IMPRESSIONS OF COLON

371 was there and then presented, and none more worthy of commemoration.

The approach was, of course, by way of Colon-the Aspinwall of earlier years-and it must be confessed it was not impressive. The translucent ultramarine of the Caribbean was changed as we approached the coast to turbid, tawny yellow, due partly to the muddy outflow of the Chagres and partly to the all but insistent trade-winds which beat upon that coast and so disturb the waters of the open roadstead as constantly to stir up the mud from the shallower bottoms. Yet the coast itself was not unattractive. Low and flat as Manzanillo Island itself is, at each side and at the inland background the eye found grateful variety in swelling hills. and jutting headlands, while everywhere was a riotous profusion of verdure, both low and lofty. The rows of graceful, towering palms, all leaning at a uniform angle before the trade-winds, gave even the squalid streets of Colon an air of distinction at a distance. But it must be confessed that the enchantment of the view was in great measure lent by distance. It needed only a short time ashore to persuade me that Colon was a wretched blunder. The site is all but hopeless. It is wind-swept, and therefore not as hot as some other places on the Isthmus. But it lies at only the slightest elevation above an almost tideless sea, in one of the rainiest climates of the world. The result is such humidity as not even the Ganges Delta knows, and an almost hopeless lack of drainage. The elevation is scarcely sufficient to permit sewerage into the sea, though we have been building a sewer system there; and such sewage as does find its way into the sea is not swept away into the depths, but is beaten back upon the shore, or churned about in the shore waters. We used to say of certain lands that they would be delightful if only they could be submerged in the sea for an hour, until all the inhabitants were drowned beyond resuscitation, and then be raised again for a new population. Colon would be an attractive place if, on the other hand, it could be elevated in a mass ten or twenty feet, and sustained there. If enough

earth for that purpose can be brought down from Culebra, well and good. Colon may be redeemed. Otherwise, it would be best to abandon it altogether and rebuild elsewhere.

When, however, we got away from the reeking coast swamps, and reached solid ground, and began to wind our way among the hills, the prospect was charmingly transformed. The general landscape varied from the beautiful to the sublime, while detailed bits on every hand presented an exquisite loveliness beyond the power of words to describe. There were impenetrable jungles of vines and fern and brake, and there were stately open woodlands of palm and cedar and mahogany and ceiba and a hundred other woods. There were near the coast some sluggish waters, from which alligators leered at us with half-human, half-reptilian eyes, but elsewhere the swift-flowing streams were clear as crystal. Orchids and innumerable other flowers glowed and blazed with colours which would be the despair of a painter's palette, but of course, as is the rule in tropic lands, mostnot all of them were without perfume. (Is not, by the way, the same to be said of our flowers in the north? The majority of the showy ones are odourless, or have unpleasant odours.) Monkeys chattered in the treetops, and there was assuredly no "loneliness of wings," with the countless multitudes of birds, from the humming-birds, scarcely bigger than a bumble bee, to parrots and cockatoos as big as barnyard fowls-and, of course, the omnipresent black vulture, sailing and circling on motionless wings far up the sky. Again, according to the rule of tropic lands, the most brilliantly coloured birds were songless. (But why say the rule of tropic lands? With few exceptions the same is true elsewhere. One little brown house wren can outsing a whole flock of your brilliant jays and tanagers, and even bluebirds and orioles, while the greatest of all our feathered choir, the catbird, the mocking-bird, and the veery, are very Quakers and nuns for plainness of garb.)

The stretches of open and cultivated country were by no