Notes of a naturalist in South America

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Ball John. Notes of a naturalist in South America

PREFACE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

APPENDIX A. ON THE FALL OF TEMPERATURE IN ASCENDING TO HEIGHTS ABOVE THE SEA-LEVEL

APPENDIX B. REMARKS ON MR. CROLL’S THEORY OF SECULAR CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S CLIMATE

FOOTNOTES

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A voyage across the Atlantic in a large ocean steamer is now as familiar and as little troublesome as the journey from London to Paris. It rarely offers any incident worth recounting, and yet, especially as a first experience, it supplies an abundant variety of sources of curiosity and interest. It is easy for a man to sit down at home and within the walls of his own study to find the requisite materials for investigating the still unsolved problems presented by the physics and meteorology of the ocean, or the evidence favourable or hostile to the important modern doctrine of the permanence of the great ocean valleys; but in point of fact very few men who stay at home do occupy themselves with these questions, and it is no slight privilege to feel drawn towards them by the hourly suggestions received during a sea-voyage. Nor is it possible to make light of the simpler pleasures caused by the satisfaction of mere curiosity, when that is linked by association with the pictures on which the fancy has worked from one’s earliest childhood onward. The starting of a covey of flying-fish, the fringe of cocos palms rising against the horizon, the Southern Cross and the Magellanic clouds, the reversed apparent motion of the sun from right to left – none of them very marvellous as mere observed facts – are so many keys that unlock the closed-up recesses, the blue chambers of the memory, which the youthful imagination had peopled with shapes of beauty and wonder and mystery.

Some thrill of delightful anticipation was, I presume, felt by many of the passengers who went on board the royal mail steamer Don in Southampton Water on the 17th of March, 1882. Amid the usual waving of handkerchiefs from the friends who remained behind on board the tender, we glided seaward, and by four p.m. were going at half speed abreast of the Isle of Wight. The good ship had suffered severely during the preceding winter on her homeward passage from the West Indies, when the heavy seas which swept her upper deck had carried away the covering of her engine-room, stove in the chief officer’s cabin, and severely injured her commander, Captain Woolward. On this occasion our voyage was easy and prosperous, and nothing occurred to test severely the careful seamanship of Captain Gillies, who had taken the temporary command.

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We were fortunate in having in our company Mr. W – , a gentleman of Polish descent, to whose lively conversation we had owed much information and amusement during the voyage from Southampton. Now the owner of a large estate in Ecuador, he had long known this region, and appeared to be on terms of familiar acquaintance with all the strange visitors gathered in the saloons at Panama, from the ex-President of Peru to the negro head-waiter. The latter, as we learned, was not the least important member of the assemblage. In one of the numerous revolutions at Panama he had played a leading part, and had attained the rank of colonel. His party being then out of office, he had for the time returned to private life, but may possibly at the present day be again an important person in the state.

For the first time since leaving England the heat at Panama during the midday hours was felt to be oppressive, and we were content with a short stroll, which, to any one familiar with old Spain, offered little novelty. Unlike such mushroom spots as Colon, Panama has all the appearance of an old Spanish provincial town. It has suffered less from earthquakes than most of the places on the west coast, and a large proportion of the buildings, including a rather large cathedral, remain as they were built two or three centuries ago.

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