Notes from a Traveler in the Tropics 

 II. CUBA TO PANAMA 



By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



With illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes 



TRAVELERS nowadays soon learn to regard steamship announcements 

 as mere 'scraps of paper' which are not to be taken seriously. I was not 

 surprised, therefore, to learn that sailings on the line by which we had 

 expected to reach Cristobal, from Cuba, were cancelled, and correspondingly 

 pleased when a steamer bound for the desired port arrived from Spain, and 

 on her we left Havana on the evening of October 26. With steam-coal at S28 

 per ton, time is cheaper than fuel, so we jogged along at about three-fourths 

 speed, over a sea so smooth that the entire voyage of four and a half days 

 might have been made in a canoe. 



Our route ran around the western end of Cuba and thence down the Car- 

 ibbean. It was, therefore, not far from the flight-line of birds which migrate 

 down the eastern coast of Central America, or, perhaps, indeed, over the very 

 waters through which we passed. A month earlier we should doubtless have 

 been visited by numbers of the feathered voyagers, but a Nighthawk and two 

 Barn Swallows, which were first seen on the evening of the 29th, when we were 

 in about latitude 14°, longitude 81° 30', were the only land-birds observed. 

 The Nighthawk evidently found our nine miles an hour too slow a pace for 

 him and decided to continue his voyage without convoy, but two Barn Swallows 

 (presumably the birds of the night before) accompanied us all the following day, 

 and many were the circles they flew about the ship to accommodate their 

 rate of progress to ours. 



Of water-birds there were only a single Booby and one Petrel (Aestrelata ?). 

 The latter, after the manner of his kind, was skimming the seas at high speed, 

 as though in a desperate hurry to find something which he expected to dis- 

 cover at the next wing-stroke, but which never seemed to materialize. It 

 is to be assumed that these strong-winged, tireless hunters are sometimes 

 successful, but tliey must caj^ture their prey 'in their stride,' as it were, for 

 they seem never to pause in their rai)id flight. 



As we approached Cristobal, on the morning of October 31, hydroplanes, 

 those recent additions to our avifauna, flew out to meet us, and Man-o'-war- 

 birds, with an utter disregard for the principles of gravitation, 'lloated lazily' 

 overhead. 1 use this hackneyed phrase without compunction, for, whatever 

 it may have been applied to originally, it belongs, by reason of its especial 

 fitness, to the Man-o'-war-hird. 'I'hat he can tloat, no one who has watched him 

 for hours, sailing serenely through the sky without detecting a movement of 

 the wings, will deny; while, if laziness is to be measured by the diiTerence be- 

 tween what one does and what one can do, the usual inaction of this bird of 

 i!U'alcuhd)ly powi'ifiil lliglit more than justities the ap|)lication of the term. 



