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Category: A.C. Gunter: Baron Montez of Panama and Paris

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 5. Black Blood Changes to Blue

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 5. Black Blood Changes to Blue

    Twenty-five years after the closing events of the last chapter, Panama is still our setting, though the focus has shifted from the Panama Railroad to a new major engineering challenge: The Panama Canal. The year is 1880 and Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and developer of the Suez Canal and his entourage, are in Panama to celebrate commencement of the French undertaking to link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

    Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-1894)

    A New York reporter tries to obtain engineering information from the official party, and amid an ensuing scuffle, mention is made of the Monroe Doctrine. Instigated by John Quincy Adams, then US Secretary of State, and first delivered in a speech by President James Monroe in 1823, this policy became a formative statement in the international presence of the United States. It fundamentally and unilaterally opposed European colonialism in the Americas, or meddling “into any portion of this hemisphere” (Monroe). Most of the Latin American colonies had either gained independence from Portugal or Spain, or were on the point of doing so. Monroe stated that any European efforts to reestablish control would be seen as unfriendly toward the United States. The United States would, however, recognize existing European colonies.

    The attitude of the United States towards France was quite positive at this time. France had helped America substantially in the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). A swathe of public opinion decried the “virulence” of the Paris Commune of 1871 (Bernstein); but a good relationship ensued with the Third Republic. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 massively increased the size of the United States, and enabled its continental completion. The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, will be inaugurated in New York in 1886.

    The narrator, we know, finds it difficult to keep a secret. If his insider knowledge of Montez, and his ‘book cover’ assessments of other characters are correct, we as readers have an idea what is going to happen, if all goes according to fomenting plan. Our narrator also, you will find, is not backward in coming forward over the plight of shareholder’s interests being neglected in the expensive promotions taking place—to the extent of shouting at the reader. The French attempt to create a canal was abandoned in 1887, a mere five years before this novel was published, and given the strident voice, it may not be far-fetched to suggest the author personally knew shareholders, or was one himself.

    Not only did shareholders lose greatly in the $287M venture. As noted on the first page of the chapter, yellow fever is still prevalent, and over twenty thousand will die before it is over. One such sad case is the Director General of Works and Chief Engineer, Jules A. Dingler. He arrived in Panama in 1883, and spent $100,000 building a mansion, only to lose his wife, son and daughter to the disease.

    The fate of his prize stallions is one of the heart-wrenching episodes of his tragedy:

    His wife had frequently gone riding on one of two magnificent horses worth 25,000 francs, which had been a gift from Gadpaille [a labour recruiter] in Jamaica. After her death, the director did not wish to encounter anyone else on the streets of Panama riding these horses, so he ordered the beasts to be killed. The staff refused to carry out the command. Finally they found a poor fellow who was given the role of executioner, but at the last moment his hand trembled and he could not finish the job. For hours the horses were heard, partially disembowelled, screaming in agony. In the end they were shot dead.

    Parker, p. 123

    Dingler returned to France in 1885 a broken man and died within six months.

    Under our narrator’s guidance, readers continue to follow the nefarious career of Fernando Gomez Montez, which is interlinked with the Panama Canal project. We hear no more, for the time being, of the fate of sweet Alice Ripley, or her daughter left alone in the United States. However, not content with the elevated position he has achieved, our conniving Montez has two new victims in his sights.

    BOOK 2

    The Franco American

    CHAPTER 5

    Black Blood Changes to Blue

    It had been a day of triumph for Panama and le grand Français Ferdinand de Lesseps, this first day of January, 1880—this day that inaugurated the opening work of the Canal Transatlantique; that was to make the commerce of all oceans one; that was to wipe out from the sailor’s log the tempestuous icy hurricanes of Cape Horn, and the more languid but equally retarding calms of the Cape of Good Hope. By it France was to become richer, the world happier, and Ferdinand de Lesseps doubly immortal—this man of Suez and of Panama.

    The Ball (n.d.), Gaston La Touche (1854-1913)

    Five o’clock on the previous afternoon, welcomed by the braying of the one military band, and addresses from the Committee, and President of the State of Panama at the railway station, he had descended from the train bringing him from Aspinwall, soon to be rechristened Colon.

    The bridge over the track of the Panama Railroad, from which the speeches were made, had been adorned with the flags of France and Colombia.

    In carriages, the finest in the city, though not of the latest style, and the worse for twenty years’ wear, Comte de Lesseps and his attendant party of engineers, politicians and fortune seekers, had been driven through streets, that for once in the history of Panama, and only once in its past, present, or to come, were clean. They had been swept by municipal order, that their foul odors might not affront the delicate nostrils of the great Frenchman. Along the road from the railway station, leading up to the old Gargona road, and thence into the Plaza and the Grand Hotel, the huts and houses were especially white washed for the occasion, to destroy germs of yellow fever, or cholera Asiaticus that had convenient resting place upon their palm-thatched roofs and mouldy beams.

    This had been the suggestion of Don Fernando Gomez Montez, by this time one of the leading dignitaries of the city, banker, rich man, and general swell, who had impressed his views upon his confrères, by this pertinent remark: “Caramba! If all those delicate Europeans encounter Yellow Jack and el vomito negro before they commence operations, good-by to our canal which is to make us rich.”

    So the French party came with prancing of horses and shoutings from the crowd of creoles, negroes, and the general populace, between two battalions of native troops drawn up along the road, as ragged, as barefooted and as badly armed as in the days of ’49; for this man and his nation were to bring wealth, commerce, and enterprise to this city deserted since the days of the early Californian travel; and Panama was to become even greater, richer, and more populous and important than the old town whose deserted tower stands in tropical jungle five miles to the south—the one that Morgan’s buccaneers destroyed two hundred years before—the richest city of its size on earth.

    Among the élite gathered to meet the great French man had stood Fernando Gomez Montez, apparently not much older than when he had made his first great coup in life from the returning Californian, since which time he has devoted the plundered gold dust of that night to commercial pursuits, and has built up for himself a fortune, large for a Colombian city, but not great for Paris or New York.

    His poverty he has learned by travel, for he has been both to France and America; and his intellect, bright, wicked, and unscrupulous as ever, has been made subtile, cautious, and wary by experience. At twenty he was a great villain, at forty-four he is a great man, and therefore greater villain. To the audacity of the bandit he has added the finesse of the diplomat.

    During the preceding day he has made his address at the railway station and at the banquet of the evening, and has been embraced by le grand Franc̗ais, and petted with diplomatic tact, and called the hero local of the canal—for he had greatly assisted in obtaining from the Colombian Government the concession about to be sold to French stockholders for ten million francs.

    On this day he has, with the inaugural party, sailed in the Tobaguilla around the bay, into La Boca of the Rio Grande, where young Mademoiselle Fernanda de Lesseps was to have inaugurated the work of the canal, by digging with childish shovel the first little sod of all the earth that separated the Atlantic and Pacific. But, as it had grown late, in this land where darkness comes on with sudden rush, they agreed to consider the entrance of the steamer into the river as the opening of the work of the canal—and omitted the shovelful of Isthmus swamp; thus beginning the gigantic enterprise by a makeshift—one of the many that they made—till makeshifts were of use no more.

    Gaston La Touche

    Returned from this excursion, tonight Fernando Montez is at one of the minor banquets that take place before the ball.

    It is in one of the smaller rooms of the Grand Hotel. Several of the attachés of De Lesseps are at the table—a Paralta, a Diaz, and one or two others of the leading families of the Isthmus. It is a gentlemen’s dinner party; and though the great Frenchman is not there in person, all are enthusiastic about the canal which is to give every one a chance to grab a fortune.

    Among them sits one Anglo-Saxon—a man of about twenty-eight years, who has a pleasant though weak face, surmounted by light hair, and adorned by a moustache and goatee, the cut of which are French. His costume is rather that of Paris than America, as far as a dress suit permits.

    “The stock must be subscribed for at once!” cries Montez. “The fever must not be let grow cold in France.”

    “Oh, trust De Lesseps for that!” answers one of his satellites, Monsieur Dirks, Dutch engineer, who has dug canals in level Holland.

    “Let me be the first to subscribe!” says the Franco American. Here he whispers to one of the French attachés: “Please hand my name for the first one thousand shares to your chief, the Comte de Lesseps!”

    “The first one thousand shares subscribed for by an American!” There is a buzz of excitement around the table. The champagne glasses clink.

    “A health,” cries Montez, “to the great Republic and the American, Mr. Frank Leroy Larchmont!”

    “I beg your pardon!” says the gentleman he toasts.

    “Don’t put me down as an American. Register me as a Franco American—Franc̗ois Leroy Larchmont.”

    “But you live in the United States?” says Jose Peralta who sits next to him.

    “I did once. Now I consider myself a Parisian!” Which in truth he does.

    “This gentleman who takes one thousand shares so eagerly—I know his name—but what is he?” whispers Montez to the Frenchman sitting next to him.

    “Oh, he is very rich, I believe! That is all I know about him. He lives in Paris, has the good taste to like France, and very seldom visits his native land.”

    Then the banquet goes on, but during its conversation, buzz and excitement, Montez’ eye, sleepless and relentless, never leaves the face of the Franco-American who has taken the one thousand shares.

    Fernando Gomez Montez has determined to make himself one of the rich men of the world by this canal; as many more did about that time, some of whom succeeded. He is shrewd enough to foresee, this cannot be by the dividends it will pay to its investors, but in the immense amount of money that must be handled, and rolled about, and circulated from hand to hand and check book to check book during its construction.

    His subtle mind can easily grasp the idea that in this great “grab game” some of it must come into his clutches. This gentleman, who rushes so eagerly into a scheme just set on foot, whose face has a peculiar weakness not often seen in men of the United States, may possibly be a very good chicken to pick in the great pluckings and pickings that will take place during all the financial evolutions of this great enterprise.

    As soon as cigars pass about, and the formality of the dinner becomes somewhat relaxed, he contrives to get his chair beside that of Mr. Larchmont, and their conversation, from being that of first introduction, becomes freighted with some of the confidences of friends.

    Mr. Larchmont, to Fernando’s deft questioning, informs him that though educated partly in America, and his family entirely American, he has lived from his seventeenth year mainly in Europe and Paris. “Paris,” he says, “I regard as my home. I have a young brother in the United States, who is only twenty now. I am afraid he is too American to ever become a Parisian like myself.” But here their conversation is disturbed.

    A dapper young man, with the quick address of one to whom time is money, and the manner of “no time like the present,” enters the room, and says: “Pardon my stopping the champagne, Monsieur Dirks. I believe you are one of the engineers in control of the preliminary surveys of the canal?”

    “I have that honor,” says the Hollander.

    “Then, between drinks, permit me to ask you four questions. First, when do you expect to open the Panama Canal that has been inaugurated today?”

    “Certainly,” replies the Dutch engineer, astonished at the abruptness of the address. “In five years at the latest. In 1885.”

    “You are sure?”

    “So confident that I would write it in letters twenty-four feet high!”

    “Then can you tell me how you are going to provide for the tremendous floods in the Chagres River that wash down, each rainy season, dirt enough to fill up the whole canal?”

    “That will be by means of a large dam and reservoir sufficient to hold the average rainfall of a week.”

    “But when the rainfall is more than the average, what will you do with it?”

    To this, the Hollander replies evasively: “Are you an engineer?”

    “No!”

    “Then why do you ask engineering questions?” he replies sternly.

    “It is because I am not an engineer that I ask engineering questions. If I were an engineer, I could determine things for myself.”

    “Ah, then I will tell you. The floods in the Chagres will be provided for—later.”

    “Then, the floods being provided for, what will you do with the higher rise of tide in the Pacific than the Atlantic?”

    “That will be provided for later also!” returns the Dutch engineer savagely. And others of the Latin races at the banquet look with angry eyes upon this young man who stays their festival. Who is this creature that dares interrupt their night of triumph by impertinent queries that tend to throw doubt upon their grand scheme?

    “Then, all this being settled, will you tell me how you are going to build the canal if you don’t get the permission of the Panama Railroad, which by its concession from the Colombian government must give its consent before you can dig a barrelful of dirt out of your gigantic ditch?”

    At this question, the guests rise with foreign indignation and South American swagger.

    “That,” shouts Dirks, wildly, “will be provided for by Monsieur le Comte de Lesseps. When he visits the United States, he will obtain from the Panama Railroad the requisite consent.”

    “Not unless he pays Trainor W. Park pretty well, if I know him,” replies the young man. “I have just got time to telegraph your answer.”

    “Ah, you are an emissary!” cries a French attaché. “An emissary of the United States, that is now making such a shriek about the accursed Monroe doctrine!”

    “I am no emissary!” the intruder gasps, dismayed, for two or three Latins have gathered about him threateningly, and one, a young Chiliano, is handling a carving knife as if it were a cuchillo. “I am merely a reporter for the New York―” He can say no more, for at this instant he is rushed from the room and hurled down stairs, which perchance saves his life, as the Chiliano does not reach him in time.

    Looking on this, the Franco-American says disgustedly: “You see the crude manners of my country men. No wonder I fly from them! You will appreciate my embarrassment, Señor Montez, at this uncouth scene. I have been lately to New York, to try to induce my brother Henri to live with me in Paris, but he declines. Over his actions I have no control; but my ward, Mademoiselle Jessie Severn, as her guardian and trustee, I am taking with me to Paris. I made a short tour in America, and while in San Francisco, thought I would come to Panama, to see the opening of this great French enterprise, and from here take passage in the Transatlantique line from Colon to France.”

    “The young lady, your ward, is with you;” remarks Montez indifferently.

    “Oh, yes; she and her governess and nurse.”

    “Ah, she is not a young lady?”

    “Not yet. She is but ten. I am taking her to Europe, to educate her in the manner of my adopted country. I do not approve of the way in which girls are brought up in the United States. Heiresses in America become so bold and self-reliant. They even assert their independence to the extent of selecting their own husbands.”

    “Ah, an heiress!” thinks Fernando, his eyes opening a little wider at the news, for here may be two fortunes to play with; not only that of this rich gentleman, but also that of his ward.

    So he proceeds to weave the first meshes in the web of the spider around this Franco-American fly. His conversation grows jovial, and full of anecdote, repartee, and wit. Incidentally, by adroit questions that seem more suggestions than queries, he learns what he wishes to know of the other’s character and life; and, though it is conveyed to him with reluctance, discovers that Mr. Larchmont’s father had been at one time a tailor in New York, and turning the money he had received for dress suits, overcoats, and trousers into city real estate, had become one of the magnates of Manhattan, though his elder son was almost ashamed to own him, notwithstanding the very handsome estates he had left behind him to his two sons and co-heirs.

    “Ah!” remarks Montez, to this revelation, “no one can avoid bourgeois ancestors in the United States; it is land of trade and money.” And he sneers at the tradesmen in his mind, as the robber always does at the merchant.

    Then noting that the gentleman sitting opposite him seems somewhat ashamed of his commercial American ancestors, and drags into his conversation every one he knows of title or rank in the Old World, Montez’ occult mind divines that to thoroughly and easily trap this man who is ashamed of his commercial country and tailor birth, he his captor must be of the nobility.

    Then he mentions parenthetically: “Though you of North America have no aristocracy, South America still clings to hers. The Hidalgos of Spain never forget that they are grandees. As such I remember my ancestors!” and a drop of the blood of one of the Spanish Conquistadores coming into his eyes, this gentleman looks very haughty and exclusive to his Franco-American acquaintance.

    Shortly after, they stroll from the apartment in which the little banquet has taken place, towards the ballroom. As they pass through the corridor of the hotel, which is brilliantly lighted, a charming figure trips toward them. It is that of a beautiful little girl, who is dressed like a sylph in gauze and fancy flowers and whitest muslin.

    She is attended by a French bonne, trying in vain to restrain her charge, who comes eagerly towards the gentlemen, exclaiming, “Mr. Larchmont—Frank—Guardy! Look what the count has given me.”

    She exhibits one of the beautiful decorations the charming gentleman had had made for distribution among the ladies of Panama—a mass of colored enamel and solid gold, and bearing the Colombian coat of arms, and an inscription in Spanish announcing the inauguration of Del Canal Interoceanic by Count Ferdinand de Lesseps.

    These exquisite badges had been scattered broadcast among the youth and beauty of Panama, little drops in the ocean of expense that was to come, but bearing promise of the lavish manner in which gold would be thrown broadcast over promoters, jobbers, contractors and employees—in short, on everyone engaged in this gigantic enterprise—SAVE THE SHAREHOLDERS.

    Delighted with her present, the child stands poised on tiptoe, one hand held upwards towards her guardian, one little foot advanced. With bare white arms and graceful pose, the short skirts of childhood displaying fairy limbs, she looks to Montez like a ballerina idealized. For she has the blonde hair and blue eyes that dark nations love so well; and her figure, draped in the light dress of that warm climate, gives promise of faultless development in an early future.

    “This is my little ward,” says Larchmont, examining the pretty bauble she holds up to him. “Miss Jessie Severn, permit me to present Señor Montez.”

    “Baron Montez.”

    “Ah!” is the little surprised exclamation from the American.

    “Yes, we are old Castilians, we Montez, and like all Spanish Hidalgos, punctilio itself about our name and our titles. You will excuse my mentioning it to you,” says Fernando, with a pleased smile at his own inspiration. “Baron Fernando Montez.”

    English postcard, c.1919

    But here the little girl breaks in upon them, and says: “How curious, Mademoiselle Fernanda de Lesseps was to open the canal today, and you are called Fernando! Fernando Montez—that’s a pretty name! I call little Fernanda, Tototé; must I call you Tototo?” Then she looks at the little figure of the ennobled gentleman, and gazes curiously at his jetty hair that is just beginning to show a little silver on the temples, and notes his mobile mouth play under his waxed moustachios, and his very white shirt, which has a decoration upon it—some old Spanish order he had picked up in some Peruvian cathedral. Next the blue eyes of happy childhood glance up fearlessly at the bright orbs of the newmade noble that have opal flashes in the gaslight; and, somehow, though this child had never felt fear before, her eyes droop before those of the all-nation gentleman, and she is happy when her guardian says: “Jessie, it is time for little girls to be in bed.” So mademoiselle trips hurriedly off to her governess, followed by the sleepless eyes of Montez.

    “You have made quite an impression on my little ward,” whispers the guardian.

    “Ah, you ravish me with delight!” cries Fernando.

    And so he has; for the little girl is murmuring to her elf: “Bluebeard, Bluebeard—naughty Bluebeard!” and trembles as she runs along.

    The Hidalgo is pleased to see that his title has made an impression upon the Franco-American. He remarks, for the beauty of the child still lingers in his senses, “Miss Jessie will soon be ready to bless some happy man with her hand—this little beauty!”

    “Pooh! She is only ten. That will be years from now!” says Larchmont easily. Then he goes on: “But I see in this tropic land the ladies develop early,” and casts his eyes over the bronze shouldered Inezes and Doloreses, as they are trooping into the ballroom.

    “Yes, we would marry her at fourteen here!” laughs Montez. “But even in France, in a few years she will be ready for her trousseau—about the time the canal will be open. You might celebrate both fêtes together, when you have selected the husband.”

    Then the buzz of excitement coming in through windows that are always open, save during thunder storms, in this torrid city, attracts the gentlemen. They step out to catch the night breeze that comes refreshingly to their cheeks, and look down upon the great Plaza of Panama, with its green plants and paved walks, in which the crowd are promenading, the great cathedral standing at their left. For this is the old Grand Hotel—the one that afterwards became the offices of the Panama Canal—which is decked to-night for gayety.

    Looking at the cathedral, a grim smile comes over the face of Montez, and he sees in his vivid imagination a bridal procession going up its great aisles to music of the organ and chant of dusky altar-boys, and picturing the bride with blue eyes and blonde tresses, thinks to himself: “Why not I for the bridegroom? I am not old! She is rich. The man beside me is weak. Perhaps with another fortune may come to me another beauty.”

    The noise of the moving crowds below breaks in upon his reverie, and Larchmont suggests:  “Suppose we see the ball.”

    They go in to the dance where Spanish beauties, in the ball-dresses of Europe, jostle French and Colombian uniforms and black dress coats; and the grand old man dances quadrilles with lovely Inezes, Marias, and Manuelas, to have his agility telegraphed all over the world, so that doubting French peasants may invest their stocking hoards in his newest and grandest enterprise, still thinking him the man of Suez, when Ferdinand de Lesseps is in reality beginning a dotage, awful in its consequences, to his friends, his government and his country—because it is unsuspected.

    So the ball goes on to its climax, amid the strains of the latest waltzes, and the clinking of champagne glasses in the supper room, and the laughing eyes of Spanish beauties, and the babbling tongues of sycophants and hangers-on.

    And on this night of triumph, when De Lesseps inaugurates the work on the Panama Canal, this night Fernando Montez gives to himself nobility and a title that will give him weight in Europe and influence over weaklings like the one he has set his eyes upon this evening. So the black drops in his veins become blue, azure, and noble; even the little Congo negro he has in him changes to old Castilian, as he exclaims: “Fernando Gomez Montez, I ennoble thee! Mule-boy of Cruces, I introduce you to Baron Montez!”

    Full of his project, this very night he obtains a printer, who, under great promise of secrecy, for which he is heavily paid, furnishes early the next morning the following striking carte de visite.

    Visiting card is decorated with a coronet. Embossed flowing script reads, "Baron Montez, Panama and Paris".

    This looks so beautiful to him that he cannot refrain from trying its effect early next morning.

    Old Domingo, who is older by twenty-four years since the night he assisted to make Montez rich, lives with him, not as servant, but as kind of halfway guest, for the old man is well-to-do. The old pirate knows the buccaneer maxim: “Every man his share!” And he had had pirate enough in him to compel the moiety of the American’s gold due him from Montez.

    On this he has lived and prospered, and though well over seventy, is still as hale and hearty and old a sinner as can be found in South America—which furnishes as fine a sample of ruffians as Hades itself.

    “How now, Señor? You seem happy!” is Domingo’s greeting, as his mentor saunters on to his portico, having finished his alligator pear, sucked his orange, and drank his cup of coffee. “How now, Señor Montez?”

    “Baron Montez!” corrects the gentleman addressed, severely.

    “Caramba!”

    “After this, Baron Montez! I have been ennobled,” remarks Fernando, shoving his ornamental pasteboard beneath Domingo’s rolling orbs.

    “Ho oh! By the great fat Frenchman who is here?”

    “Yes, the great Frenchman, who will make us all rich.”

    “Sant Jago! Another massacre! There are lots of them here now! Beauties, too! Would I were younger!” mutters the ex-pirate, his eyes glowing with pirate gleam.

    “No, not this time. They have more to give us if we let them live!” returns Montez in grim significance.

    But the remembrance brought to his mind of that night in 1856, does not seem to please him. He looks curiously at Domingo, then gives a little sigh of relief; the appearance of his co-laborer indicates he will be forever close-mouthed. Time has made the rest safe. They are dead; even the beautiful Indian girl, Anita of Toboga, had become a hag at twenty-five, and died at thirty. Beauty that the sun nourishes most fondly, it soon scorches to death in these tropic climes.

    So, with a contented smile, Fernando strolls off, to put his new nobility to use.

    He sends up his card, with its coronet, to the Franco-American, and very shortly following it to that gentleman’s parlor in the Grand Hotel, is greeted by a “Good morning, Baron!” and an effusive grasp of the hand.

    For one second he starts, thinking some one else is addressed—it is not easy to get accustomed to nobility overnight—then, with a smile, the “new creation” replies with affable hauteur.

    Soon after, all others address him as Baron; none seeming to doubt his title, for these curious reasons: The French, knowing but little about him, think he is a true Spanish Hidalgo. His Colombian confrères, some of whom have known him even when he was an altar boy in the Cruces chapel, think Fernando has received his patent of nobility in some peculiar manner from le grand Francais De Lesseps. Besides this, they are very much occupied about a revolution that they have been intending to put in progress, but have postponed, fearing their political shooting and slaying might delay the opening of this canal. They will, however, go at this quite merrily, as soon as Monsieur de Lesseps leaves Panama. So it comes to pass that the ex-muleboy of the Gargona trail, el muchacho diablo, becomes accepted by men as Ferando Gomez, Baron Montez, and prepares to air his title in the salons of Europe and the Parisian Bourse.

    Notes and References:

    • Le Grand Franc̗ais: a title bestowed on Ferdinand de Lesseps by Léon Gambetta, a French statesman, a revolutionary Republican known for his brilliant oratory. De Lesseps withdrew from the election in the District of Marseille in order that Gambetta might win it, and Paris District.
    • Comte de: count, earl.
    • cholera Asiaticus: Asiatic cholera pandemic (1826-1837), was “a cholera pandemic that reached from India across western Asia to Europe, Great Britain, and the Americas, as well as east to China and Japan.”
    • el vomito negro: alternative name for acute viral yellow fever.
    • la boca: French—the mouth.
    • confrères: a fellow member of a profession, fraternity, colleague.
    • Chiliano: Chilian.
    • cuchillo: knife.
    • carte de visite: visiting card, i.e. a calling card. Notably a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854.
    • bourgeois: member of middle class.
    • sylph: “a slender, graceful woman or girl. (In folklore) one of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air” (dictionary.com).
    • bonne: French—a child’s nurse.
    • punctilio: a fine point, particular, or detail, as of conduct, ceremony, or procedure.
    • moiety: a half, or an indefinite portion, part, or share.
    • hauteur: haughty manner or spirit; arrogance.
    • Bourse: stockmarket—the Paris Stock Exchange


    Bernstein, S. “The Impact of the Paris Commune in the United States,” The Massachusetts Review
    Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer, 1971), pp. 435-446.

    “Monroe Doctrine; December 2, 1823“. Yale Avalon Project: Documents in law, history and diplomacy.

    Parker, M. Hell’s Gorge: The Battle to Build the Panama Canal (London: Arrow Books, 2007).

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 4. What The Moon Saw In Panama

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 4. What The Moon Saw In Panama

    This is the last chapter of Book One, dealing with the climax of events on the evening 15th April, 1856, for which the narrator has been preparing the reader. There is a thin line between author and narrator, and in some novels the narrator is distinct, is known, has a name: ‘Call me Ishmael’, so says the narrator in Moby Dick. In such cases the author’s sympathies, concerns, failings, desires and knowledge are limited to the age and experience of the character. Then again, the author may design a character to express their own attitudes and opinions, if ever so discreetly, or the reverse, as with the multi-blood Fernando, a collection of all the author’s antipathies, to act as a prime example of the dissolution of civilization without American standards and values, law and order.

    Fernando’s preparations appear haphazard, as he is actually selecting a boat when he happens upon Domingo, his major confederate, who has a crucial part to play in immediate and future events. He is relying on his influence in various quarters, yet this would be insufficient motivation for the action of others, were it not for his knowledge of American behaviour and the underlying resentment for the American presence in Panama. Although the narrator desires the reader to view Fernando Montez as a major instigator, he is only a bit-player in historical events.

    ‘American exceptionalism’

    The United States, of course, has performed exceptionally in fields such as space exploration, scientific research, pharmaceuticals, mass production, education, sport, and many others, but that is only part of the whole.

    Exceptionalism requires something far more: a belief that the U.S. follows a path of history different from the laws or norms that govern other countries. That’s the essence of American exceptionalism: The U.S. is not just a bigger and more powerful country—but an exception.

    Ian Tyrrell, The Week

    The term was first used in English many years after the events of this book, when in 1920 an American Communist, Jay Lovestone, proclaimed that conditions were still more unfavourable for Communism in America in comparison with other countries. Needless to say, he was ejected from the party. It was Abraham Lincoln who first espoused the national principle at the close of his 1864 Gettysburg Address:

    …we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    November 9, 1863

    It is all very well for one president to say such words, but how does this reflect in the general population? Many foreign visitors commented on American exceptionalism, including Karl Marx, Francis Lieber, Hermann Eduard von Holst, James Bryce, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc; and they did so in complimentary terms. The theme became common, especially in textbooks. From the 1840s to the late 19th century, the McGuffey Readers, primary school texts, sold 120 million copies and were studied by most American students. The Readers “hailed American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and America as God’s country. McGuffey saw America as having a future mission to bring liberty and democracy to the world” (Skrabec, p. 223)

    Amongst the population of the time there is a growing sense of what it means to be an American, and with increasing influence and power comes a form of self-righteous arrogance when abroad and engaging with different native cultures and lifestyles. This cultural anomaly was put centre stage with the 1963 film, The Ugly American, starring Marlon Brando. Though set in a fictional country, Sarkhan, and shot in Thailand, it was based on a factual study of American diplomatic behavior in South East Asia by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, for their novel of the same title. They observe how Americans typically failed to engage the concerns of the native populations or learn their languages, which gave Communist regimes who did, a head start in influence and control (‘A Factual Epilogue’.)  President J. F. Kennedy was so impressed with the book he sent a copy to every one of his senate colleagues and took out a full page add in the New York Times to advise the public (Curtis, ‘How to Kill a Rational Peasant”). As a Burmese journalist in the book puts it:

    For some reason, the [American] people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They are loud and ostentatious.

    Lederer and Burdick, The Ugly American, 122-3

    The narrator of Baron Montez is an American exceptionalist, and though the moon may be watching, it is he who is everywhere directing the action, coloring the readers reception of participants and escalation of events. In this he seeks to alter the reader’s impression of an historical event: The Watermelon Riot of 1856, (which actually began in the morning, not the evening).

    American press depiction of the “Watermelon Riot” in Panama City, April 1856. From ”Frank Leslie’s Illustrated”, May 1856.

    As you read, note the words the narrator uses to describe the native populations and wonder what makes someone unknown ‘vile’, and although the melon vendor is described as a ‘black savage’ his name was José Manuel Luna, and he runs off after the pistol is drawn. Historically, the police only joined the riot once an officer was shot in the arm. And while our narrator exhorts the absence of U.S. troops to defend the American population in Panama, it was actually US troops firing on the native population that caused the riot in which twenty-six Americans and two Panamanians were killed (Daley). US Marines then arrived to attempt to quell the violence. Following the riot, Panama was forced to pay substantial restitution to the US, Britain and France, and the incident was used as leverage to exert more control by the US over Panama.

    The next chapter commences twenty-five years after the events in these pages, with the advent of a new American interest: The Panama Canal.

    Warning: The following text contains words considered racially insensitive and offensive.

    CHAPTER 4

    WHAT THE MOON SAW IN PANAMA

    Montez, after gliding through the crowd about the railroad station, joins Domingo, who has been waiting for him, and the two stroll together along the dusty lane leading to the Cuinago, a quarter of the city composed of vermin, filth and native huts, in which the lower orders of this town of Panama make their habitat.

    “You half understand my design, my worthy old desperado,” murmurs Montez.

    “Si, Capitano mio,” returns the swarthier and more stalwart bandit.

    “Then I will explain the rest to you. Listen!” and Fernando hastily outlines a plan, which makes the other grind his teeth together in a wild kind of unholy chuckle. “Diablo! This will be a better night than any one of the wild days of my youth!” and Domingo had once been a ship’s boy with Lafitte, the last pirate of the Gulf of Mexico.

    “Yes—it will be—fine!” laughs the other. “There are women and children among this crowd of passengers. These people are not like the adventurers of ’49. They are going to be California farmers, not miners. Few of them carry a revolver; fewer still know how to use it.”

    “But your American friend bears a very large one.”

    “Yes, and is a dead shot; but that is arranged,” says Montez.

    “Ah, trust el muchacho diablo!” laughs Domingo, looking in admiration at his little mentor. Then he says suddenly: “But the plan you have mentioned, will take much time. The natives must be aroused.”

    “It is almost arranged now. You have but very little to do. The keg of powder I have ordered is already in those huts. You see our savage boatmen and muleteers are prepared to use it,” and Montez points to the crowd of excited Indians, sambos, mulattos, negros, Spanish gypsies, and every other vile race of the Isthmus, who are stimulating themselves in the streets of the native quarter with aguardiente for some work they have on hand, and are even now nearly all armed with old muskets, machetes, or pistols.

    Looking upon this, Domingo says: “That little steamer,” pointing to the Toboga, whose smokestack is still visible at the end of the wharf, “has taken away their livelihood from the honest barqueros here, by transferring the passengers that were their customers. Their hatred will be an assistance to us. Besides, the railroad has ruined our mulateros—they will not be backward.”

    “Not with American plunder in sight,” laughs Montez. “But they will need a leader—Domingo, you are the man for that kind of thing: you like blood!”

    “Ah, but, demonios! we have forgotten the police!”

    “We have not forgotten anything!” replies the brighter scoundrel. “The police are arranged for; the governor, I think, is arranged for also. A Dios till six o’clock! Do your work here; I will do mine in the town! Remember at six—the railroad station. There Montez will make his start in life.”

    Tertulia de Pulquería (1851), by Agustín Arrieta. Scene inside a Mexican pulqueria (pulque bar)

    Leaving Domingo surrounded by a crowd of his old cronies and chums, whom he will excite with strong pulque and bad aguardiente, Montez, turning away from the native quarter, strolls through the Gargona gate, along the Calle de la Merced, into the middle of the old town of Panama.

    Here he sees many of the passengers of the Illinois, who are buying jewelry of Choco gold and Panama pearls, sombreros de Guayaquil, and bright-hued stuffs, to take with them to California.

    The sun is going down rapidly, flaming lanterns are beginning to appear in the shops; a few Spanish ladies, in short white petticoats and light chemises, scarcely concealed by graceful mantillas and nelosos floating from their dark hair, and draping their bare and gleaming necks and arms, are tripping with slippered feet hurriedly homeward.

    The lights are twinkling in the Cafe Victor and the Hotel Francais. The tingling of bells announces mules, ridden by dashing caballeros adorned with all the splendor of Spanish horse trappings. Still the streets seem curiously deserted; the lower classes have left them; few mulateros, boatmen, or ladrones are here; they are nearly all in the Cuinago, and those that are not yet there are hurrying towards the native quarter, as if going to a rendezvous.

    Looking on this, Montez thinks: “This will be a glorious evening! But to make sure, I must see His Excellency.”

    He passes rapidly to the street San Juan de Dios, and stops before a low stone building, in front of which a negro sentry is parading, with dirty gun and bare feet. He says to him: “Colonel Garrido is here?”

    “Yes, Señor, inside.”

    “I must see him.”

    And word being sent in, Garrido, Commander of Police, makes his appearance. He is half negro, quarter Spanish, quarter cur—all devil. Adorned with great tawdry epaulettes, and buttons and sashes, and a big sword, he wears long dark oily mustachios, which he strokes in an affected and military way.

    “Ah, Señor Montez, mio!” he laughs, looking at the little man who has already placed his hand in his pocket and is chinking doubloons together.

     “You have come at last. I have been waiting for you!”

    “Yes, I represent the law,” says Montez. “There is going to be an outbreak. The Americanos, the passengers at the railway depot, will attack tonight our poor fruit pedlers.”

    “You told me of that yesterday.”

    “Yes! I am a prophet! Are the police prepared?”

    “The police will do their duty. They are now ready,” and Garrido chuckles and points into the patio where he has already mustered and armed the hundred vagabonds he calls the police of Panama.

    “Then the Americanos will bully us no longer,” rejoins Montez. “I thought that would be your decision. The Americanos have women and children with them, also considerable sums of money with which they are going to buy ranchos in California.”

    “But the men—those awful Yankee fighters,” stammers the police colonel, growing nervous; “I remember them in ’49 and ’50. How they handled their revolvers!”

    “Now—they do not carry many, besides—” Here Fernando’s hand chinks a roll of doubloons into the out-stretched palm of the officer of the law. “Besides—they are unprepared to fight—these rioters.”

    “Aah, that settles los Americanos” laughs Garrido. “But the governor—” suggests the other.

    “Ah, the governor,” mutters the colonel of police. “He is wavering.”

    “Wavering? Diablo! Caramba!” moans Montez. Then the drop of Morgan’s buccaneer’s blood coming to the front in this little man, he becomes tremendous. He cries out: “I’ll see him at once! He shall waver no longer!”

    So he directs his way to His Excellency’s house, and begs that he may see the Governor of the town of Panama, but word is brought him that His Excellency is engaged.

    At this Mr. Fra Diavolo grinds his teeth, writes four words on a slip of paper, and says: “Give that to His Excellency, curse him, and see if he dares to be engaged.”

    A moment after, the answer comes that he can see the potentate of Panama.

    Young Fernando is received by this functionary, with a suggestive snarl. He says to this little every-nation gentleman: “What mean your threats, Señor Montez?”

    “Nothing, only if the President at Bogota knows what I know, the Governor of Panama will occupy six feet of our quiet little cemetery within the month, though he will not die of yellow fever. Shall I tell him?”

    “Certainly not!”

    “Not if you do as you promised. There is no danger! The American Consul is a nothing! If it were Englishmen we were killing—Santos! that would be different.”

    “Very well, then! Garrido is arranged for?”

    “Perfectly! Besides, these people are mostly unarmed; they have women and children with them. They will be easy. Likewise, the plunder will be great!”

    “And my share?”

    “Will be great also, as I promised.”

    “Ah! then I will know nothing about it! I shall go to sleep! I will not be awakened. Buenas noches, Señor Montez! Tell my people that I must be disturbed on no account—not for an earthquake—not even if a riot—nothing till tomorrow morning!”

    “Very well, I will give your orders!” laughs Fernando. He is about to depart, when suddenly the governor queries: “How will the riot commence?”

    “The Americanos shall do that!”

    “The Americanos—how?”

    “There are nine hundred and forty passengers; some one of them is sure to be drunk. Drunken men are quarrelsome!”

    With these words Montez departs, whistling to himself a jaunty air from one of Verdi’s first operas—the ones with melody divine in them—for this little gentleman has a drop or two of Italian blood, that make him a devotee to the Muses.

    So passing along, he joins the stream of passengers bound for the railway depot.

    Arriving there, the scene is much the same as when he left it, only there is a greater throng of passengers checking their baggage and seeing about their tickets. More ladies and children are going on board the Toboga, and the laughter coming from the saloons of McFarlane’s hotel and the Ocean House (a rival hostelry) is louder. One or two drunken Americans are strolling about in front of the depot, and bantering in an alcoholic way some negro fruit hucksters, who are plying their trade with a defiant bloodthirsty vim, for they are waving the knives by which they cut up watermelons and pineapples, in a threatening and ferocious manner.

    Just back of these stands Domingo and fifty or sixty of his cronies, and perhaps a hundred more are scattered from the depot, along the lane leading to the Cuinago.

    Several American ladies, and their husbands and children, together with one or two Spanish señoras of the better class, from the town, are looking at the scene, which is made picturesque by torches, as darkness is coming down.

    It is a peculiar contrast of civilization and barbarism.

    On one side, the long train of yellow railway passenger cars; the giant locomotive, that is powerless now because it has lost its steam; the railroad track; the puffing steamer at the end of the pier; ladies and gentlemen of Anglo-Saxon race, in the costumes of Paris and New York, for some of the ladies wear little crinolines, that are just now commencing to make their appearance on the Boulevards and Broadway.

    On the other side, the flaming torches of the negros; their black, swarthy faces; the waving palms and bamboos and cocoanuts of the tropics; the wild gesticulations and jargons of the savage races who are half clothed, and seem to excite themselves not only with pulque and aguardiente, but with some more subtle yet potent stimulant, for their eyes blaze under the torch glow with some unholy fire.

    Between these aggregations—one white and civilized, one black and barbarous—stands one man—drunk and disorderly—and he, alas! of the Anglo-Saxon race. He is bargaining with a negro huckster for a slice of watermelon. He takes the watermelon, the watermelon disappears; the negro holds out his hand, demanding a real.

    “Go to the—the—d—devil!” hiccups the drunken American.

    “A real, or your life’s blood, Gringo!” screams the negro savage, waving his machete in threatening gestures about the American’s head.

    “Here’s your ten-cent piece, Blackey! Don’t make a muss,” cries another Anglo-Saxon, stepping alongside his compatriot, and tossing the negro the demanded coin.

    “Curse it! He—he was trying to b—b—bully me!” gulps the drunken American, trying to draw a revolver.

    A second later, there is a sound of a pistol shot, and riot and plunder, arson and murder, are let loose upon the defenceless Americans, who, in a foreign land, burdened with their women and children, are almost helpless, in the presence of a debased and armed mob.

    The bell of the old church of Santa Anna, in the native quarter, near the Gargona trail, is pealing an alarm. Hundreds of blacks are running up the road from the Cuinago, with wild cries and waving of muskets, machetes, and pistols.

    On this Montez looks and smiles, and as he does so, a hand is laid upon his shoulder, and a voice cries in his ear: “Stand the brutes off till the women and children get on board the steamer!” Then George Ripley, drawing his revolver from his belt, runs down the steps of the hotel, and steps in front of the coming negros.

    A moment after, McLean of the Pacific Mail Company, and Nelson of the railroad, stand beside him.

    “Get the women on board the boat, quick! If they come another step, I shoot!” cries the Californian. “And I shoot to kill!”

    A moment more and he would try his pistol, and find it useless, and thus perchance save his own life, did not Montez hurriedly whisper to him: “Hold! the police are coming! Hear their bugle!”

    At this moment its clear notes sound over the road running from the town.

    “Ah! then all is well!” mutters George, and puts up his revolver.

    Then a man named Willis, who has hastily rolled a six pounder out of the railroad depot, and trained it loaded to the muzzle down the lane running towards the Cuinago, which is crowded with coming blacks, turns it away, crying: “Law and order! we’re all right now,” and runs it back down the wharf, as headed, by Garrido, the native police come marching with unsoldierly bare feet, and carelessly carried muskets, to the front of the hotel.

    As they see the police, a cry of joy comes from the American ladies and children, who have not as yet escaped to the steamboat.

    The bugle sounds again. A crashing volley from the police.

    “My God!” cries George. “They have made a mistake! They are shooting at us! They have killed the child beside me! There’s its mother screaming over it.”

    Another crashing volley!

    Mistake no more! It is no riot. It is a massacre!

    Attacking negros rush upon the railway station, butchering those they come upon, and plundering all. Trunks are broken open and looted; and a little baby, torn from its mother, is tossed about by the savage men and more savage women of the mob, till it becomes a clot of gore.

    Again the police fire!

    Le Désespéré (1843), Gustave Courbet

    More Anglo-Saxon blood!

    A delicate American lady staggers to Ripley and gasps, “Tell my husband I—I was going to join—Harry Nesmith of Colusa—how I—died,” then falls at his feet, a Minié bullet through her breast.

    This sight brings recollection to the Californian.

    With a muttered “My God! my wife!” George Ripley rushes back into the hotel to find and save, if possible, his wife and treasure. If not both, the woman he adores.

    Montez, Domingo and three blacks glide after him. The register of the hotel lies open in the deserted office. Tearing it to pieces, Fernando says: “There is now no record of the American on the Isthmus! His fate will be unknown. To business!”

    A second later, amid crashing volleys. George Ripley, one arm around the slight waist of his wife, who is sobbing on his shoulder, one foot upon the trunk that contains the fortune he has risked his life to gain amid the Sierras of California, stands confronting the negros; foremost of whom, his eyes all blood-red now, is Domingo, a vermilion glow upon his black cheeks and white eye balls, as if they were painted.

    The ex-pirate cries: “Death to the Americano! Save the lady! Her beauty gives her life!”

    To this Ripley’s revolver makes reply; the lock clicks, but no cartridge explodes. With a muttered curse he turns the cylinder.

    They are springing towards him. Again the pistol, that has never failed him till now, when all depends upon it, gives no report to his clicking trigger.

    “My heaven! Someone has tampered with my weapon!” he gasps; and taking his wife’s hand, turns to fly, but at the door stands the man he thinks his friend, and he cries: “Thank God! In time. Montez!”

    And Alice joins his shout: “Dear Señor Montez, God bless you for coming!”

    But tired of diplomacy, the savage drop coming upper most in him, this little every-nation fiend cannot for the life of him keep down a smile of triumph and a mocking laugh, as Domingo cries: “Fear not his pistol! It will not shoot.”

    Then suddenly the American knows!

    He gasps: “My ruined weapon!—that bath at Toboga—it was you! you! YOU! But, Judas, you go first!”

    Reversing the revolver, with its butt end the Anglo-Saxon strikes down two negros who spring upon him, and seizing Montez by the throat, is strangling him over the trunk of his desires.

    But at this moment there is a flash; and, with a shriek, such as comes only when hope has gone, Alice Ripley sinks fainting on the dead body of her husband. For as he has forced the every-nation traitor down, the back of the Californian’s head has come within two inches of the pistol of Domingo, the ex-pirate; and to the flash of its explosion, George Ripley dies.

    Looking on the scene, Fernando, rising, gasps—for the breath has nearly left his body—to Domingo: “Quick! the mules—before the massacre is over! This treasure is mine—all mine! This beauty is mine—all mine! Montez has made his first great start in life!”

    As he speaks, more volleys from the murderous police outside tell of more bloodshed in the railway station, and more cruel massacre of unarmed men and helpless women and shrieking children, that, were they English, would have been atoned for by the blood of the Governor of Panama and his satellites and police; but being American, is left to the shallying procrastination of a languid consul, and forgotten soon in the rush of the great Republic towards what it loves best—gold.

    Will the United States of America never learn to protect its absent citizens, and make its banner, like the Union Jack of England, a bulwark of defence to its wanderers on the earth and on the sea?

    Some two hours afterwards, the moon rising high above the Cordilleras of the Isthmus, lights up the Gargona trail leading into the mountains, where, on the back of a mule, is a defenceless woman insensible, in the arms of Montez, who rides hurriedly along, bearing her farther from any aid that civilized man can give, into the recesses of the upper valley of the Chagres. Domingo, ex-pirate, striding sturdily along in front of his master, mutters: “This has been a pleasant evening!”

    The glancing fireflies light up the lianas, parasites and creeping plants that hang from the great trees of the dense torrid forest. The silence is unbroken save by the tramp of the mule’s hoofs as they scatter the decaying leaves, or the rustle of a serpent seeking his nightly prey—when, as he holds the fair victim to his heart, Montez starts.

    Her lips are moving—sentiency is coming to her. She is shuddering, and murmuring: “My husband—killed at my side!”

    And under that same tropic moon, far out in the waters of the Bay of Panama, “Toboga Bill” and two other tiger-sharks, are munching over and playing with a something that was once George Ripley.

    And, in a school dormitory, in faraway America, a child in the white dress of night is kneeling by her little bed, and praying, with happy eyes and expectant lips: “God bless papa and mamma, who are coming home to me again!”

    Notes, References, Further Reading

    • Jay Lovestone: ‘In 1929, Communist leader Jay Lovestone informed Stalin in Moscow that the American proletariat wasn’t interested in revolution. Stalin responded by demanding that he end this “heresy of American exceptionalism.” And just like that, this expression was born’ (McCoy).
    • Si, Capitano mio: `Yes, my captain’
    • Pulque: an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant.
    • Aguardiente: mash-up of the words agua, meaning water, and ardiente, meaning burning, aguardiente is direct translation of the English term, firewater (or vice-versa). Based on sugar-water. a generic term for alcoholic beverages that contain between 29% and 60% ABV (alcohol by volume)
    • barqueros: boatmen
    • mulateros: mule drivers
    • Demonios!: Damn it!
    • Calle de la Merced: Spanish – Street of the Mercy (i.e. leading to the Iglesia (church) of the Mercy.
    • doubloons: a former gold coin of Spain and Spanish America
    • choco gold: gold from the mines of Choco, whose river sands are also auriferous (gold-bearing)
    • sombreros de Guayaquil: A port city in Equador known for somberos and panama hat making
    • mantillas: scarves, shawls
    • caballeros: gentlemen
    • ladrones: thieves
    • los Americanos: the Americans
    • Buenas noches: good night
    • Santos!: Saint, Holy
    • crinolines: ladies stiff petticoats made of horsehair and linen.
    • real: coin – originating Brazil.
    • Minié bullet: “The Minié ball, or Minni ball, is a type of muzzle-loading spin-stabilized bullet for rifled muskets named after its developer, Claude-Étienne Minié, inventor of the French Minié rifle.” simple.wikipedia.org.
    • the lianas: climbing vine found in tropical rainforests.

    Ceaser, J. ‘The Origins and Character of American Exceptionalism,’ American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, vol. 1 (Spring 2012). Available in PDF at time.com

    Curtis, A, ‘How to Kill a Rational Peasant‘, ‘The Medium and the Message,’ BBC blogs.

    Daley, M.C. ‘The Watermelon Riot: Cultural Encounters in Panama City, April 15, 1856‘. Hispanic American Historical Review (1990) 70 (1): 85–108.

    “History of Panama”. World Heritage Encyclopedia, available here at Project Gutenberg.

    Ignatieff, M., ed. American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005

    Lederer, William J. and Eugene Burdick. The Ugly American. NY: Fawcett Crest, 1983. Available on loan from Internet Archive.

    McCoy, T. ‘How Joseph Stalin Invented “American Exceptionalism’”. The Atlantic, Mar 15, 2012.

    Skrabec, Q.R. William McGuffey: Mentor to American Industry. NY: Algora Publishing, 2009.

    Tyrrell, I. ‘What Exactly is “American Exceptionalism”?‘ theweek.com.

    “Watermelon Riot“. Wikipedia.

    Westerhoff, J. H. McGuffey and his readers : piety, morality, and education in nineteenth-century America. Nashville: Abingdon, 1978. Available on loan from Internet Archive.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 3. The Railroad Station At Panama

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 3. The Railroad Station At Panama

    As we begin this chapter, Fernando Gomez Montez, having tampered with George Ripley’s revolver, has new confidence, and commences putting in place other components in his plan to relieve the American of his gold-filled chest, and fair-skinned wife. Montez arranges boat transport for himself and the Ripleys to Panama where they find it crowded with travellers recently offloaded from steamers awaiting the train across the Isthmus and also those joining vessels to travel up the West Coast of the United States. Panama has become a busy hub for trans-continental travellers.

    Even before the railroad was completed, Americans eager to join the gold rush in California were paying to have themselves and their luggage transported across the extent of the completed track. The Californian Goldfields would generate nearly twelve million ounces of gold, most of which would pass through Panama on the way to the Eastern United States. George and Alice can expect to pay a hefty twenty-five dollars each to travel on the recently completed railway to Aspinwall.

    Old rail route across the Isthmus of Panama (panamarailroad.org)

    Seven years earlier, in 1848, the United States signed the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, ending the long running Mexican War. The treaty gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, established the U.S.-Mexican border of the Rio Grande, and ceded to the United States the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. This expansion completed control of continental United States complementing central lands transferred through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The removal of the threat of warring Mexican forces, and mitigation of dangerous Native Indian tribes encouraged settlers like those awaiting the steamships to venture to the Western States.

    During the construction of the railroad, the Americans used workers who had come from the United States, Europe, Columbia, China, the Caribbean islands, and also African Slaves, a great many of them who died of Cholera, Malaria and Yellow Fever. Once the Railway was completed the majority of these remaining poorly paid workers were dumped and left to their own devices for survival. The US used troops to suppress separatist uprisings and social disturbances on many occasions. The first time will occur on the fifteenth of April, 1856.

    Unlike the narrator, who reminds the reader of the date, Fernando is unaware of any significance attached to it and goes about his connivances, which remarkably are designed to precipitate an historical event.

    CHAPTER 3

    THE RAILROAD STATION AT PANAMA

    On the veranda once more, George Ripley suggests: “Would you mind showing us your pearls? My wife is anxious to see your jewels, and we must be soon getting under way for the mainland.”

    “Yes, the Illinois arrived this morning at Aspinwall,” returns Montez. “Her passengers will soon reach Panama. Soon there will be a Pacific Mail steamship in the bay. The Golden Age from San Francisco is one day overdue. When she comes in, her passengers will be moved eastward rapidly. If you are not at the railway station you may be left to spend ten days more with us. That would please me, mi amigo; but you—you are an American, and in a hurry. You do not enjoy life. You fly through it.”

    “And you dream through it, I imagine, Señor Montez,” laughs Alice, coming on the veranda to meet the returning bathers. Then she says archly, “Dream no more; show us your pearls, and become a man of business.”

    “That I will!” cries Montez, as he displays his jewels, and descants on the beauties of the large pink pearl he has, and the perfection of the white ones he holds caressingly in his hands, with the vehemence and volubility of an Armenian in the bazaar at Constantinople, and the shrewdness of a Hebrew pawnbroker in Seven Dials.

    Fernando’s trading powers, however, are thrown away; for the American takes all the pearls at the seller’s own prices, which though exorbitant for Panama, are cheap for New York.

    “Come in and get our business over,” says George; and Montez following him and Alice into the bamboo cottage, the affair is completed. Opening a large buckskin bag, that is part of his belt, after the manner of early Californians, Ripley makes payment in gold dust; for at that time gold was plenty, though coin was scarce, in the Western world.

    Upon this yellow dross, Fernando’s eyes linger lovingly, and from it roam gloatingly to the heavy ironbound trunk of the Californian, and turning from this to the beautiful Americana, who had thrown her pearls in a string of white radiance around her fair white neck, his glance becomes more longing than ever.

    Antique French postcard (n.d.)

    Here George laughingly suggests: “Montez, you think jewels become her? Alice should have had these pearls when she stood in Edouart’s gallery in Washington Street, San Francisco, and had this taken,” producing from his pocket a tintype of his wife, a style of picture just come into fashion.

    “Yes, I had two of them taken; one for my husband, the other for my daughter; Mary’s was sent to her two months ago. It will remind her of my coming,” replies the lady; then blushes a little, for Montez, in his native way, has cried out: “Ah, Dios! It is celestial—but the sun has not done you justice, Señora Ripley!”

    The sun, however, has done very well, and the tintype has the blue eyes and fair hair of this charming American.

    So charming, Montez fears to stay; his passion may betray itself. He mutters, “I will go and engage your boat, Señor Ripley.”

    “Yes! Get a safe one, I don’t care for speed. Something there is no chance of capsizing,” calls the Californian after him.

    “I will be sure of that for my own sake, as well as yours,” cries back the little gentleman, as he glides down the pathway, brushing with a bamboo switch the dust from his patent leather boots.

    At the white glistening beach he selects carefully a boat, and is delighted to find among its crew a swarthy boatman, who is called Domingo.

    Addressing him familiarly, and slapping him on the back, Montez says in his ear: “Old bravo, are you still up to banditti work as in ’52, on the Cruces roads?”

    To this, Domingo, a gentleman with a pirate countenance adorned by two fearful scars, with a stalwart black frame, and a stout black heart beating in his black body, replies: “Si, Señor, mouches dinero, mouches sangui, mouches Domingo.”

    So Fernando knows he has at his hand, for this night’s work, a man who will not be turned back for pity, nor blood, nor danger, from doing any wickedness that may come to his hand.

    While this has been taking place on the beach, Ripley and his wife, during hurried preparations for their departure, are holding a conversation that makes the Californian open his honest eyes in astonishment.

    His wife says to him, under her breath: “Now that Montez is away, I wish to tell you something: I am glad we are going!”

    “Of course! Tomorrow we will be one day nearer our daughter.”

    “It is not entirely that,” whispers the lady, nervously, “but I fear to stay here.”

    “Why?”

    “Anita hates me.”

    “Impossible! No one could have nursed you more faithfully during the fever, than the bright-eyed Indian girl.”

    “It is her bright eyes that make me fear her. Something new has come into them. Besides that, while you were taking your bath she told me that we had better go away as soon as possible. She told me.”

    “Well, what?” says the American impatiently.

    “Only—that—if the fever returned to me here—I would not throw it off again. Toboga breezes are good for the first attack,—but after that,—like other medicines,—they lose their value.”

    While she says this in a hesitating, disjointed manner, a bright red flush has come over the features of the beautiful American lady, for Alice Ripley is telling her husband her first falsehood.

    Anita’s words had been to her: “Beware of Montez! Montez loves you!” and suspicion coming to her quick feminine mind at these words, Alice had noted some of the uncanny glances the polyhæma gentleman at times could not restrain himself from indulging in. But at the last moment, even when warning was on her lips, she has hesitated to tell her husband what she has heard and suspects—because the very thought of the thing brings blushing shame upon her.

    So the modesty of this beautiful woman takes from her husband one of his ropes of safety this day—his one chance of suspecting the man he thinks his friend, but who is even now bent upon his robbery and ruin.

    “Well, let us give Anita her pearl—perhaps that will reconcile her to our going away,” laughs the Californian.

    This being done, they leave the palm-thatched bamboo villa, and come down the little rocky pathway to the beach at Toboga, to take departure for Panama.

    Three stalwart natives carry the ironbound trunk, and find it all they can handle; another swings easily the lighter one that contains the wardrobe of George Ripley and his wife.

    Looking around, Montez is happy; for there is only a steamer of the English Steam Navigation Company in the harbor, one or two trading brigs and schooners, and the Columbus just returned from her voyage to the Islas de las Perles, and no vessels of war of any nation. No blue jackets can be landed to interfere with a plan that he has already set on foot among the desperate native classes of the town of Panama this fifteenth day of April, 1856.

    Toboga is slumbering in the midday sun, as they stand upon the sandy beach. A lazy steward from the English steamer is buying fish and fruit from a big Indian bongo that has come from a neighboring island. There is a drowsy hum from a few bamboo huts, and pine board edifices that do duty as shops, and ship chandlers’ stores, for this Island of Toboga is really the port of Panama, as the depth of water permits vessels to lie there at all times; while off the mainland, the tremendous rise and fall of the ocean compels ships of burden to keep three or four miles out in the bay.

    “I am glad you got a good, big, safe boat,” remarks the Californian, “and I hope competent boatmen.”

    “Yes, that is all arranged. On board, mi amigo,” cries Montez, offering a gallant hand to assist the pretty Americana.

    But what the Indian girl has said to her makes this lady blind to his attentions, and she carelessly and lightly steps over the gunwale of the boat, and tripping to its stern, takes seat under its awning of many colors, ignoring the gentleman whose eyes follow her, an unknown suspicion in them.

    A moment after, they are under way, black Domingo pulling a strong stroke oar, and three lithe natives keeping time with him, and dashing foam that looks like pearls and diamonds from the water, as they glide over this aquarium, in which Alice looking down sees countless fish.

    As they move, she carelessly drops a dainty hand into the cool water, playing with its ripples. The next instant Montez quietly takes it in his and replaces it in the boat.

    Perchance, unable to control himself, he has given its delicate fingers a tender pressure, for the lady’s face grows angry.

    “Would you like to leave your arm in that fellow’s maw?” is Fernando’s reply to her indignant glance, and he points to a huge white shark that is lazily patrolling the water a cable’s length or so from the English steamer’s stern.

    Following his gesture with their eyes, the crew start and Domingo mutters: “Diablo! Toboga Bill!”

    “Yes, that is the gentleman!” laughs Montez. “This desperado has just come up after the Peruvian steamer from a trip down the coast to Callao.”

    “So that is the terror of Panama Bay?” queries George, turning his eyes upon the great fish, who is as long as a ship’s cutter, and whose dorsal fin makes a big swash of foam with every movement.

    Bay of Panama, lantern slide c. 1900–20 (cropped), Art Gallery of South Australia

    “Yes! There will be one or two less native boatmen, perhaps, before he leaves harbor!” returns Montez. Then he suddenly cries: “For your life, No!” and places a deterring hand upon the Californian’s pistol, for Ripley is about to draw it.

    “There is no danger in this big boat. Let me have a pop at the desperado,” says George, still fingering his ready revolver.

    “No, no! Your wife is here. He might charge the boat. He has upset canoes! Don’t use your pistol!” murmurs the little every-nation rascal, his lips trembling and growing white.

    “If he is so awful—don’t shoot at him!” gasps Alice to her husband.

    “If you tremble, of course not!” says the American, returning his revolver to his belt. “Though I had imagined Montez had better nerves.”

    This idea is that of the boatmen; for one of them says in Spanish to his fellow: “Caramba! I never saw the muchacho diablo tremble before—at a shark, too!”

    But Domingo knows his old master better, and chuckles to himself: “What was there about that pistol of the Americano that Fernando did not wish him to use it? Ah! It has been tampered with. This man and this woman are to be our prey.” And from now on, the whites of his eyes grow bloodshot when they look on the Californian and his fair-haired wife.

    As they leave “Toboga Bill” behind them, fear seems to depart from Montez; he regains his spirits, but whenever a stray gull offers a tempting shot he looks nervous; perchance Ripley will test his pistol.

    Three hours after, they make the landing at Panama, having been assisted by the incoming tide, which has just turned, and is here tremendous.

    They come to the end of the long wharf of the railroad, finding there a little light-draft iron steamboat—the Toboga—used in transferring passengers and mail to the great Pacific steamers that cannot come nearer than three miles of the town. Not six inches of water is under the Toboga’s keel. It must wait for the incoming tide to free it, and make it float again, which will be somewhere about ten or eleven o’clock this evening.

    Clambering upon this wharf, which rises at this stage of the tide quite high above the boat, Montez and Ripley assist the American lady, who soon stands beside them.

    “There will probably be no train for Aspinwall before tomorrow morning. I think we had better go to one of the hotels in the main town. It will be more comfortable,” remarks Ripley.

    “Very well,” answers Montez, a shade of disappointment crossing his face, “the Hotel Francais. But what will you do with your trunk—the heavy fellow? It seems all that the three boatmen can manage.”

    “Of course, George, they can never carry it into the town in this hot sun,” remarks Alice, who, having hoisted a dainty parasol over her head, stands watching the men.

    “Let me suggest the Pacific House,” returns Fernando, pointing to a white board hotel just across the road from the station. “It is but a step for your wife—and your trunk.”

    To this proposition George assents, and they walk up the wharf, followed by three of the boatmen, who struggle under the heavy ironbound chest, upon which the Californian, turning ever and anon, casts a wary glance. Behind them tramps old Domingo, slinging easily upon his stalwart shoulder the light trunk containing the wardrobe of the Californian, which does not seem to interest Ripley at all.

    Walking along the tracks of the Panama road, which run upon this wharf, they soon come to dusty terra firma, and find themselves in quite a crowd of passengers from the Illinois, which has landed them at Aspinwall, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, some few hours before. These are making their preparations for departure, some of them checking their baggage, and others having their tickets examined; a few, even now (fortunately for themselves), are taking their families on board the Toboga, as the Golden Age, the incoming Pacific Mail steamer, has been sighted.

    Hearing this, Montez whispers to the Californian: “The train for Aspinwall will be sure to leave early in the morning. The Pacific House is the one for you, it is so near the railroad depot.”

    Railroad Station at Panama, antique postcard (n.d.) (panamarailroad.org)

    So they pass in, and registering their names with McFarlane, the proprietor, soon find themselves in a little room on the eastern, and now shady, side of the house, for the sun is already declining in the heavens. This chamber is one flight up, retired and quiet as any room can be in a house made of thin boards with partitions of canvas and paper. To this the three natives stagger with the heavy trunk, Domingo accompanying them with the lighter one.

    Here Montez says to the American, “Au revoir!” but while doing this, suggests: “Won’t you take a stroll with me into the town? You will find lots of the passengers who are bound for California, seeing the sights. Why not make an evening of it with me? Dinner at the Cafe Victor, and then, I believe, we have a circus in town tonight.”

    “That would be delightful!” cries Alice. A moment after, she says thoughtfully, “but I am afraid I am too fatigued for it.”

    “No thank you, Montez, old boy,” answers George. “I think I’ll stay here with my baggage and my tired wife.”

    “Then au revoir again!” murmurs Fernando, and turns to go, but the Californian comes after him, and seizing his little fingers in his stalwart grip, says gratefully; “This must not be the last we shall see of you! Promise to come back here this evening. My wife and I must thank you again for your hospitality, and what you have done for us. I’ll not forget to express the revolver to you from New York.”

    “Oh, do not fear—I’ll return to you!” answers Montez, the Armenian drop in his blood coming to the fore, and giving his eyes a farseeing, peculiar, subtle look. “Until this evening!” and whispering these words, he skips down the steps, giving one last longing parting glance at the fair American lady, who makes a pretty picture, her bright beauty being in strong contrast to the bareness of the room, as she carelessly sits upon the ironbound trunk. Thus grouped these two treasures of the American look very beautiful to Señor Montez—they are now, he thinks, so nearly his.

    As he reaches the doorway of the hotel he suddenly starts and says: “But I have much to do!” and so passes rapidly out of the Pacific House, where there is a good deal of drinking going on, and many glasses are being emptied to the first sight of the Pacific, by passengers eager to reach the land of gold.

    Left together Ripley turns to Alice, saying: “It looks as if you would have a dull time, little woman, till tomorrow morning when we get upon the railroad for Aspinwall.”

    “Oh, I’ll pass a little of it writing to Mary.”

    “Why, the child’ll see us as soon as the letter!”

    “Not quite. We’ll have to remain a day in New York probably. The letter will go right on. I’ll tell her of our week in Toboga,” returns the lady, taking from her trunk the articles for a hasty epistle. “Had you not better see about our tickets?”

    “They’ll do in the morning,” replies the gentleman who is looking out of the hotel window. “Besides, the crowd bound for California are giving the railroad officials all they want to attend to just now.” And George amuses himself inspecting the movements of the throng outside as the sun goes down upon Panama.

    After a little, his wife closes an epistle full of a mother’s love to her absent dear one, telling her the day after she receives it she will be in her arms, and says, “George, just step down and put this in the mail at the railroad depot, before you forget as usual.”

    “Then the usual bribe,” laughs her husband.

    “Two, if you like,” and the lady’s lips receive his kisses, for these two are as much lovers as when they first became man and wife.

    “Now hurry. For Mr. McFarlane’s gong is going to sound for dinner soon,” cries Alice.

    So George Ripley goes down and posts the letter to Mary, his daughter, putting it in the strong grip of Wells, Fargo & Co., but does not come back to dinner with his wife—for this is the night of the fifteenth day of April, 1856—a night that at Panama severed husbands from wives and parted children from parents’ love.

    Notes, References, Further Reading

    • Aspinwall: City founded in 1850 on the northern shoulder of the Isthmus. Named after co-founder of the Panama Railroad, American businessman William Henry Aspinwall (1807–1875), it was the Atlantic terminal of the railroad. The name was changed to Colón, after Christopher Columbus, whose Spanish name was Cristóbal Colón. See “How Did Colón Become Columbus?: Explorer’s name varies from country to country” (thoughtco.com).
    • dross: “waste product taken off molten metal during smelting, essentially metallic in character” (wordreference.com).
    • descants: to comment or discourse at great length.
    • tintype: Photographic image produced on a thin metal plate. See “Tintype Photographs” at phototree.com.
    • mouches dinero, mouches sangui: much money, much blood.
    • set on foot: to initiate, start something.
    • polyhæma: many bloods.
    • bongo: “[T]he small schooner-rigged market craft of Panama are […] called bongos.” Man, Vol. 28 (1928), p. 122, at Internet Archive.
    • Caramba!: good heavens.

    Bishop, F., Panama Past and Present (NY: Century, 1916). wikisource.org .

    Daley, M.C., “The Watermelon Riot: Cultural Encounters in Panama City, April 15, 1856,” Hispanic American Historical Review 70:1, Feb 1990. Available Duke U Press.

    Haskin, F.J., The Panama Canal (NY: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1913) Project Gutenberg eBook.

    Musicant, I., The Banana Wars (New York: Macmillan, 1990).

    Schott, Joseph L., Rails across Panama; the story of the building of the Panama Railroad, 1849-1855 (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Borrow from Internet Archive.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 2. A Toboga Breakfast in ’56

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 2. A Toboga Breakfast in ’56

    Our narrator is at it again, delighting us with wonderful descriptions of island scenery and life, while never missing an opportunity to take a swipe at Montez. Fernando is now increasingly referred to as ‘little’. When a Narrator becomes a character in a story, as I explored in the previous introduction, expressing opinions, deriding or debasing characters, a question arises: can he be trusted? Were it not for the intimations of the Narrator, the previous chapter would seem idyllic. Hasn’t our kind host, Fernando rescued the ill Alice and her husband George from the pestilence of Panama, for the sweet aromatic breezes of his island retreat, treated them to excellent care and wonderful cuisine, travelled to the Isle of Pearls for them, at all times been a perfect gentleman? Yet our American Narrator’s insights into Montez’s character are ringing true, and his credibility appears intact for the time being.

    Village on Taboga Island, Republic of Panama, from postcard c. 1927

    While providing an unsympathetic history of young Fernando, at the same time the Narrator covers some of the history of the Isthmus and the crossing before the railway. Prior to this, for three hundred years the Isthmus was a possession of the Spanish. They first sought to improve the way across it for the passage of South American gold and treasure back to Spain.

    Through Fernando’s memory, his first engagement with the Americans, George Ripley and his wife, is related. It is clear he holds some disdain for Americanos, apart from their potential as marks in a confidence trick, which is likely shared amongst the local population. American presence and involvement in the Isthmus had been going on for some time. In 1846, the United States and The Republic of New Granada negotiated a treaty of “peace, amity, navigation and commerce” that included a guarantee of the US right of way across the Isthmus of Panama. The country of New Granada consisted mostly of present-day Colombia, and also Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela (Encycl. Britannica).

    Background is provided on George Riley, and his wife, Alice’s, contraction of yellow fever. Yellow fever, malaria and other mosquito borne diseases were rife in Panama due to the port being surrounded by swamp. Direct off-loading of passengers by steam ships was not possible which is why they disembarked at Taboga Island and later transferred to Panama by smaller boat or canoe.

    Most infections of yellow fever lead to serious illness. At first the sufferer experiences a high temperature, a slow pulse, muscle pain, nausea, shivers and vomiting. About 15 percent of people progress to a toxic stage, with life threatening symptoms such as bleeding, jaundice and liver and kidney failure. Half of these sufferers die within two weeks of onset. In 1887, the artist Paul Gauguin contracted yellow fever and malaria after working on the Panama Canal and spent time on Taboga Island recovering, as does Alice Ripley.

    Fernando‘s aspirations for Alice Ripley have grown, though his vision varies not, and she remains a beautiful object to him, second only to the old chest of George Ripley. In this chapter, Fernando’s disarming ways take on a new definition, and he moves one step closer to achieving his goal.

    CHAPTER 2

    A TOBOGA BREAKFAST IN ‘56

    Then this little disciple of Satan runs over what has brought him this great chance of good luck. He thinks of his earlier days.

    He is scarce twenty now, but people develop rapidly under the hot sun of the Equator. He remembers the quiet little town of Cruces, in the mountains—at the head of navigation of the Chagres, where the good priest taught him his Paternosters, and where he chanted them each day in his class, mingling his Latin with howls produced by blows of a cutting rawhide in the hands of the padre’s athletic and vigilant assistant.

    This mixture of penance and prayer pleased the young Montez but little. His mother, who lived in a palm hut by the rapids of the Chagres, did the padre’s washing; his father was—Heaven knows where or who. There seemed no way of escape. They were about to make him an altar boy, and rebellious little Fernando cursed as he chanted and saw no prospect save of a life of prayer and penance, and candle carrying behind a decorated image of the Virgin, in its daily religious procession through the lanes of the little town. But just at this moment Cruces—buried from the world in the hills of the Cordilleras in the deadly slumber that had fallen upon the Isthmus when the route to Chili and Peru round Cape Horn succeeded the route via Panama, and the jingling bells of its mule trains were no longer heard crossing the mountain paths between Panama and Porta Bella—awoke and lived again.

    The first rush of the gold seekers for California in ’49 crossed the Isthmus.

    Flying from church and prayer and penance, young Montez dodged fasting and discipline in the hurly-burly of that early Isthmus excitement.

    At thirteen he peddled water, for ten cents a glass, to thirsty Gringos. A year after he did a thriving business in unripe bananas, oranges, and pineapples in the streets of Chagres. Next taking up with a monte shop, became “muchacho diablo” in a gambling establishment at Gargona, where he learned card sharping and thimble rigging. In the years 1851, 1852, and 1853 he was a handler of bad mules, which he leased out at exorbitant prices to the embryo pioneers and argonauts of California to cross worse roads from Gargona in the dry season, and from Cruces in the wet time, to Panama.

    Spanish muchacho. Anonymous photo c. 1920

    Perchance, he took a flyer or two, with one or two successful bandits, and some looted treasure came to him.

    He had a knack of recovering lost children who disappeared together with their native carriers in this rush across the Isthmus, and restoring them to fond parents for large sums of money.

    And during this time he learned one great principle that has been of much use to Napoleons of finance both in America and Europe—that is, not to steal often, but to steal much. The first invariably leads to disgrace and a prison—the second often to honor and a palace.

    While doing all this, his facile mind became educated. He picked up French, from some Parisians crossing the Isthmus. Spanish was his native tongue. A smattering of Latin he had from the priest. English came to him from his vocation with the Californian adventurers; and by devoting himself to one or two Portuguese, who travelled tremblingly across the Isthmus in those days, he stole from them a smattering of their language and any doubloons and Spanish dollars they might leave within reach of his grasping paws.

    At length, the railroad completed in 1855 destroyed young Montez’s means of livelihood; but by this time he had sufficient to engage in other occupations, and turned his attention to dealing in pearls, precious stones, and other valuables he could pick up about the Isthmus, sometimes making trips to the Pearl Islands, and once or twice going as far as Ecuador and Peru, upon the English steamers that were now running down the coast of South America, and to Acapulco to the north, on the Pacific Mail boats, trading always with a rare facility and shrewdness that had come to him in a drop of Yankee blood left by a New Bedford whaler at Darien some hundred years before, and by a globule of the vital fluid of Israel, that had entered his poly-nation veins from an unfortunate Jewish pedler the Inquisition had burned, before the time of Morgan.

    He was even now considered well to do, and his orders were good in the Hotel Francais in Panama, or in the restaurant of Monsieur Victor, the Isthmus Delmonico those days, but still as yet no grand coup had come to him.

    Some ten days before the time he sits upon the veranda of the villa on the Island of Toboga, the steamer John L. Stevens, from San Francisco, brought its lot of passengers from California, to take route across the Isthmus by railway to Aspinwall, and so on to New York; among them this American gentleman and his wife, who are occupying the pretty palm cottage this morning—Ripley ruddy in health, Alice beautiful as a pale lily, stricken with the fever picked up during a six hours’ stay in Acapulco, and too ill to proceed on her journey. But for this, the American would have been the happiest of men, for he was a successful pioneer to California.

    George Merritt Ripley had left a clerkship in Baltimore, and taken his wife with him, leaving his little daughter of twelve at school in the East, and had gone to California in 1852. He had made his first start in gold mining in Calaveras County, at Mokelumne Hill, and being sensible enough to see that placer digging was uncertain, and that trade in California at that time was a sure road to wealth, had taken his few thousand dollars, and entered into business in the thriving town of Stockton on the San Joaquin. In three years he had accumulated some sixty thousand dollars, which, in those days of cheap prices, large interest, and small capital, was the equivalent to half a million at the present.

    Having enough to live upon in the East, his money properly invested in the growing towns of New York or Boston would in time make him even wealthy.

    His wife, anxious to see her child (for four years is a long time to a mother’s heart), had implored him to return to the Eastern States, which in those days all Californians called “home.”

    So, though his life on the plains of the San Joaquin had been a pleasant one, Ripley was delighted to turn his face from the crudities of the early California, to the more civilized existence of the Eastern world.

    He had come on his way rejoicing, until the fever struck the woman he loved, so he had brought her to Panama to rest there—perchance to die there.

    His trunks, checked through to the East, had gone on, all save one that contained their immediate necessities of apparel, and the other one; the one that never left his eye—the heavy one—the one that took three natives to handle. These, together with his wife, were in Panama, when he chanced to meet Montez, who, having many arts and graces of a gentleman, had soon made George Ripley think him his friend.

    Montez had recommended the change from the pestilent miasma of the mainland to the breezes that came fresh up the Gulf to the Island of Toboga, and in these zephyrs, health had come to George’s wife, and despair had left the heart of the strong man who loved her.

    During these days of his wife’s convalescence, in one of his conversations with Montez, Ripley had mentioned a desire to invest a little of the gold he was bringing with him in the pearls of the Isthmus—which were cheap at Panama compared to New York. This treasure was all in his own care, for Wells Fargo’s charges in these days, for the transmission of specie, were very high, and George Ripley thought himself strong enough to take care of his own money, having stood off bandits from his Mokelumne Hill mine and possessing that peculiar self-confidence that seemed to come with the air of the Sierras to all Californians in those early days. Therefore this foolish Ripley had evaded Wells, Fargo & Co.’s charges, and had everything he held valuable in this world with him in Toboga this sunny day—save his daughter in her Eastern school.

    Musing over this, Fernando chuckles to himself: “Brave Americano—fool Americano!“

    Just here he is awakened from his reverie by the brave Americano’s voice in his ear, and the hearty grasp of the fool Americano’s hand upon his shoulder. The voice says: “Come along, Don Fernando Montez! We are hungry. The odor of the breakfast is delicious—but my wife insists upon our waiting for our kind host.” The hand drags in friendly play the petite carcass of Fernando Gomez Montez to see the prettiest sight his sparkling, all nation eyes have ever gazed upon—the blonde beauty of the temperate zone contrasted with the dark loveliness of the Equator, surrounded by a tropic breakfast al fresco.

    It is under the shade of the tamarind trees, the perfume from which is mingled with the odors of a feast for the gods!

    The aroma of Costa Rica coffee just burnt and ground comes from a steaming urn that stands on the ground near the fire of perfumed orange wood, upon which turtle steaks are broiling, and luscious plantains and mealy yams are cooking in its ashes. A stew of rice and freshly killed Iguano lizard, made hot with Chili Colorado, and a slight suspicion of garlic—for Anita is an artist in the cooking line—stands ready to their hands; and fruits, gorgeous as the sun that gave them their ripe beauty, lie about them everywhere.

    The American lady, lazily seated in a hammock, looks coolly beautiful under the leaves that shade her—the abandon of careless ease shows her still girlish figure in graceful motion. Her blue eyes would be very bright this morning, were they not wistful at times when gazing towards the East. Anita posed like a bronze statue stands near the fire, her orbs sparkling also, save when looking at la Americana they glow with soma unknown passion like those of a Voodoo priestess!

    So breakfast passes, Anita the presiding goddess of the feast; for to this Indian girl all the beauty of the tropics has come in the fifteen years of her life. She is robed in white—some soft clinging Isthmus stuff, which drapes her lithe figure, and displays the beauties of her graceful limbs at every motion—and her little feet, bare as when she was born, step so lightly they hardly rustle the leaves under them.

    The girl flits about, ministering to the appetites of Señor Montez and his guests, which seem to be very good, Montez apparently being happy, and a great joy beaming in the eyes of the American. His beautiful wife has roses on her fair cheeks, and in ten days they will be in their Eastern home; with them the one child of their love. Health and appetite are theirs, and their breakfast is almost like that of Arcady.

    The coffee is of the sweetest aroma, the Iguano is done to a nicety, and the turtle steaks are juicy as those from a two-year old buffalo cow. These being finished, they revel in the fruits of the tropics—oranges green as an olive, thin-skinned as a lady’s glove, with one blood red shot upon each, to prove that it has ripened; melons, sweet limes, Avigado pears, and the mangoes for which Toboga is famous.

    As appetite is appeased, conversation becomes easy.

    “Why did you not ask Anita to tell me that I was keeping you from breakfast? It is such a good one,” laughs the every-nation gentleman.

    “Anita did not seem to care for your coming.” returns the American lady. “Perhaps she did not think her breakfast was as perfect as it is.”

    “Ah, Anita was sulky, eh?” says Fernando, a little mocking snarl curling over his white teeth. “Anita has an Indian temper and Indian moods.” He regards the girl with a sneer, and she returns him several flashes from her eyes, that would be reproachful, were they not almost vindictive.

    “A little sullen, Anita—eh?” jeers the host.

    His tone would drive the girl to frenzy, did not the American lady suddenly say, “Please don’t be cross with her. You do not know how kind she has been to me during your absence and my sickness!” Then she turns to her husband and suggests: “We must not forget Anita’s services when we leave her.”

    “No,” cries the jovial Californian. “Anita shall have the biggest pearl that Montez has brought from the Islands.”

    At this mention of personal adornment, a smile runs over the volatile features of the Indian girl.

    Fernando smiles also. What is Anita’s is his. And everything is fish that comes to his net.

    A second after, he gives a start. The American lady is remarking in grateful tones: “And what shall our offering be to you, Señor Montez, whose hospitality has given me health?”

    “A present for me? Mia madre! you are too kind.”

    “Yes, mention what you like and you have it,” interjects the Californian.

    “Oh, if you wish me to say what I should regard with the greatest favor, it would be your—your beautiful revolver. There is none like it on the Isthmus,—none that shoots so truly, for I have seen your skill with it,” answers Fernando, looking with longing eyes upon the fatal weapon of the American.

    “My revolver,” echoes the Californian with a start. Then he says, after a pause of consideration: “I will send it to you by express from New York. Until this journey is over, I cannot part with it. It has guarded my life and my property before. I feel safer with it by my side.”

    “Yes,” returns Alice, “at his side by day, near his hand at night. George is superstitious, I think, with regard to it.”

    This conversation apparently does not please Señor Montez very greatly. The revolver has seemed to fascinate him. All through the meal his glances have sought the long Colt’s pistol that carries six lives in its six loaded chambers as it hangs in the Californian’s belt. A little spheroid of timid Cingales blood, poured into his veins from some East Indian ancestor, now brings a coward faltering into his bright eyes. He does not seem to enjoy the Avigado pear that he was eating with a good appetite a second before. Throwing it away with a “pish” of disgust, he cries: “Anita, quick, a cigar!” for nicotine soothes this gentleman’s excitable nerves.

    The Indian girl, at his command, draws out from a bundle of fragrant Toboga tobacco a fresh leaf, and rolling it in her deft and agile fingers, in half a minute it becomes a cigar. Thirty seconds more, a second leaf becomes another cigar. This she offers to the American, who follows his host’s example. So lighting up, the two men puff away contentedly.

    A moment after, Alice gives a start of amazement, for a third cigar has been tendered to her. and to her astonished refusal, Anita laughs: “You are not well enough yet to smoke. I had supposed now you are ill no longer you would enjoy it as I do.” Then throwing herself into a hammock, this lazy bird of the tropic surrounds herself with wreaths of smoke, puffing them out between her white teeth, and playing with them as a juggler does with his baubles.

    The sensuous scene appeals to even the energetic Californian’s senses. He mutters: “This week at Toboga has seemed like a week of—of—”

    “Of paradise! “interjects his wife. “Since I have become well again, we have made a fairy land of it. Daytime in the hammock, sipping coccanut milk and chicha under the tamarind leaves; dinners at Jacques’ petite restaurant in the cocoanut trees, and moonlight in a canoe on the water. George said,” here the lady blushes slightly, gazing at her husband with bride’s eyes, “that it was more romantic than our wedding tour.”

    “A-ah, a—new honeymoon!” sighs Montez. Looking at the beauty of this Northern violet, as she sits before him in the ease of this tropic Arcady—for Alice Ripley has imitated Señorita Anita in the hammock business, and sits lazily under the green leaves, one perfect foot and one delicate ankle carelessly swinging from under her white laces and muslin and ribbons—this gentleman’s face suddenly flushes with a great delight, as he thinks: “A new honeymoon!—Yes—for me!” Then visions come to him, entrancing as the dreams of opium sleep, as he gazes at Alice Ripley through the clouds of his cigar smoke.

    Woman in white. Anon., antique French postcard (n.d.)

    Mingled with the rustling breezes in the tamarind groves, as they sit there, the “silence—of—the—smoker” coming on them, is heard the voice of a rushing stream, which issues gurgling and foaming from the hillside, and splashes into a little basin, a short hundred yards away, suggesting coolness.

    The day is already burning, and the noise of this foaming stream apparently puts an idea into the fertile mind of little Montez, as he sits looking with sleepless eyes at the big Californian, through his wreaths of smoke.

    He says: “How is a cool plunge this hot morning? Why not a bath, Señor Georgio Ripley?”

    “A bath—delicious!” ejaculates the American. Then looking over the green water of the bay, he suggests, “But the sharks!”

    “No sharks here,” and Fernando points with a little finger, adorned with some diamonds and a very delicately trimmed almond-shaped nail, to the cool, limpid basin worn in the rock by the unceasing flow of the living stream for centuries. “That is nature’s bathing place.”

    So the two go off together, through the thickets to the shady pool, bearing with them handfuls of javoncilla leaves, that will act as vegetable soap and make their skins soft as those of children.

    Looking on its limpid waters, dark under the palms and only golden where the sun steals in upon it through little breaks in the leaves, the American mutters: “This is perfection.”

    Then Montez cries, “Quick, I’ll beat you into the water. You need not fear to undress here. Toboga has no deadly lance-vipers or coral snakes like the mainland.”

    So undressing himself in the little thicket of broad leaved palms and feathery bamboos, George Merritt Ripley, as he takes his plunge into nature’s bathtub, for the first time in his journey really parts himself from his revolver.

    It is but for a short fifteen minutes, and Montez bathes with him ten of them, but leaves the water first.

    But in that five minutes, that one last plunge for Ripley, something has happened to his weapon of trust that had saved his life and his treasure from the bandits of the Sierras and the highwaymen of the Californian trails.

    Not knowing this, George comes laughingly up the bank, crying, “That last plunge was the most refreshing of my life! I hope you enjoyed your bath as well as I did, Señor Montez.”

    “Perhaps better,” returns his companion, who has as yet hardly begun to dress. Fernando is apparently a lazy man, and he has had something to occupy him, and a little file that he has brought with him, during the five minutes of Ripley’s last plunge.

    From now on, a confident air seems to come over this every nation gentleman; and when his eyes look at the revolver which the American is strapping around him again, they no longer shrink from it, but gaze at it in confident triumph. So, walking up the path to the tamarind grove and bamboo cottage, Fernando chuckles to himself: “I am sure now—treasure and beauty.”

    Notes, References, Further Reading

    • Cover feauture image is a painting by Edward Gennys Fanshawe, ‘From a back window in Panama, March 10th 1850’.
    • Toboga: Taboga, volcanic island in the Gulf of Panama, known also as ‘the Island of Flowers’. See “Some History of Isla Taboga” at taboga.panamanow.com.
    • treaty: known as New Granada Treaty, Bidlack Treaty, or Bidlack Mallarino Treaty (see Dennis).
    • yellow fever: See “What’s to know about Yellow Fever”, medicalnewstoday.com
    • Chili: early variant spelling ‘Chile’.
    • monte shop:  monte is a gambling game played with a 40 card deck.
    • muchacho diablo:  Spanish ‘man-devil’
    • specie: coin, or money in kind.
    • Paternosters: in the Roman Catholic Church, The Lord’s Prayer usually in Latin.
    • Padre: Spanish ‘father’, ‘a priest’.
    • Delmonico: Opened 1837. “New York’s first a la carte restaurant on 2 South William Street, favored French cuisine, cloth-covered tables and a printed menu designed by the first “star chef,” Charles Ranhofer” (A Brief History of Delmonico’s)
    • Placer digging: “placer derives from the Spanish placer, meaning shoal or alluvial/sand deposit, from Catalan placer (shoal), from plassa (place) from Medieval Latin placea (place) the origin word for “place” and “plaza” in English. The word in Spanish is thus derived from placea and refers directly to an alluvial or glacial deposit of sand or gravel” (“Placer Mining” — Wikipedia).
    • Darien: Darién, province in eastern Panama. The Scots failed in an attempt to colonize it in the 17th century. (See Ben Johnson, “The Darien Scheme.”)
    • Arcady: Arcadia, a region of Greece, known through the ages as a beautiful, unspoiled wilderness.
    • Mia madre: Spanish `my mother’
    • Isle of Pearls: a group of islands in the Gulf of Panama, Isle del Rey being the largest.
    • Avigado pear: Avocados are widely cultivated in Panama.
    • Javoncilla: Luffa operculata.
    • John L. Stephens: “The [SS John L. Stephens] is 2500 tons register, 280 feet keel, 66-1/2 feet breadth of beam amidships, and 285 feet over all. Her engine was built in the Novelty Works, and is on the oscillating principle. It is suspended from a framing of wood similar to the frames usually employed in the construction of beam-engines, and is the first application of the kind ever introduced. She is built on the clipper model, and is believed to be the sharpest American steamer ever constructed. Her accommodations are for twelve hundred passengers and the ventilation throughout every part is believed to be superior to any steamship ever built. Her buoyancy is also very great, and with 650 tons of coal and 20,000 gallons of water, she draws less than 12 feet of water” (excerpt from March 25, 1853, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California). See maritimeheritage.org .
    • lance-viper: Fer-de-lance, venomous pit viper.

    Anderson, Charles L.D., Old Panama and Castilla del Oro (np: Sudwarth, 1911 at Smithsonian Institute. “Narrative history of the discovery, conquest and settlement by the Spaniards.”

    Dennis, William Cullen. “The Panama Situation in the Light of International Law. The Treaty of 1846 between
    the United States and New Granada” The American Law Register (1898-1907) , May, 1904, Vol. 52, No. 5, Volume 43
    New Series (May, 1904), pp. 265-306. Available at Jstor.

    “América Central. Tierra Firme. Mapas generales. 1785” Historical Spanish maritime map of Central America. España en el Mundo.

    Samuels, A.J., “Gauguin in Panama: A Forgotten Journey”. Culturetrip.com

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 1. The Returning Californians

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 1. The Returning Californians

    Welcome to the first instalment of Achibald Clavering Gunter’s 1893 novel Baron Montez of Panama and Paris. The story is integrated with historical events which provide a background for the introduction of the main character, Fernando Gomez Montez. The first chapters take place on a particular day, the fifteenth day of April, 1856, a date that has a significant part to play both in history and future plot.

    Panama

    Panama was always of vital interest to the United States. President Andrew Jackson as early as 1836 had commissioned a study of proposed routes for a railroad across the Isthmus to protect the interests of Americans travelling to and from the Eastern and Western states by ocean, and the developing Oregon County in the Pacific Northwest. Two years before gold was discovered in California in 1848, which made safe transit across the Isthmus even more crucial, William H. Aspinall, who ran the Pacific mail steamships conceived of a railroad. He and his partners formed a New York company and raised a million dollars to conduct engineering and route studies. The Panama Railroad was completed on January 27, 1855, at a cost of eight million and an estimated five to ten thousand lives to malaria, yellow fever and cholera.

    The ‘science’ of blood and race

    There is a great dollop of blood ahead and smatterings throughout these first chapters, with racial connotations. Not to alarm our readers, it is best to put this in context with the time of A.C. Gunter’s writing, 1893. Ten years before, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, defined Eugenics as ‘the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial quality of future generations’ (Memories… p. 321). As Darwin’s evolutionary ‘survival of the fittest’ made universal sense and was applied widely beyond its scientific origins, so Galton’s determination took on a life of its own in the US. Pseudo-eugenics prospered. Galton proposed that, where possible, breeding should be encouraged from good stock, and discouraged in bad. He saw the English upper classes as good stock with good qualities.

    Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911). Platinum print by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant). Source: Wikimedia Commons

    It’s all very well to establish a scientific principle, but left in the hands of the unscientific to ascribe subjective values on who or what is desirable, is another thing, particularly if based simply on race. It becomes a basis and validation for prejudice. None-the-less a movement began to grow to embrace the principles for the betterment of society through inherited blood. As Nancy Ordover puts it:

    U.S. eugenicists tended to believe in the genetic superiority of Nordic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples, supported strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws, and supported the forcible sterilization of the poor, disabled and “immoral.”

    Ordover, American Eugenics (2003) xii

    Today, the narrator’s stereotypical presumptions would be considered racist, but these were, not to judge or justify, the emerging values of the society within which he lived. With financial support from the likes of John D. Rockefeller, and the Carnegie Institution, and aided by influential scientists like Charles B. Davenport and Alexander Graham Bell, the formation of organizations such as The Eugenics Record Office and the American Breeders Association, ensured the movement continued to grow and expand its demands until the commencement of the First World War (Ordover).

    Style and technique of the storyteller

    Contemporary writing has been greatly influenced by the visual mediums of television and film. ‘Show don’t tell’ is the admonition given new writers. This is a distinct departure from previous writing styles where the narrator plays a more visible, involved role of story-teller. However, even in Gunter’s period narrators were generally unobtrusive entities largely prepared to let their characters’ actions and words speak for qualities and nature.

    The narrator of Baron Montez, has a prominent all-seeing, all-knowing presence, to the extent of almost becoming a character of the story himself—as a US basketball coach is considered part of the team or an off-stage voice one of the cast. But this is purposeful. A.C. Gunter is a successful New York playwright, and this dramatic influence is evident in this work, in staging, character design and the transparency of his dialogue which truly provides an insight into character.

    In this first chapter, A.C. Gunter has several revelations to impart which have a bearing on the larger plot: the new Panama Railroad and its effect on the native population, and transiting Americans such as Alice and George Ripley; and while alternatively mollifying the reader with exquisite descriptions of the paradise that is Toboga Island, the sand, jewel waters and flowers, the vehement narrator carries out a relentless character assassination of Fernando Gomez Montez, who no doubt is up to no good. He is the quintessential bad boy, a charming rogue without soul, capable of anything, and his irresistible potential for evil-doing draws the reader on.

    BARON MONTEZ

    OF

    PANAMA AND PARIS

    A NOVEL

    BY

    ARCHIBALD CLAVERING GUNTER

    BOOK 1

    A TRAGEDY OF THE EARLY ISTHMUS

    CHAPTER 1

    THE RETURNING CALIFORNIANS

    “ANITA!”

    “Fernando, light of my heart! Returned from the Pearl Islands!” cries the beautiful Indian girl rushing to his arms and covering Mr. Fernando’s olive face with the kisses of youth and love. Anita is but fifteen, and the heart grows fast under the sun of the Equator.

    Fernando himself is scarce twenty, but he does not seem so ardent. He replies carelessly, “Yes, last night, by the Columbus,” pointing to that little unseaworthy steamer as she lies languidly upon the blue waters of the Bay of Panama, about three miles from the town, and seven from the lovely Island of Toboga, from which these two are gazing at it.

    “Last night, and you did not come to me? you—away five days!” answers the girl, tears coming into her eyes that flash through mists of passion like topaz stones.

    “Last night I had business in Panama—great business.”

    Then the young man says anxiously, “Is the Americano well?”

    Photo of indigenous Panamanian woman by Ayaita (detail, adjusted) CC BY-SA 3.0 Source: Wikimedia Commons

    “Yes.”

    “And here?”

    “Still here.”

    “He has not gone yet! Blessings on God! And his wife—the beautiful Senora Alicia, the lady with the white skin? She has recovered from her touch of the fever Panama?”

    “She is better. They go to the mainland this after noon.”

    “Ho-oh!”

    “To-morrow morning they take passage on the railway, to Aspinwall, and then go on the big vessel with the smoke to the great America beyond the sea.”

    “A-ah. she is well enough to travel?”

    “Yes, she is yellow no more; her cheeks are red as the blossoms of the manzanilla.”

    “Por Dios! She must be lovely as a mermaid of Las Islas de las Perles!” murmurs Fernando half to himself, but still not sufficiently low to miss the sharp ear of an Indian; for at his words the dark eyes of Anita flash ominously, her full, round bosom pants under its white semitransparent cotton drapery, and she mutters savagely to herself.

    “What are you saying under your breath, Anita?” cries the young man.

    “Nothing! I—I was only whispering a prayer to the Virgin for the young American lady’s recovery, in the language of my tribe,” answers the girl hesitatingly.

    “Diablo! No more of the language of your tribe! I don’t understand the language of your tribe!” sneers Señor Fernando, giving the girl a little slap on her shapely brown shoulder and a nasty glance out of his bright eyes. To this she does not reply, as she passes round the corner of the bamboo cottage, apparently overcome by some emotion she would sooner the gentleman who has been speaking to her would not discern in her face.

    “By all the saints of the cathedral, I believe the fool is jealous of my passion for the beautiful Americana! Anita jealous! Did she but know there is an Anita at Cruces, another at the Island del Rey, and half a dozen more scattered between Aspinwall and Panama, little Anita of Toboga would have fine cause for jealousy,” chuckles the young gentleman, smoothing his elaborate and spotlessly white shirt front, and settling the bright red sash around his hips, in the conceited way peculiar to South American dandies.

    A moment after, he thinks: “What matters one Indian girl, more or less? Besides, today I have other things—they are going away today. How lucky I returned from the Pearl Islands in time! But now, Por Dios!—everything is arranged for the departure tonight of the American, his treasure, and his—beautiful—wife.” He lisps this through his white teeth, as he looks lazily out over the Bay of Panama, and dreams a daydream which seems to be a pleasant one.

    It is shortly interrupted by a hearty American voice saying: “Back at last, Señor Montez. I hope you have brought the pearls. I was afraid we would not be able to wait for you. A gleaming necklace would be a very pretty present for my little girl in the United States.”

    With these words, a brown-faced, hardy and stalwart American, George Merritt Ripley, steps upon the bamboo portico and gives the man he addresses a hearty grasp of the hand. Ripley’s manners are those of one who has been educated as a gentleman, but has to a limited extent thrown off the veneer of society among the rough and ready companions of Alta California.

    This is apparent as he continues. “Light a cigar, my Spanish friend, and enjoy the view with me, this beautiful morning;” and, taking a camp chair, places his feet lazily upon the bamboo railing of the veranda, making a fine picture of a returning Californian of the fifties in his light woollen turn-away shirt, Panama hat, black trousers, high boots and belted revolver.

    “Gracias!” The Spaniard accepts the offered weed and then suggests: “Your wife, I understand, is now sufficiently recovered, to continue her journey to the United States.”

    “Yes, thank God!” answers the American. Then his lip trembles a little, as he says: “Though our first day in Panama, I was afraid my Alice would leave me forever;” and sighs: “That would have been the saddest parting on earth. My wife going to the embraces of our daughter she has not seen for four years—since we left her to journey to California.”

    “Why did you not take her with you to the land of gold?”

    “What! take a child of twelve across the Isthmus in 1852? With its boat travel on the Chagres—its night at Gargona, amid the clicking of dice and the curses of the gamblers—its morning of miasma, going up the river to Cruces, and its mule ride through tropical forests infested by thieves and banditti? That would have been too great a risk; but now, with the railroad, our return is different and safe.”

    At the American’s mention of gamblers at Gargona, and bandits on the Cruces road in 1852, a slight smile has rippled the olive features of the young man to whom he is talking.

    As the returning Californian speaks of the railroad, the smile on the Spaniard’s features changes to a scowl, but a moment after he assents laughingly: “Yes, it is different.” Then a gleam of diabolical hope comes into his face, as he says: “I am glad the Señora is well enough to travel.”

    “Yes, we leave here this afternoon. That reminds me I must thank you for your kindness of the week. Had it not been for you, Alice would have remained in Panama, and perhaps have succumbed to the fever; but here on this beautiful island, the sea breezes and the perfume of the tamarind groves have been better for her than all the quinine in the universe, and all the doctors on earth. So I shall take her back to the East to meet our child, and a reunited family will settle down to a life of civilization, blessing God for the gold placers of the Sierras, for I have been very fortunate in California. My wife will be dressed very shortly, Señor Montez. Would you mind suggesting to the kind Anita that sea breezes bring appetite for breakfast?”

    With this the gentleman returns into the little cottage of bamboo walls and palm-thatched roof, and Fernando Gomez Montez, looking after him, murmurs: “He has been very fortunate!” and thinks covetously of a strong ironbound chest the returning Californian carries with him, whose weight indicates that it contains the gold of the Sierras.

    Then his agile though sensuous mind wanders to the beauty that he knows the slight bamboo walls keep from his prying, inquisitive, hungering eyes—the beauty of the American lady—the white lady whose loveliness he has longed for since he has seen it—more than for the biggest pearl ever fished up from the blue waters of the Gulf of Panama.

    So he chuckles, looking over his own personal charms which he thinks are great, for he has very nice regular white teeth and sparkling dark eyes; his skin is a very mild chocolate color, and his slight, wiry, petite figure is clothed in immaculate white linen save where his bright red sash circles his dapper waist and falls down his right leg almost to his highly polished patent leather Wellington boots.

    Then hearing a woman’s soft voice within the bamboo walls, he mutters: “The Californian is bigger than I; but she will forget him for me—the prettiest boy in Panama!” and, gazing over the bay, sees in the distance, on the shore, the ramparts of the town, the white walls of its houses, and the glittering domes of its cathedrals.

    Back of it are the savannas, green as emeralds, that glisten in the rising sun; beyond, the Cordilleras droop to the lowest gap of that great ridge that divides the Atlantic and Pacific—so low here that twenty-five years after, they will draw all the gold from the stockings of the saving peasants of Brittany and Normandy, in the vain attempt to make the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic meet.

    Behind the South American town rise two green hills—the nearest, called Ancon; the other, farther back, an advance peak of the Sierras, is the Cerro de Filibusteres—thus ominously named because Morgan, the buccaneer, first gazed upon the old Panama that he and his two thousand miscreants (gathered from all quarters of the earth) three days afterwards destroyed with lust and pillage and rapine and fire and blood.

    Looking on this, Montez murmurs: “How peaceful! how beautiful!” Even his soul is struck by the lovely view before him, though he has seen it a hundred times, for to devils’ eyes, heaven is sometimes lovely: and this looks like heaven—though it is not.

    The sea breezes bring to him the scent of the tamarind, lime and orange groves. Around him is a mass of green—feathery green—of palms and bamboos, brightened here and there by red and yellow blossoms, that are strung, as if on florist’s wreaths, from tree to tree, and often dangle and droop into the limpid waters that lave the shore of fair Toboga Island.

    In front of him, and round to right and left, are waves clear as blue diamonds, in which the fish are seen as in some gigantic aquarium: the white shark, mixing with shoals of baracuta, and now and then a shiver of pearly water thrown into the air by flights of flying fish, that glisten in the sun.

    A little to his right, concealing a portion of the modern town of Panama, are three or four islands—green to the water’s edge. Were he nearer to them, they would also be brightened by the colors of innumerable tropical flowers, and made joyous by the songs of tropic birds. Beyond these, on the mainland to the south, lie the ruins of the old town of Panama—the one that Morgan made no more. Farther towards the Equator, the mountain range, growing higher, disappears in the blue sky.

    To the southeast, but beyond his eye, lie the beautiful Islas de las Perles. Around him it is all green and golden yellow and brilliant red—the foliage, fruits, and flowers of the tropics; about him blue; at his feet the waters of the Gulf; above him the ether of a fairy atmosphere. Its dreamy effect appeals to his sensuous soul. He gazes entranced.

    Panama, showing Archipiélago de las Perlas and Isla del Rey. (By Zakuragi; released by copyright holder)

    But as he looks his restless eyes catch, just on the right of the new town of Panama, a little smoke that goes peacefully into the air above it, and mingles with it. It comes from one of the locomotives of the Panama Railway, completed but eighteen months before, and a gleaming smile, as bright and sunny as the day he looks on, comes into the eyes of Fernando Gomez Montez, as he thinks: “Our mulateros and the Chagres boatmen hate this railroad that has taken from them the just dues they filched from the stupid Gringos who travel across our land. This iron track robs our honest banditti of their chances of spoil and plunder on the Cruces mule trail. To-night this helps me! To-night I have both the American’s treasure and his wife!”

    Then he giggles and chuckles to himself, emotions running over his mobile countenance, as fantastic, bizarre, and changing as the many drops of the blood of the various human races who in two centuries have passed across this highway of the world; and Montez of Panama has a drop of nearly all the races of the earth within his despicable carcass, and each drop—the basest.

    He has the drop that gives the cunning of the Spaniard; the drop that holds the bourgeois greed of the Frenchman; the drop that makes the watchful stealth of the Indian; the drop that contains the savage cruelty of the Zulu warrior; the drop that gives the finesse of the Italian; the drop that comes from the Corsican and makes undying hate; and, above all, one drop left by one of Morgan’s buccaneers, that makes him more dangerous than all the other drops of wickedness in his blood, for it gives to him the determination and the bulldog pluck of the Anglo-Saxon.

    Brute and bully as this buccaneer had been, he left his drop of blood to flow in the veins of this fantastic creature of all nations, to make him dangerous; because it gave him that unflinching determination that has carried the Anglo-Saxon race to all quarters of the world, and made it dominant in every one of them.

    But Montez awakes with a start. A merry voice is in his ear, a white, aristocratic hand is held toward him in friendly greeting. These belong to Alice Ripley, who with joy, hope, and happiness on her fair American face, is saying: “Señor Montez, our kind friend, you have been to the Pearl Islands for us—another favor for which to thank you!”

    “You are now quite well?” he stammers, a little confused, though his eyes are bold enough to linger over the beautiful woman, as she stands before him, a white muslin dress floating about her graceful form, and some ribbons in her golden hair, giving color to a fair Saxon face, that is lighted up by radiant, happy violet eyes.

    “Yes—quite well!” she laughs. “So well, appetite has returned to me. I am impatient for breakfast, which kind Anita says is ready in the tamarind grove.”

    “You are—quite changed—you are more beautiful—”

    “No,” she laughs, “more happy. I am well once more—my husband is by my side. In ten days I shall kiss my daughter. Am I not a fortunate woman? But breakfast. En avant, George, and forward Montez!” and Alice Ripley flits over the veranda towards the breakfast bower, made girlish by joy, and stands beside the green palms and red flowers, a picture that makes Señor Montez’s eyes grow tender, and he would pity this lovely American lady he hopes this night to cut off from husband and friends, and home and child—but in all the polyhæma drops that run in his vile veins, there is no drop of pity.

    But there are in his body, drops of blood that carry unbounded passion and intense desire, and gazing on this fair woman’s blue eyes, and white skin, and graceful mobile figure, his eyes grow misty, as he mutters: “A rare flower for Fernando Gomez Montez of Panama to pluck—Ah! This is a lucky day for the naughty boy of the Isthmus!”

    Notes and References

    • Francis Galton (quotation): The version above is taken from Galton’s book Memories of My Life (1908), where he refers to the quoted definition appearing in the ‘minutes of the University of London’, presumably based on his work. (See Field, p.23 for clarification.)
    • Por Dios: Spanish, ‘For God’s sake'.
    • quinine: anti-malaria treatment. Made from bark of a tree from Peru. It gives Tonic Water its bitter taste.
    • rapine: origin 1375–1425; late Middle English – robbery, pillage.
    • mulateros: Spanish, mule driver, mule boy.
    • Gringos: Spanish foreigners, pejorative: Yanks, Yankees, North Americans, light hair/complexion.
    • banditti: Spanish, el bandido; bandit (plural, el bandolero).
    • Cerro de Filibusteres: Cerro, hill. The literal meaning of ‘filibustero‘/’filibuster’ is ‘obstruction’; hence in the text, ‘thus ominously named…’.
    • lave: before 900; Middle English, laven < Old French, laver < Latin, lavāre, to wash. Partly representing Old English, lafian, to pour water on, wash, itself perhaps < Latin, lavāre (same Latin root as ‘lavatory’).
    • polyhæma: ‘many’ + ‘blood’; in the context, perhaps referring derogatively to his ‘mixed blood’?

    Field, James A. ‘The Progress of Eugenics’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1911, 26.1, 1-67. Jump to file (OUP) at JSTOR.

    Galton, Francis.Memories of My Life (London: Methuen, 1908). Jump to quotation at Internet Archive.

    ——. Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences (London:Macmillan, 1802). Jump to file at Internet Archive.

    ——. Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. (London: Macmillan, 1883). Jump to file at Internet Archive.

    Otis, Fessendon Not. Isthmus of Panama: History of the Panama Railroad; and of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (NY: Harpers Brothers, 1867). Available free: Google Books. Internet Archive.

    Ordover, Nancy. American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour