THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 
 
 U\ JOLLA, CALIFORNIA 
 
 THE GATES OFTHE 
 
 CARIBBEAN 
 
 by William M c Fee 
 
 GREAT WHITE FLEET
 
 r 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 Clre 
 
 th<e 
 
 o/ ex. 
 
 WilliamM c Fee 
 
 UN i T E D FRUIT COMPANY 
 
 STEAMSHIP SERVICE
 
 ATLANTIC 
 OCEAN 
 
 ngston 
 
 CARIBBEAN SEA 
 
 Route of Special Costa Rican Cruises
 
 The Gates of the Caribbean 
 
 By WILLIAM McFEE 
 
 T is one of the compensations of modern life that a voyage is 
 no longer, as the ironic French peasant was accustomed 
 to describe it, "a little death." So far indeed have we come 
 from the times when a traveler was looked upon as a creature 
 of mysterious mental moods, strangely afflicted with a desire 
 to go somewhere, that the possession of a wardrobe trunk is now of no 
 more significance than a camera or a bag of golf clubs. It is indeed the 
 thing to do, not so much from the selfish motive of improving one's 
 mind, as for the finer fancy of seeing what the world is like and, speaking 
 internationally, calling on the neighbors. 
 
 But going south, heading for one of the Gates of that alluring congeries 
 of romance and modernity we call the Caribbean, our emotions have certain 
 special qualities apart from those engendered by any ordinary trip abroad. 
 Without entering into a lengthy disquisition as to the merits of our educa- 
 tional system, it must be conceded that when we speak of foreign parts 
 we think readily of Europe, just as the Englishman, when America is men- 
 tioned, thinks at once of the United States. And so when we start south- 
 ward, embarked at length upon our expedition to what we may conveniently 
 call Latin-America, we have, quite possibly, a new curiosity, a vague notion 
 of doing something romantic, and behind that, a few fantastic illusions as 
 to where we are going and what we are about to see. 
 
 And it is to be noted at the outset that the enterprise is carried out 
 under the more or less normal conditions of a comfortable human existence. 
 It may conduce to the happiness of some to become microscopic units in 
 a vessel so enormous that one may cross the ocean in it without ever seeing 
 it, or spend many hours losing one's way in its interminable corridors. On 
 the other hand, it is in accordance with average temperaments to find this 
 vessel of ours, just and gracile in her modelling, spacious and modestly 
 beautiful in her garnitures, an adequate substitute for the houses and 
 country clubs we have left amid the wintery landscape at home. 
 
 That same wintery landscape, however, will be already receding by the 
 time we have adjusted our personalities to the novel environment of 
 shipboard life. It is a favorite recreation of witty folk to make disparaging 
 remarks concerning the habits of those who travel by sea. Doctor Johnson 
 set the melancholy fashion when he remarked dryly that being on a ship
 
 was like being in jail, with the added 
 risk of getting drowned. It is true 
 that there are certain practical natures 
 so addicted to dry land that they will 
 admit no other reason for sailing on the 
 ocean than their desire to reach some 
 otherwise inaccessible destination. But 
 for those who have what Walter 
 Baghote called "an enjoying nature," 
 who can from the safe seclusion of a 
 deck-chair regard with philosophical 
 benignity the strenuous pastimes of 
 youth, the four days between New York 
 and Havana will pass all too quickly. By the time the mountains of Cuba 
 emerge from the horizon, there will have come upon the ship's company a 
 sense of solidarity born of the explicit object to which they have dedicated 
 the coming days. 
 
 And a dedication it is, as they can testify who have seen rising out 
 of the sea, the delicate outline and coloring of "San Cristobal de la Habana." 
 "Like Valletta!" you hear some one say, who has been to the Mediter- 
 ranean. And that is true. Though in Valletta you have to go a long way 
 round for your Malecon, and the rocks beneath St. Angelo have not the 
 sinister blackness behind the white surf that swirls and growls below the 
 long scarred battlements of the Morro. 
 
 Here, as the ship moves serenely between the twin headlands which 
 form the huge harbor, you encounter abruptly that alien and romantic 
 atmosphere you have set forth to seek. For Havana has retained, in some 
 magical and secret fashion of her own, and in spite of her indubitable 
 advance in what we cheerfully describe as civilization, a great portion of 
 the extraordinary glamour which lured within her walls the wealth, the 
 beauty and the enterprise of the Indies in her days of greatness. And it 
 holds an essential quality, this glamour, which makes it distinct from that 
 of the Mediterranean or the Orient. It is Latin, and it is shot with gleams 
 of tropical splendor: it is rendered sombre at times with memories of the 
 dark deeds of conquist adores and the incredible exploits of the Brethren 
 of the Coast. 
 
 But if these are to be found among our impressions as we look back, 
 they will be in abeyance as we step ashore into the maelstrom of modern 
 Havana city life, a maelstrom of brilliant sunshine and swiftly moving 
 vehicles. There are no taxis as understood in northern lands, their work 
 being done by innumerable Fords, more adapted to the narrow streets of 
 a Spanish city. They are Fords of unbelievable sumptuousness, however, 
 with elaborate upholstery and a system of colored plates which identify 
 them to the initiated. And while it would not do to accuse their drivers 
 of attempting suicide as they shoot with startling velocity athwart abrupt 
 cross streets, they recall the story of the indignant American in Paris who
 
 asked his driver "if they 
 had no speed limit in that 
 city. ' ' And he was assured 
 that they had, but no one 
 had ever reached it. 
 
 The compensation for 
 these narrow thoroughfares 
 comes with satisfying com- 
 pleteness when you arrive 
 by devious ways, past 
 ancient court yards and 
 arcaded sidewalks, upon 
 the center of this "Paris of 
 the West Indies." A dozen 
 streets radiate from it and 
 you take naturally enough 
 
 The Prado, an immense double boulevard with a central pathway for pedes- 
 trians set between grass plots and trees, which will cany you clear out upon 
 the sea wall of the Malecon. It is not suggested that motor cars should 
 be avoided. Indeed they are to be commended as a swift and economical 
 means of transit to many points of interest. The point emphasized here 
 is that we, remaining but three days, and having taken our fill of the con- 
 ventional sights, if we are to catch the magic of the town so that we may 
 cany it with us, must take our way on foot as the sun sinks below 
 the horizon. 
 
 As the dusk falls like a mantle of misty azure over the harbor and the 
 lights spangle the distant shores, you pass the cavernous darkness of an 
 ancient gateway, and pause in the shadow of the quaint belfry of a ruined 
 church. And you become aware, under the roar of the modern metropolis, 
 of a subtle murmur, faint and clear, reminding you of old days when tall 
 galleons rode at anchor in the harbor and mailed heels rang on the pave- 
 ments of the stately mansions among the palms. 
 
 Of today there is nothing so bizarre to a northern sportsman as the 
 game which is played in the great public courts of the city under the name 
 of /a/ Alai. To us who have seen it in the old world it is the Basque game 
 of Pelote, the protagonists wearing on their right wrists a curious con- 
 traption of woven wicker, like a scoop, with which the ball is hurled with 
 tremendous force against the further wall of the court. And great is the 
 excitement when the players run neck and neck and the man you have 
 backed wins and you discover, to your astonishment, that your two dollar 
 ticket is redeemable for a respectable sum which you promptly reinvest 
 on the favorite, and lose, in a highly sportsmanlike manner. Yet your 
 ultimate gain is to be recorded if measured in the wealth of new and fan- 
 tastic impressions the lights, hung high over the great rectangles of the 
 courts, the fans and perfumes of the ladies, the amazing dignity and im- 
 portance of the small boy who deals out fresh balls, the manoeuvers of the 
 ticket speculators who haunt the outer vestibules, and the harsh brazen 
 voices of the bookmakers as they rouse the excitement to fever heat with 
 new and unheard of odds.
 
 And so, all too soon, we are out upon the sea again, Cuba a long blue 
 hummock on the horizon as we head for the Yucatan Channel. It is here 
 that we enter the actual waters of the Caribbean. 
 
 A glance at the map shows the West Indian system to be outside, 
 rather than within the Caribbean. Eastward from Cuba, with Haiti and 
 Porto Rico forming the main line of the northerly breakwater, there runs 
 an ever diminishing chain of islands that curve to the southward as the 
 Windward Group and couple to the continent of South America at Trinidad. 
 Within these boundaries lies a sea with a history, a climate and a civilization 
 all its own. From the submerged city of old Port Royal to the delta of 
 the Magdalena, from Bridgetown in Barbadoes to Belize in British Hon- 
 duras, the Caribbean Sea was the stage on which were enacted the peculiar 
 exploits of the gentlemen who alluded to themselves, very modestly, as 
 the Brethren of the Coast. However, a careful examination of this part 
 of the world proves that they are now extinct. 
 
 The business of piracy was never handed down from father to son, 
 nor did many of the regular practitioners live long enough to enjoy the 
 fruits of their industry. A reflection that must inevitably occur to us today, 
 while reading the lives of the pirates and buccaneers of the American Coast, 
 is that if these men had used the same energy, ability and resource in honest 
 merchandising, they would have all died millionaires; instead of hanging 
 at somebody's yardarm. Nothing is more extraordinary in the history 
 of that period than the utter blindness of all these desperadoes to the 
 colossal wealth concealed in the virgin soil beyond their dirty and disor- 
 derly settlements. 
 
 These thoughts will be inspired, reasonably enough, by our arrival 
 in Jamaica. By this time the intelligent traveler and it is a gratifying 
 feature of a West Indian tour that so many of one's fellow travelers are 
 intelligent has become sufficiently familiar with a maritime existence to 
 take much of it for granted. He will have dis- 
 covered the extraordinary number of combina- 
 tions rendered possible by dropping a rubber 
 ring a given number of times on a squared board. 
 He will have reached the inevitable conclusion 
 about deck quoits : that nobody ever has or ever 
 will acquire skill enough to win from anybody 
 else (unless he take a voyage round the world 
 and devote every moment to practice) . He will 
 have learned the true inwardness of that myster- 
 ious sport, deck-golf, when played with a lady 
 partner, or better still a lady opponent, and he 
 will have found that the ship's pianos, con- 
 tradicting the majority of travelers' tales, are in 
 tune. All this is very broadening, and the 
 approach to Jamaica is welcomed as affording an 
 insight into the workings of an authentic colony. 
 
 Such is Jamaica, a compact, orderly and 
 extraordinarily fertile island that looks like a
 
 blue mountain in the distance, and 
 remains startlingly blue as you 
 approach it, so that when you 
 finally land you are not surprised 
 to discover that the main back- 
 bone of it is called Blue Mountain 
 with Blue Mountain Peak soaring 
 into the clouds between you and the 
 other side of the island. 
 
 For it is the custom here to 
 abandon the ship for a day or two 
 at Port Antonio, and while she 
 eventually finds her way round by 
 sea to Kingston, we go to Hotel 
 Titchfield and later take the road 
 over the mountains. 
 
 Here at once is apparent a 
 happy distinction which Jamaica 
 can claim over many adjacent territories. She has good roads. She is a very 
 old established country, for she began making sugar even before Havana was 
 founded, and you will see as your car drops down the hill presently, the 
 vestiges of old stone acqueducts which the early Spanish planters built 
 to irrigate their fields. There are other views, too, of buildings with formid- 
 able walls raised by slaves but overgrown now by the all -conquering foliage. 
 And perhaps it is of that foliage in its almost incredible abundance 
 and variety that you will carry away the most vivid memories. As the 
 clean, well -graded road leaves the north shore and you begin to ascend the 
 Wag Water Valley, the vegetation crowds to the very edges and strives 
 to arch itself overhead. And as you climb and the road skirts the precipi- 
 tous rim of some deep green gully, you can look down and behold gardens 
 on end, as it were, vertical vegetation; and you marvel by what eccentric 
 devices the industrious agriculturist manages to achieve his miraculous 
 tasks. And looking more intently upon the 
 scene as it unwinds in a polychromatic vista, 
 you observe that every hummock and hill, the 
 very sides of otherwise inaccessible gorges, are 
 scored with tiny regular terraces on which at 
 intervals microscopic humans can be seen, with- 
 out any apparent means of support, engaged 
 upon the cultivation of coffee and cane and 
 bananas. On the upper reaches of the moun- 
 tains lie great forests of hardwood trees, while 
 nearby, and wherever they can find room, the 
 green plumes of the bamboo, like enormous 
 ostrich feathers, cover the slopes. And at 
 intervals there towers above the road some 
 enormous ceiba tree, whose trunk is like a forti- 
 fication, so strongly is it set into the earth, and 
 whose branches extend like great cantilevers to 
 support their vast extent of shade.
 
 HERE will come at intervals ebony trees with heavy foliage 
 amongst which the fruit shines like globes of luminous amber. 
 There are palms of bewildering variety, from the obliging 
 "traveler's palm" which bleeds cold water when stabbed, to 
 the slender cocoanut tree, likewise a dispenser of cool liquids, 
 and the royal palm, superb in his tall beauty, a single lovely column crowned 
 with a tuft of matchless symmetry. 
 
 Castleton Gardens, with a gorgeous profusion of palms, ferns and 
 blooms; and then, as the road twists and turns in one hair-pin bend 
 after another, and you comment upon the occasional ironic warnings 
 to "drive carefully" as if any one would do anything else if he wanted 
 to get home again the shoulder of Stoney Hill is won and the earth 
 falls away from the road in a grand sweep. In the distance lies the blue 
 Caribbean once more, with Kingston Harbor sleeping in the sun behind 
 the Palisadoes. 
 
 Kingston, the metropolis of the Island, lies on the northern side of a 
 great harbor, and its situation in the wide plain at the foot of the Blue 
 Mountain Range raises the temperature during the morning hours. In 
 the afternoon a breeze blows strongly across the water. The stores should 
 not be missed, especially those devoted to what are genetically described 
 as curios. It is here you can gratify the universal desire to get something 
 for the folks back home. Here you can purchase articles of formidable 
 utility such as baskets and hats ; or other things of no utility at all yet which 
 certainly give pleasure to the untraveled. Such things as, for example, 
 a vase made from a joint in a giant bamboo, a table center fashioned from 
 the silky fibres of a native plant, and sea shells of gorgeous tintings. Fish, 
 too, of grotesque proportions, safely dried and varnished, and cocoanuts 
 carved into amazing shapes, will tempt the benevolent citizen as he goes 
 shopping. 
 
 And it may be our fortune, as we fare further, to discover a shop 
 where have come down from many a manor house in the island, some 
 of the old fashioned furnishings of early days. Here, among pieces of 
 authentic china, you will see those substantial Colonial candle sticks, 
 with heavy bases and huge glass globes, so that even a hurricane could
 
 not blow them out. Here, too, you may come upon old silver and glass 
 and curious ornaments of coral and aquamarine and jet, the prized 
 trinkets of by-gone simple hearts. 
 
 Yet of all the memories we carry from Kingston these are not the 
 chief. Most of all we shall remember the oasis of palms behind the hotel, 
 away from the grind of the trolley car and the dust of the country roads, 
 where the breeze blows across rippling water from Port Royal and the 
 world becomes but a dim adumbration of soft lights and sounds seen 
 and heard amidst tropical foliage, while under a sky crowded with un- 
 suspected galaxies, we can distinguish the movements of departing mer- 
 chantmen and the loom of white yachts at anchor. 
 
 So far, however, we have seen but the fringe of Latin-America. 
 Both Cuba and Jamaica have achieved something essentially belonging 
 to themselves alone; something we can call racial as well as national, 
 yet which derives from the northern races. For if Cuba has emerged 
 from her unhappy Colonial period under the vigorous tutelage of the 
 United States, so that she can stand alone, Jamaica bears upon the face 
 of her institutions and community life the ineffaceable imprint of the 
 Mother Country beyond the sea. 
 
 But Latin- America is something beyond either of these, and it will 
 be necessary to climb up out of sight of the sea, to traverse the lowlands 
 of the coast, before you can begin to sense the atmosphere of an authentic 
 foreign civilization. Because modern transportation inevitably brings 
 along with it the genius of the race which evolved it and the North Amer- 
 ican, with his ship and his railroad and his hotel, tends to find himself 
 at home everywhere ; whereas the main lure of travel is to get away from 
 home and into foreign parts. 
 
 Yet the experienced traveler, stepping ashore for the first time at the 
 northern end of the Panama Canal would wonder how to classify the impres- 
 sions made by so strange a medley of North and South and of East and 
 West. Here is no clean-cut racial line, but rather an almost unimaginable 
 conglomeration of types. It is as though a tide of heterogeneous humanity 
 
 11
 
 had surged up against the immense white concrete walls of the Canal 
 Zone and had been flung back upon itself in a burst of chaotic color and 
 movement which is the City of Colon. Emerging from dock buildings 
 so clean and so vast that there is nothing save the great Baths of Cara- 
 calla to compare with them, the timid visitor avoids being run down by 
 a joyous negro on an electric baggage truck, and steps across an oasis 
 of tall palms among which can be seen the romantic looking offices of 
 steamship lines offices which bear a striking outward resemblance 
 to Oriental palaces. 
 
 Beyond these and the immediate track of the railroad, one abandons 
 Efficiency and Sanitation and Ferro Concrete, and comes quite suddenly 
 upon Life. As you glance along this exotic Main Street, the frame 
 verandahed stores crowding over the sidewalk to the very curb, so that 
 you are always sheltered from sudden tropical down-pours, and as you 
 watch the bizarre manifestations of alien activity around you, it is diffi- 
 cult to avoid comparing it with the jungle itself. And the impression 
 grows as you steer gently among the myriad of vendors of fruit and 
 candies and newspapers and lottery tickets; as you peer into cavernous 
 stores where brilliant-eyed Orientals lie in wait for the unwary; and catch 
 sight abruptly, within some dark court, of staircases, climbing into in- 
 tricate confusion and festooned with clothing of dazzling colors, like the 
 vines and foliage of the Isthmian forests. And you observe with a cer- 
 tain amount of trepidation, as you pursue your adventures, that the 
 apparently impregnable front of these lines of caravanserais are pierced 
 by narrow and mysterious alleys, as though the dense thickets of build- 
 ings were infested by rapacious animals who have beaten out these per- 
 ilous pathways to the outside world. 
 
 12
 
 OWEVER, this may be only the fancy of the timid stranger 
 as he wavers along, astounded by the infinite variety of the 
 wares he is implored to inspect. Gentlemen from the remot- 
 est provinces of the Orient burst forth into soft eloquence as 
 he passes. He discovers silken bath robes of fabulous designs 
 and tintings, combs of ornately carved ivory, trinkets of jade and shell 
 and lacquer-ware. He will be importuned to examine astonishing fabrics 
 from Egypt, hats from Ecuador, and pongee suitings from farthest India. 
 Dignified persons with gleaming eyes, outlandish head dress and a 
 remarkable command of English, will spellbind him into buying articles 
 of fantastic design and problematic utility. 
 
 In and out among the pillars which support the arcades darts the 
 eternal small boy at his eternal job of selling papers, while at every cor- 
 ner local residents regard the lottery tickets pinned upon boards with 
 profound deliberation before taking their weekly chance at wealth be- 
 yond the dreams of avarice. 
 
 Such are a few of the scenes which are to be observed by the tolerant 
 and leisured voyager as he wanders about one of the most cosmopolitan 
 cities in the world. And perhaps one of the most fugitive fancies flitting 
 through his mind, as he pursues his way across the Zone, will be that he has 
 come into a country of gigantic aviaries, so strongly do these rectangular 
 screened dwellings, set amid gorgeous tropical scenery, resemble bird cages. 
 Of the Canal itself it is imperative to say that the tourist will be 
 doing himself a serious disservice if he fails to become thoroughly familiar 
 with Isthmian history before he arrives at Cristobal. It is a very com- 
 plex affair, with its roots in the almost forgotten past, entangled with 
 a deal of wickedness and folly after the fashion of human affairs generally. 
 But if the voyager begins, on the southward journey, to consult the 
 ship's library and discover for himself how the California gold rush of 
 1849 brought into existence a traffic and a railroad from sea-to-sea, and 
 how gentleman-adventurers of all nations scrambled across under un- 
 believable conditions, he will probably continue to read until the story 
 has become coherent in the mind. The chief difficulty is to realize 
 adequately the change which has been wrought in the face of the country 
 inside of twenty years.
 

 
 Yet one would like to evoke, if only for a moment, the scenes that 
 met the eyes of those fresh-faced, dauntless young men from New Eng- 
 land and New York as they came up the old Chagres River, the black 
 boys at the oars singing the song that raged across the world: 
 "Oh Susannah! don't you cry for me! 
 
 I'm off to California wid my banjo on my knee." 
 One would like to get back for a moment the extraordinary emotion 
 of these young adventurers as they sat watching the walls of the impen- 
 etrable jungle slide by, walls of palm and teak and ebony, of sycamore 
 and acacia and wild banana, looped and swathed in vines of inconceiv- 
 able variety with blooms that terrified by their unexpected loveliness, 
 until their canoes halted at a village called Gatun where their descendants 
 have raised a mountain and created a lake. A strange and unforseen 
 rendering of the song the gold seekers hummed to keep up their spirits 
 as they pushed on into the darkness of the jungle: 
 "I'll scrape the mountains clean old girl, 
 
 I'll drain the river dry, 
 
 I'm off to California 
 
 Susannah don't you cry!" 
 
 We have indeed scraped the mountains clean and drained the rivers 
 dry, so that what used to be the adventure of a lifetime is now no more 
 than an hour's run over a modern roadbed. The story of the bright 
 young visitor who caught sight of the big P. R. R. on the freight cars 
 and who remarked wistfully that he had not known the Pennsylvania 
 System extended so far south or he would have taken it, may not be 
 entirely authentic, but it should be accepted as an excellent allegory. 
 
 On no account should Old Panama be missed. There is not much 
 of it left, not only because it never was a large place but because it seemed 
 destined to pass the years in a state of perpetual destruction. No self 
 respecting pirate, it appears from the histories, could think of going home 
 without attacking and destroying Panama. With some of the more 
 eminent it became a habit. If Havana was too well guarded, if Porto 
 Bello was not yet suffi- 
 ciently reconstructed to 
 be again demolished, if 
 Cartagena proved too 
 precarious a gamble for 
 anything less than an 
 army, then the pirate 
 temporarily out of a job, 
 would instantly propose 
 an attack on Panama. 
 And while this sort of 
 thing makes a pictur- 
 esque page in history it is 
 not to be expected that 
 Panama, after so many 
 assiduous destructions, 
 should have very much 
 left to show. 
 
 15
 
 Baptista Antonio, 
 an Italian surveyor 
 sent in 1587 by the 
 Spanish king to report 
 upon this weakness of 
 Panama, stated three 
 sundry places where it 
 might without diffi- 
 culty be taken by the 
 pirates. It is safe to 
 say that every pirate 
 who came along suc- 
 ceeded one way or 
 another. After a vaca- 
 tion in Port Royal, 
 the invigorated des- 
 peradoes would cross 
 the Caribbean and 
 start up the Chagres 
 River. Doubtless it passed through the minds of many of these extra- 
 ordinary beings, as they fought the poisoned arrows of the Indians and 
 the poisoned stings of the mosquitoes, that a canal would have been a 
 convenience, but they were all in too great a hurry to clean up and return 
 to their homes. The tale of their exploits in this part of the world has 
 been amusingly set down by one of them, Jan Esquemeling, a Dutchman, 
 the only literary pirate on record at that early day, which was long 
 before the era of "pirated editions," of course. Esquemeling was one of 
 those deserted by Morgan who, after all the hard work was done, sailed 
 off without dividing the spoil. The theory that Morgan suspected 
 Esquemeling of literary tendencies and abandoned him on that account 
 is not borne out by our knowledge of Morgan's character. So shrewd 
 a commander would have found some use for a ready pen. 
 
 As we return to the ship and recall the fantastic history of this nar- 
 row strip of volcanic jungle and fever-haunted swamp, it is impossible 
 to avoid a feeling that the men who faced and conquered the unspeak- 
 able perils of the transit, whether conquist adores or merchants or buc- 
 caneers, whether adventurers for gold or railroad builders, were the un- 
 conscious instruments of one of those mighty inspirations which are 
 transmitted from one generation to another and which are the compen- 
 sating forces of the world against the terrors of jungle and swamp and 
 the darkness of the unknown. They were the forerunners, the pioneers 
 of whom Kipling has sung so vividly: 
 
 "He shall desire loneliness, and his desire shall bring 
 Hard on his heels a thousand wheels, a people and a King. 
 He shall come back on his own track, and by his scarce- 
 cooled camp 
 There he shall meet the roaring street, the derrick and 
 
 the stamp: 
 
 For he must blaze a nation's ways with hatchet and with brand, 
 'Till on his last-won wilderness an empire's outposts stand." 
 
 16
 
 You will find this fancy coming back more strongly and perhaps 
 get hold of the essential spirit of the great enterprise which has so trans- 
 muted the Isthmus, as you return to the ship some evening, and your 
 eye is engaged by the austere classical loveliness of the enormous buildings 
 of the new docks. New, and of a stark utility unsurpassed in architect- 
 ure, yet beholding their facades in the luminous tropic night across 
 the vast expanse of level concrete floors, you can do them justice only 
 by conceiving them to be the stones of a great achievement, the visible 
 temples of a powerful and benign civilization. 
 
 In the four hundred years since the great navigator himself dropped 
 anchor inside Grape Cay and went ashore not far from where the city 
 of Limon now stands, men have ceased to regard the Caribbean as a 
 "Sea of Darkness." Yet the configuration of these coasts remains 
 very much as Columbus saw it from his caravel. To him it was indeed 
 a sea of darkness and doubt. As he paced his deck and watched the 
 long line of white surf break on the yellow sand beneath the palms, 
 and raised his eyes to the blue distances of the Cordilleras beyond 
 the impenetrable jungles of the lowlands, he was turning over in his 
 mind the problem which had become the dominating passion of his 
 life. These coasts, rich as they might be in gold, were to him so 
 many obstacles holding him back in his search for the way through. 
 It is a measure of his courage and his genius that he never lost his 
 faith in that strange country he called Cathay, or his conviction that 
 sooner or later that way through would be discovered. As it has been, 
 though it may be doubted if Columbus ever imagined it would take 
 so long! 
 
 17
 
 The present day voyager, while he can evoke easily enough the 
 picture of the intrepid old captain sheltering from the slow, smooth un- 
 dulations of the easterly swell under Grape Cay, is spared the annoyance 
 of wading ashore and beating off bands of hostile Caribs. A maximum 
 of modern convenience seems to have been attained without demolishing 
 the tropical luxuriance of the place, for the city is invisible behind a 
 grove of magnificent Indian laurels save where a few houses climb the 
 green bluffs behind the plain. Indeed it is not easy to keep that same 
 tropical vegetation where it belongs. It is one of the foremost differ- 
 ences between the northern and the central zones, that in the latter 
 human beings are engaged in an active struggle with the plant life. There 
 is something almost sinister in the relentless energy and indomitable 
 intrusion of the vegetation. 
 
 There was a time when the pious settlers of Costa Rica had other 
 enemies than the jungle to contend with, and our friends the buccaneers, 
 engaged upon the enterprise of reaching the Southern Sea, but with the 
 ulterior motive of raiding the riches of Peru, appeared in force at this 
 same point where we disembark, behind Grape Cay. This was in 1665 
 when the art of piracy had reached a high degree of complexity and per- 
 fection. A gentleman named Mansfelt, who was so eminent as an ocean 
 highwayman that he called himself an admiral, left Port Royal in Jamaica 
 with a thousand men in fifteen caravels. The position of Mansfelt is 
 to be gauged by the fact that his chief of staff or vice-admiral was Henry 
 Morgan himself. A more complete company of scoundrels and riff-raff 
 it would have been impossible to conceive even in Port Royal. The 
 mere effort to visualize those ships with their dreadful crews of unshorn, 
 unwashed tatterdemalions from all the stews of Europe descending upon 
 a decent coast evokes a gesture of disgust. It was one of the penalties 
 of enterprise outstripping the running of law that such a thing should 
 have been possible. 
 
 18
 
 UT the interest for us in all this lies in the fact that when the 
 buccaneers landed where Limon now stands they were bound 
 upon the capture and pillage of Cartago, the capital city of 
 the country; and on setting forth they followed a line more or 
 less corresponding to the route we take in our railroad journey 
 into the interior. By a sudden raid at night they captured the village 
 of Matina which lay in their track towards the Reventazon River, it being 
 their plan, as it is ours, to ascend the valley of that stream, skirting the 
 shoulders of the volcanoes Turrialba and Irazu and so arriving at Cartago. 
 
 They must have been an extraordinary sight as they came swimming 
 and rafting themselves across the rapid flood of the Reventazon, that 
 mob of cutthroats from every port from Antwerp to Genoa. The books 
 tell us they comprised English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish, 
 Greek and Levantine. They counted among their commanders John 
 Davis, Joseph Broadley and Jean Le Maire. It was what an actor 
 would call a star caste. They came across, over six hundred of them, 
 while the humble laborers on the opposite shore stood in amaze at such 
 an incredible portent. All their lives they had heard of the diabolical 
 deeds of the filibusters of the Indies, and now here they were, their cut- 
 lasses in their teeth, breasting the current, their gleaming eyes and terri- 
 fying moustachios approaching with frightful rapidity. No doubt panic 
 unnerved these poor creatures for only one, a hardy Indian from the 
 highlands, was able to understand what could be done. As the buc- 
 caneers raced out of the river he dived in and swam back to the other 
 side and ran home as fast as he could. It was only a few miles, but as 
 the train climbs the northern flanks of the Reventazon Valley and you 
 look from the windows of the chair car across the savage loveliness of 
 those precipitous tropical gorges, you will get a dim notion of the journey 
 that Indian made through the jungles of Costa Rica. 
 
 But the buccaneers were to discover that they had aroused a body 
 of men who had no intention of resigning their property to any raga- 
 muffin who might rush up and demand it. The Spanish colonists of 
 Costa Rica were the vigorous descendants of the conquistadores who 
 
 19
 
 were tougher and more determined than the toughest of buccaneers, 
 and in a very short space the latter, who had arrived at Tunialba, were 
 coming to the view that things were not going entirely right. 
 
 They had marched and scrambled and swung themselves over cliffs 
 and over the edges of ravines as the tortuous track led them upward 
 towards the mighty cone of Turrialba with his cap of white clouds, and 
 they were much cheered by the information that the young ladies of 
 the city of Cartago were extremely good looking and no doubt inclined 
 to have a romantic interest in a swaggering buccaneer from over the blue 
 Caribbean. And no doubt, also, the clatter of so many different lan- 
 guages in their ranks added a certain varied interest to the journey. 
 But instead of romantic young ladies, bullets began to arrive from the 
 dense jungle that beset Turrialba on all hands, and the buccaneers, not 
 knowing how many regiments of warlike and indignant Spanish colonists 
 were concealed behind these menancing screens of leaves, suddenly 
 broke away down the mountainside and never stopped until they reached 
 Matina. A number of them fell into the river as they came down pell- 
 mell and it is gratifying to reflect that the alligators were on hand to 
 receive them. From Matina they hurried across the lowlands, now 
 covered with banana plantations, and arriving at Portete, as they called 
 Limon in those days, got on board and sailed out into the Caribbean 
 as fast as possible. 
 
 Wealth no doubt is a relative thing and the freebooter who des- 
 cended upon these smiling hospitable coasts and who slaughtered the 
 simple agriculturists and smashed their houses and temples in his frantic 
 anxiety to accumulate gold, quite possibly imagined himself an extremely 
 clever and efficient person. The best we can say of him now is that he 
 was deficient in vision. Very few pirates were prominent citizens in 
 their own sections, and their way of life did not give them the opportunity 
 to appreciate the riches latent in the fertility of those valleys and uplands 
 to whose inhabitants they were about as welcome as a pestilence. 
 
 But it is worth noting that both to the old time buccaneers and to 
 modern commerce the problem was one of transportation. No one who 
 makes the journey from Puerto Limon to the capital of Costa Rica, 
 will ever forget the experience. There are probably but two other as- 
 cents which can be 
 adequately com- 
 pared with it 
 the line from Lima 
 up the Andes and 
 the railway from 
 Vera Cruz to Mex- 
 ico City. There 
 is a story about 
 the former road 
 which comes to 
 the mind as the 
 train carries us 
 briskly over the 
 dizzy gorges and 
 through the cork-
 
 screw cuttings of the line to San 
 Jose. The constructor was warned 
 that the loose shale was an impos- 
 sible basis for a railroad. He retorted 
 that rather than give up he would 
 hang his rails from balloons while 
 he was consolidating the earth 
 underneath. It must be admitted 
 that at times the track of our railroad 
 seems to be suspended in some such 
 way over the Reventazon. There is 
 one glimpse to be held in memory, 
 a vista of many shaded greens and 
 blue distances, cloud capped peaks 
 and rich plantations, with the river 
 a streak of gleaming silver coming 
 down the valley. And from the other 
 side, if you are lucky and the clouds 
 are not too heavy, you will see the 
 vast crater of Mount Irazu, with his 
 forty mile plume of smoke and steam 
 rolling away across the central plateau. 
 
 The difference in climate 
 between Limon and San Jose is not 
 to be ignored. As you sit in the train 
 waiting for it to start, you will admit 
 that the temperature is undoubtedly hot. But when the train has 
 achieved the five thousand feet altitude of the hundred mile journey, 
 and you are established at your hotel in San Jose, you become aware 
 of the fact that nobody is wearing a straw hat; and as you go out in the 
 square after dinner to listen to the band, you have a distinct impression 
 that an overcoat would by no means be superfluous. 
 
 To the visitor from North America the famous cities of the Latin 
 republics have a remote and modest air. For obvious reasons the Euro- 
 pean founders of these communities chose the more or less inaccessible 
 highlands of the interior, for in the days before the connection between 
 mosquitoes and malaria was understood, the tierras calientes, the hot 
 lands of the coast, were impossible. Even the natives could not be in- 
 duced to go down there. And San Jose, reposing upon a slight eminence 
 in the center of a lofty shallow plateau like a saucer, so that from every 
 street you can see the plain sloping away, with the rim rising in the dis- 
 tance, has no tall buildings like American cities. The available area 
 renders them unnecessary. The long orderly lines of white houses with 
 their roofs of dark red Spanish tiles often surmounted by a couple of 
 dignified looking cormorants give one a very vivid impression of a foreign 
 yet comprehensive 'civilization. But it is in the evening in the Plaza, 
 the heart of the town, when the magnificently attired military band 
 comes forth to demonstrate the Latin-American's virtuosity as a musi- 
 cian, and the walks beneath the rich foliage of the little park are alive 
 with crowds of young people moving round in orderly gaiety, that the 
 
 21
 
 spirit of the place is to be caught in all its charm. The visitor will reflect 
 with interest that when those old buccaneers were informed that the 
 ladies of Costa Rica were pretty, there was a good deal of truth in the 
 report, if one is to judge by their descendants. Impression is gained 
 from the evening promenade that the density of beauty to the acre must 
 be very high in San Jose and the inhabitants will not deny that their 
 women are generously endowed with a more than ordinary portion of 
 the graces of body and mind. 
 
 It would be foolish to conclude a visit to so interesting a section of 
 Central America without seeing the vestiges of the aboriginals in the 
 National Museum. The Indians of these parts invariably buried a 
 quantity of golden ornaments with the late owners, and these, together 
 with their pottery, show a high degree of craftsmanship. 
 
 And so, as the sun is setting behind the Cordilleras we gain the low- 
 lands once more and come to a halt at the head of the harbor. There 
 is another experience in store for the initiated which may help to crystalize 
 the memories of an alien land. It takes but a moment to walk through 
 the little park close by, where the Indian laurels make a dark tunnel and 
 the lime-washed boles of the royal palms rise like huge columns, until 
 we arrive at a long low sea-wall wet with the spray of the waves that are 
 forever rolling in and bursting with a sound of muffled thunder. It is 
 here, beneath the rustle of the palms in the landward breeze and the boom 
 of the surf, that we can savour in all its intensity that alluring and elusive 
 emotion which the tropics evoke in the hearts of those who hail from 
 northern climes. We watch the lights coming out clear in the luminous 
 dusk of evening, and the smooth swell as it lifts some lonely fisher in his 
 tiny canoe; and in the sob and suck of the tide rip through the rocks 
 below we can hear: 
 
 "The long backed breakers croon 
 Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon." 
 
 And what are those tales we hear as the crabs slip away from us 
 and vanish down the rough sea wall? Tales of long gone evil and ill- 
 starred ambition. Tales of heroic struggles against the darkness of the 
 forests. Tales, too, of great things done in our time, of indomitable 
 energy matched against the terrors of the wilderness, of craft and shrewd 
 resource. Of man's faith in man and in his destiny, of failure and defeat, 
 of ultimate achievement. So they come to us, those voices of the tropic 
 sea, ere we start on the quick run home through the Gates of the Carib- 
 bean to take up once more our own problems, in the crisper northern air. 
 
 
 fV. 
 
 ., 
 
 ^b^j;^'^:- 7'^ ~
 
 HE routes of the steamships of the Great White Fleet are by 
 no means confined to that which takes us southward via 
 Havana, Jamaica, Panama and Costa Rica. Equally en- 
 joyable and fascinating are the cruises to Colombia and 
 Guatemala. 
 
 They are operated all the year round, the Colombian ships sailing 
 from New York every week, and the Guatemalan ships sailing fortnightly. 
 And the charm of all these cruises lies in their dissimilarity. You may 
 take a different Great White Fleet Cruise every year for your vacation 
 and come home each time with distinctly new impressions and inspirations. 
 
 As in the case of the Costa Rican Cruise many entertaining shore 
 excursions are included without charge in the Colombian Cruise during 
 the winter season. 
 
 These steamers proceed from New York direct to Kingston, Jamaica, 
 where motor cars are provided for the trip to the lovely Castleton Gar- 
 dens. From Kingston the course is southwest across the Caribbean to 
 Colon and from there passengers are conveyed by train across the Isthmus 
 to Panama City. On our return to Colon, the ship sails eastward through 
 the Gulf of Darien to the ancient and beautiful city of Cartagena, the 
 "Queen of the Oceans," as the poet Heredia calls her in one of his poems. 
 
 The next port of call is Puerto Colombia, seaport of Barranquilla, 
 one of the most important commercial centers of this region. From here 
 the river steamers and hydroplanes leave for Bogota, Colombia's capital 
 nestled in the mountains of the interior. 
 
 Less than sixty miles east of Puerto Colombia is Santa Marta, 
 shielded behind scarred hummocks of volcanic rock from the easterly 
 breeze and backed by the imposing ranges of the eastern Andes. Here 
 we motor to San Pedro the home of the liberator, Bolivar, and well called 
 " th e Mount Vernon of South America . ' ' We also visit Rio Frio a United 
 Fruit Company plantation where an opportunity is given to see the 
 various processes of banana culture. 
 
 23
 
 Guatemalan Cruise takes us from New York to Santiago, 
 Cuba, thence to Kingston, Jamaica and from there to Belize 
 in British Honduras and to Puerto Barrios, the terminal 
 of the Guatemalan Railroad System. 
 
 Sixty miles out of Puerto Barrios is Quirigua where are 
 the most important relics of the lost civilization of the Maya Indians. 
 It is a region of richly fascinating antiquity. 
 
 Twelve hours distant by rail from Puerto Barrios is Guatemala City, 
 one of the most interesting of the Latin-American capitals and well 
 worthy of a visit during the steamer's lay-over. 
 
 Additional Great White Fleet Cruise service is maintained from 
 New Orleans, ships sailing twice each week for sixteen and seventeen 
 day cruises. The ports of call are Havana, Cuba ; Cristobal, Panama 
 Canal Zone ; Bocas del Toro, Panama ; Tela, Honduras, and Port Limon, 
 Costa Rica. 
 
 Whichever Great White Fleet Cruise you decide upon Costa Rican, 
 Colombian, Guatemalan or one of those from New Orleans you will 
 experience an equal measure of pleasure and gratification. No one of the 
 Central American countries and the West Indian Islands is more inter- 
 esting than another. 
 
 The steamships are all especially designed for cruising in the 
 Caribbean Sea and while some are a little larger than others, the same 
 high standard of service is aimed at for all. They are the most expens- 
 ively constructed vessels of their kind in the world. All cruise state- 
 rooms are outside and are first class only. Not how large, but how fine, 
 best expresses the thought dominating the construction of the ships of 
 the Great White Fleet ; a steamship service designed to meet the most 
 exacting requirements of the traveler. 
 
 24
 

 
 Copyrighted 1922, by United Fruit Company 
 
 PHINTBD Ut THE TT. B. A.