The next thing in the programme is the exploration of the town, during which all sorts of things are purchased at fabulous prices, that can never, by any possibility, be required. Such unusual exercise in a hilly place, exposed to the scorching heat of the sun, soon begets a feverish thirst, necessitating copious draughts of iced-water dashed with cognac, unlimited cobblers, or more cold sour poison. Raw vegetables, acid wine, cobblers, cognac, cocoanut, and other ‘comestibles’ soon produce disagreeable admonitory twinges: dread of yellow-fever immediately suggests itself—bang goes the signal-gun! A hasty scamper for the boats dispelling further alarm, all rush on board, there to compare notes, groan over their pains and stupidity, and go through precisely the same performance at the next place of landing.
At St. Thomas we exchanged the commodious steamer ‘Parana’ for the ‘Trent,’ much more famous for getting into trouble than for getting out of it. The run from the island across the Caribbean Sea to Santa Marta, after the tumblings and buffetings that would have been good training for an acrobat, endured betwixt England and St. Thomas, seemed to me the very perfection of sea-travelling. Although a most enjoyable passage, still it became monotonous: one tires of old threadbare jokes and yarns, and wearies even of gazing day after day into the clear blue sea, each day appearing the very counterpart of the other.
Sluggish lump-fish, with their uncouth heads and misshapen bodies, continually wriggle slowly and idly along with us; sun-fish, in their parti-coloured armour, float by, ever performing eccentric undulations. Now a stiff black fin cleaves the water suspiciously, leaving a wake behind, as would a miniature ship—the danger-signal of a greedy shark; huge leaves of kelp, wrack, and sea-tangle drift by, rafts to myriads of crustaceans and minute zoophytes; the rudder creaks and groans to the music of its iron chains, clanking over the friction-rollers, as the helmsman turns the wheel; sea-birds peep at us, then wheel away to be seen no more; whilst ever following are the ‘Chickens of Mother Carey,’ dipping, but never resting, on the ripple at the stern.
I had both heard and read of a formidable fortress that once guarded the entrance to the snug harbour, on one side of which stands the neat little town of Santa Marta, embowered amidst the trees. We sighted the land before it was dark, but the captain deemed it expedient to lay-off and await the daylight, ere venturing through the narrow entrance between the rock on which stands the remains of the fortress and the mainland. Issuing strict orders, coupled with a silver refresher, to my cabin-boy to call me before daylight, I turned in, and was soon in dreamland; my dreams were dispelled by a sudden shake, and the voice of the faithful darkie boy screaming into my ear, ‘Hi, massa, him no see fort if him no tumble out and tumble up pretty quick.’ Lightly clad and hardly awake, I rush, glass in hand, on deck, and quietly seat myself in the bow of the steamer. It was just in the grey of the morning; not a sound disturbed the deathlike silence, save the ‘splash-splash’ of the slowly-revolving paddlewheels. I could discern on my right a dim line of trees, that looked as if they grew from out the water; on my left the dark rock, crowned with its ruined fort, that, as the light increased and the rays of the rising sun slanted down upon it, looked like a mass of frosted silver—so brilliant was the contrast to the dark water and darker woods, still in shadow, behind and around it.