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Updated: June 19, 2025
But the westward fever was slow to cool: and with wistful eyes we watched the sun by day, and Venus and the moon by night, sink down into the gulf, to lighten lands which we should never see. A few days more, and we were steaming out to the Bocas which we had begun to love as the gates of a new home heaped with presents to the last minute, some of them from persons we hardly knew.
It is only that you might be held up by the regulations. Passenger steamers can't land any one who has been there at any other port of the West Indies. The English are especially strict. The Royal Mail won't even receive any one on board here without a certificate from the English consul saying he has not visited Las Bocas. For an American they would require the same guarantee from me.
But he shook his head doubtfully. "I was wondering about Las Bocas," he explained, "if your going there might not get you in trouble at the next port. With a yacht, I think it is different, but Las Bocas is under quarantine." There was a chorus of exclamations. "It's not serious," Marshall explained. "There was bubonic plague there, or something like it. You would be in no danger from that.
From Punta de la Galera he sailed to the west and landed at a low cape, which he calls Punta del Arenal; this is our Punta de Icacos. As his ships drew a great deal of water, he found it difficult to enter the bocas chicas, and was obliged to construct flat-bottomed barks.
"Not for five per cent.," declared Hardenberg. "How'd we raise her? How'd we know how deep she lies? Not for Joe. What's the matter with landing arms down here in Central America for Bocas and his gang?" "I'm out o' that, Joe. Too much competition." "What's doing here in Tahiti No. 88? It ain't lettered." Once more the President consulted his books. "Ah! 88. Here we are. Cache o' illicit pearls.
The very vultures will not eat it; and while I was in the island a family of Coolies, in spite of warning, contrived to kill themselves with the nasty vermin: the only one who had wit enough to refuse it being an idiot boy. These islands of the Bocas, three in number, are some two miles long each, and some eight hundred to one thousand feet in height; at least, so say the surveyors.
This cleft is the gorge which to-day is called Cañon de las Bocas. South of it the plateaus continue with barren undulations and whitish hills. They rise gradually to the base of a sombre mountain cluster, the bulk of which was wrapped in clouds, as well as the huge mass of the Sandia chain to its right. Still farther to the right the Rio Grande valley opened.
And throughout dinner the guests of Livingstone, already bored with each other, found in them and their talk of former days new and delightful entertainment. So much so that when, Marshall having assured them that the local quarantine regulations did not extend to a yacht, the men departed for Las Bocas, the women insisted that he and admiral remain behind. It was for Marshall a wondrous evening.
Beyond it lay the naked coral reefs, the empty sky, and the ragged palms of Porto Banos. Livingstone felt that his legation was slipping from him. "That wireless operator," he continued hastily, "tells me there is a most amusing place a few miles down the coast, Las Bocas, a sort of Coney Island, where the government people go for the summer. There's surf bathing and roulette and cafes chantants.
The navigation of the river, whether vessels arrive by the Boca de Navios, or risk entering the labyrinth of the bocas chicas, requires various precautions, according as the waters are high or low.
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