fter all will be
merely a matter of waiting until the boat sails or the train starts and
the uncertainties of mules and cat boats are at an end. It is hard to
explain about our difficulties after we left Tegucigalpa but they were
many. We gave up our idea of riding here direct because they assured
us we could get a steam launch from Amapala to Corinto so we rode three
days to San Lorenzo on the Pacific side and took an open boat from
there to Amapala. It was rowed by four men who walked up a notched log
and then fell back dragging the sweeps back, with the weight of their
bodies.

It was a moonlight night and they looked very picturesque rising and
sinking back and outlined against the sky. They were naked to the
waist and rowed all night and I had a good chance to see them as I had
to lie on the bottom of the boat on three mahogany logs. By ten the
next day we were too cramped to stand it, so we put ashore on a
deserted island and played Robinson Crusoe. We had two biscuits and a
box of sardines among five of us but we found oysters on the rocks and
knocked a lot off with clubs and stones and the butts of our guns.
They were very good. We also had a bath until a fish ran into me about
three feet long and cut two gashes in my leg. We reached Amapala about
four in the afternoon. It was an awful place; dirt and filth and no
room to move about, so we chartered an open boat to sail or row to
Corinto sixty miles distant. You see, we could not go back to
Tegucigalpa until the steamer arrived which is to take us South of
Panama and we could not go to Manaqua either and for the same reason
that we had sent back our mule train and we would not wait in Amapala
partly because of fever which had been there and partly because we
wanted to get to Corinto where they have ice and to see Manaqua. The
boat was about as long as the Vagabond and twice as deep and a foot or
two more across her beam. There were four of us, five of the crew and
two natives who wanted to make the trip and who we took with us. It
was pretty awful. The old tub rocked like a milk shake and I was never
so ill in my life, we all lay packed together on the ribs of the boat
and could not move and the waves splashed over us but we were too ill
to care. The next day the sun beat in on us and roasted us like an
open furnace. The boat was a pit of heat and outside the swell of the
Pacific rose and fell and reflected the sun like copper. We reached
Corin