els ended, with the prospect of going back to Panama on the Pacific Mail boat the following night. After dinner at the hotel, a young doctor who had just arrived from the Zone, came into my room and confided the startling intelligence that he had been sent up in response to an alarming telegram from the municipal physician, stating that a number of cases of small-pox had occurred at Bugaba and in the vicinity. I did not credit this statement, because if anything of the kind had happened, we should surely have heard of it. But the circumstance was disturbing in any case, for it promised quarantine at the other end of our journey, rather than submit to which I would have remained another week in Chiriqui, although I was anxious for rest and medical attention. We decided to go in to Bugaba the next day and ascertain the truth of the report. Bugaba is the outpost of Chiriqui, near the border of Costa Rica and about thirty miles from David. It has the reputation of being a settlement of outlaws, who have fled from justice in Panama and Costa Rica. But, like many another place, its reputation is worse than it deserves. As we approached the vil lage we began to inquire of scattered countrymen whether they had heard anything of smallpox thereabouts. None of them ever seemed to have had acquaintance with the disease, and I may say, that I do not recollect to have seen a pock marked person in Chiriqui. The Alcalde of Bugaba enjoys the reputation of being the worst cut-throat in the community. He is said to have killed seventeen men in private quarrels. However, he treated us very decently and we enjoyed a good breakfast at his house. The crowd that surrounded us at the Alcalde's office was rather a rough looking lot, but probably just as harmless as other Chiricanos. As we started to ride up to the Alcalde's residence, a German, named Christian Wahl, joined He, I learned, filled the self-constituted position of local physician. 66 Any small-pox about here?" I asked. "Oh! yes, lots," was the alarming reply. "Where?" I cried. "Show me some?" “Oh, dem small pots. We have to dig for dem." It transpired that Mr. Wahl was referring to the Chiriqui pottery, of which a great deal has been found in the neighborhood of Bugaba. When I made him understand the true import of my inquiry he laughed at the idea of smallpox anywhere thereabouts. He said that he sometimes had to treat natives for an eruption which was caused by drinking too much of a beverage produced from corn. This was the nearest approach to smallpox in Chiriqui that he had ever heard of. During the brief rest before starting back Christian Wahl gave us an interesting account of his history. It appears that his father, a German physician of Cincinnati, had migrated to Chiriqui at the outbreak of our Civil War, to escape conscription. Wahl's father married the daughter of one of his fellow settlers and Christian was born at Bugaba and had never been farther away from the place than Panama. He had inherited his father's medical library and seemed to be a pretty fair selfmade doctor. His children were growing up in the wilds, without education of any sort and bid fair to become, in all but complexion, ordinary Chiricano peasants. The companions of the elder Wahl married native women and probably sank to the social level of their wives. Reminders of them are to be seen about Bugaba in the shape of tow haired children, dirty and half clad, who cannot understand a word of German and do not suspect that their grandfathers were other than native Panamans. Late in the evening we reported the result of our investigation to the commission's doctor and went on board the "Taboga" without fear of detention at the end of our voyage. THE END. |