must have been specially designed for the dwellers in the tropical world! It supplies everything uncivilised man can possibly need, to build his ships, rig, paddle, and sail them; from its products, too, he can make his houses, and obtain food, drink, clothing, and culinary utensils. Strictly littoral in its habits, the cocoa-palm loves to loll over the sea, and let the frothy ripple wash its rootlets. This also looks like another link in the chain of Divine intentions. The nuts necessarily fall into the sea—winds and currents carry them to coral reefs, or strand them on desert shores, there to grow, and, by a sequence of wondrously-ordered events, in time make it habitable for man. The ‘Havannah’ dropped down to the beautiful island of Tobago, to take in water ere she sailed for Vancouver Island.
As we crossed the Bay of Panama (which is, I believe, about 135 miles wide, running inland 120), pelicans, far too numerous to count, were floating high in the air, some of them mere specks. The species _Pelecanus fuscus_ (the brown pelican) is a permanent resident on the southern coasts of America, frequenting in great numbers the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, California, the Bay of Panama, and other sheltered inlets. They frequently build in the trees, although the nest is quite as often placed on the ground, even when the former are close at hand. My acquaintance with the pelicans in the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park had given me an idea of clumsiness, and to see them _spooning_ the fish from out their pond is certainly no indication of being adepts at fishing. I know no prettier sight than to watch the brown pelican fishing in the Bay of Panama; no awkwardness there, every movement easy and graceful. Soaring high in the lurid atmosphere, to the eye little more than a tiny dark spot, suddenly down comes the bird as if hurled from the clouds; plunging in head-first, its sharp beak cleaves the water like a wedge; a fish seized is at once pouched; and, rising without any apparent effort from the sea, it soars off again, to look out for another chance. Should the fish be missed, an event that does not often happen, the bird sits quietly on the water, and stares round in stupid astonishment.