Man, it is said, differs from all other animals, in being ‘a tool and a road-making animal,’ the truth of which was well exemplified in the curious assemblage of products collected from all parts of the world, and stowed in this huge house, brought by man’s ocean highways, and awaiting removal by his iron roads and horses.
Ceroons of cochineal and indigo from Guatemala and San Salvador, cocoa from Eçuador, sarsaparilla from Nicaragua, coffee from Costa Rica, hides from the North and South Pacific coasts, copper-ore from Bolivia, linen goods from the French and English markets, beef, pork, hard bread, cheese from the States, and silks from China.
The town of Colon, as everybody perhaps does not know, stands on a small island called Manzanilla, cut off from the mainland by a narrow frith; the entire island being about one square mile in extent, composed of coral reefs, and only raised a few feet above highwater-level. It has no supply of fresh water but what is obtained during the heavy rains; this, collected in immense iron tanks, that hold over four thousand gallons, supplies the inhabitants during the dry seasons.
The most conspicuous objects one meets with in this dismal place are flocks of turkey-buzzards (useful inspectors or nuisances, as they do their own work of removal), pigs, naked dirty little children in legions, blear-eyed mangy curs that do nothing but growl and sleep; together with peddling darkies, bummers, and loafers (I know no other names so expressive of this species of idler as these Transatlantic ones), that employ their time much in the same fashion as the curs. A line of shops faces the sea, and at a little distance is the ‘mingillo,’ or native marketplace, a spot no one would be disposed to linger in or visit a second time, unless the nose could be dispensed with. ‘Noses have they but they smell not,’ must surely apply to the dwellers in the marketplace; the air is _literally_ (and not in figure of speech only) _laden_ with the mingled fragrance of past and present victims, an odour far more potent than pleasant. Surely ladies never go to market in Colon!
The train was by this time ready to take us to Panama, and, with a parting scream, the iron horse rushed into the tropical wilderness. On leaving Colon, the line winds its way through a deep cutting across a morass, and along the right bank of the Rio Chagres; glimpses are caught of the river from amidst the tangled and twisted foliage that shuts it in on either side like dense walls. From out this leafy chaos rise the gaunt trunks of the mango, cocoanut, plane, cieba, and stately palm. Plantains, too, spread their green succulent leaves—sunshades of nature’s own contriving—to protect the tender growths that love to live beneath them. Every tree seemed strangling in the coils of trailing vines and climbers; real ropes, pendents, and streamers of brilliant blossoms, fit resting-places for the birds and butterflies, themselves like living flowers. Wondrous orchids, grotesque in form and colouring, grew everywhere, springing alike from the living and the dead; for amidst this flood of vegetable life, decay and beauty, like twin sisters, walk hand-in-hand.