South American Travels (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from South American Travels<br><br>The steamship Of the Company was widely advertised as being equipped with all modern con veniences and as the Peruvian boat the Ucayali left the day before I decided to spend an extra day Sightseeing in Panama and take the other boat. This Old tub of 3387 tons was anchored at Balboa docks and presented quite a respectable appearance. I began to think that all the yarns that I had heard about the craft Of this line were fairy tales until a slovenly pimply-faced native steward made his appearance and asked me for two dollars before he would surrender the key to my cabin. There is a rule that this money is to be returned to the passenger at the end Of the voyage; in my case for one it was not for the steward pocketed it as his tip. I was given no check for my hold baggage and was told that at Callao all baggage would be brought up on deck to be claimed by the owners. Evidently I was misinformed for upon arrival at that port I was obliged to drop into the hold and pick out my own baggage. My entire experience on the was certainly most unpleasant. The ship was four hours late in sailing and then anchored out by the quarantine station to wait for the purser a Chilean who was on shore giving the Panama Railroad Company a receipt for the cargo and who would probably fill up and not return till midnight on a launch.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases an imperfection in the original such as a blemish or missing page may be replicated in our edition. We do however repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.