she knew me and that she wanted me to come up. It seemed I met her in
Elizabeth, New Jersey with Eddie Coward where she was playing in
private theatricals. Since then as a punishment no doubt she has lived
here and her husband is Minister of the Navy with one gun boat. This
trip is very hot and I sleep on deck and look up at the stars and the
light on the jib and the smoke spoiling the firmament. It makes you
feel terribly far away from the centre of civilization in front of the
fire and you all trying to make out where we are at. I hope you know
more about it than we do.

It is the worst country for getting about that I ever heard of. It has
revived my interest and belief in all such beautiful things as buried
treasures and hidden cities and shooting men against stone walls and
filibusters. There are not many of these stories but every man tells
them differently so they have all the freshness of a new tale. There
is no ice on this boat or lemons or segars. It is the first time so
they say that it has happened in twelve months, but after this it must
be better. At Panama they fine the ice man $1000 every day his machine
breaks and so we have hopes. I feel so very, very selfish off down
here and leaving you all alone and it makes me lose my temper more than
usual when all these delays occur but I promise to be good hereafter
and we will be together soon now by the end of March sure and I hope
you will not miss me too much, as much as I miss all of you. Sometimes
I wish you could see some of these islands and the long shadowy sharks
and the turtles, there are thousands of turtles as big as tubs just
floating around like empty bottles, but I have never on the whole taken
a trip when I so seldom wished that the family were around to enjoy it.
It used to hurt me during the Mediterranean trip but there is not much
that would please you in this outfit. I like it because I am satisfied
to go dirty for weeks at a time and to talk to the engineer or the
queer passengers and to pick up stories and improve my geography but I
do not think the scenery would compensate either Nora or you or Dad for
the lack of necessities and CLEANTH. When we were crossing the
continent I don't believe I had a spot on me as big as a nickel without
three bites on it, all sorts of bites, they just swarmed over you all
sizes, colors and varieties. They came from dogs, from the sand, from
trees, from the grass, from the air. The worst wer