Identifier: aroundaboutsouth00vinc (find matches)
Title: Around and about South America
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Vincent, Frank, 1848- (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton & company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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n nine days—rather slow travel when the Atlanticis skimmed in six; but doubtless the Pacific Mail SteamshipCompany finds it more profitable to lodge and board its pas-sengers for a long period than to waste the extra coal thatwould be required for a short one. Our voyage was no ex-ception to those usually experienced in the tropics, where agood steamer, with good company, makes dullness a dream.In the days there is the exhilaration of brightness and breeze;in the nights, the balm of coolness and repose. If the moonbe large and brilliant, her fantastic glory gives an invitationto romance. This might easily have been our case, thoughit was not, and through the entire route scarcely a dozen ves-sels appeared, to relieve for a moment the Acapulcos loneli-ness. The first land we beheld was that part of the New Worldwhich Columbus, thirty-five days from Spain, in his ninety-ton pinnace, named San Salvador. To geographers it is nowmore prosaically known as Watling Island. It is one of thel
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2 AROUND AND ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA. most fertile of the Bahamas, producing sub-tropical fruits,grain, and roots in lavish abundance. It was a treat to gaze,even from a distance, upon an island, the discovery of which,nearly four centuries ago, has proved the greatest blessing ofthe kind the world has known. Passing the eastern extrem-ity of Cuba, we were soon greeted by the flaming stars of theSouthern Cross, the most splendid constellation of the south-ern heavens. Numerous flying-Ash and tiny nautili in theirboat-like shells betoken an entrance into another and strangerzone. A few uninteresting islands, right and left, did notat the moment enhance this strangeness, as we performed thepractical duty of dropping our mail-bags into whale-boats,which put off to us from solitary lighthouses. But soon thepurple mountains of Havti loomed grandly from the east,and then, crossing the Caribbean, we saw no more land untilthe famed Isthmus of Panama faintly looked at us from thevanishing-point wh

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