A WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2674, 21 January 1916, Page 3

A WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS

THE EXPERIENCES OF MISS WINIFRED JAMES

Life on the lagoons and in tho jungle of Panama is not, for a woman, a very joyous experience. Miss Winifred James, tihe novelist, lias spent there the years since her marriage, and is not exactly enthusiastic about Central America as a fixed of residence.

She has just returned to London for six months' change ad is relating her experiences in a book which will be published in a few weeks, entitled "A Woman in the Wilderness." She has been Jiving in Almirantc, near Bocas del Toro, a hundred and forty miles away from the entrance to the canal zone and from Panama proper. Even the sun, which blazes all day long over the clearances and the jungle, has its drawbacks:

"One longs and longs and longs," she said in an interview, 1 'for a good old black log, or even to sec tho trees dying ; and the tress do not die'. It is just one eternal blaze, it is like a lovely woman whom you begin to bate because she never has any change in her expression. It is all very beautiful, but you long for something different. "It is true thai man is making a difference; but it is the usual defacing of nature that takes place with the breaking of the sod and the beginning of a new town. That the town might bo as near the water's edge as possible the site chosen was necessarily a part of the mangrove swamp. To fill the swamp and' make a foothold the hills must be torn away. Then came the inevitable corrugated iron and weatherboard. And now we aro a town and a terminus, and the. banana laden trains •come down through their fifty miles of farms and crowd the railway yard, waiting to their loads into the groat ships that lie, waiting to be fed, alongside the imposing ooncrete wharf. 1 'When I went there first there was no ground at all to walk on There was a board walk about a yard wide running before all the shacks and houses, which were built on piles in the swamp. Filling in the swamp to make the town is a slow and hideous process. : "At night people go about carrying lanterns, and often me effect was very odd,. for it was as though they were crossing a field of snow. There is a mSw coral 'fill' on our side of the creek, and, when the moon was strong enough, the light that'was thrown upon the white; mass made it look just like a snow field I .' Now, however, the coral is bringing up its little ferns again, and they are making a green haze over it all." Ninth Night. Miss James spoke of a jumble sale which she organised for the British Red •Cross, and was attended by hundreds of, negroes and negro women. "They all brought. their pennies," she said, ''and didn't they spend them ? I was weighed down with the money at last, and when I counted it all up there was £100 for me, all in Panamanian silver;, They are wanting me to get up. another sale. It was a great outing for them, for • was there over a greater Britisher than . the Jamaica negro? And they bad never had anything like it before, the usual amusements being cliurch, prize-fight-ing, and Ninth Nights:

"Ninth Night," Miss James explained, "is so called because it is on the ninth night, according to Jamacians, that the spirit tries again to.enter the house. Therefore, when anyone dies the friends and relatives assemble on this night to drive the spirit away. They sing and sing and sing- and sing, and drinE between whiles.

"I went to ono Ninth Night which was held in a back yard in Jamaica, and remember that when the professional hynm-leader went, out of the room to spend, a shilling that my companion baa given hiin he left in charge a negro boy of twelve. That was the chance the' boy' had' been waiting for. He got two lines of hymn,,' Like brutes they live, like brutes they die,' and hurled them'at them, looking at everyone separately, and sending them to perdition with his rolling eyes. He knew ho would have to give it all up when .the man came back, and he meant to make the best use of his time. . '

Woman's Day in the Jungle. "It is all very amusing, both there and in Panama, until you come to live your own life, and then it is not amusing at all.' In the jungle' of Panama tliere is no place to walk; there is nothing to go and see; there is no o'd civilisation, except in Panama City; there is nothing near us; you cannot even get-to the hills. "What do Ido all day? I mil tell yon. The days are all the same. We get up at half-past six. At half-past seven we have coffee. All the morning one sees about domestic affairs and spurs on the servants. "At twelve we have lunch. Then there are things to see to, and one "ests and reads till half-past three. Then we have tea; then we sew; then, at five perhaps, we go out for a little bit of a'walk .along , the railway line. _ At seven we have dinner. Sometimes someone comes in, and sometimes Ihero is' no one; often at half-past eight we go to bed. "That is repea,ted for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and_ if you stay another year you can double it. > For a man engaged in trade there is a Busy life to be lived, but the woman sits on the watch-tower and waits."

HEIR TO THE RUSSIAN THRONE

A year or two ago it would have been almost unthinkable that the Heir to the Russian throne should bo taken to any point of danger, but the Tsarevitch, who is now eleven years of age, has been within range of guns on a visit to the wounded, and lie is to be rewarded—if the Tsar permits—with a medal. This young man may claim, without fear of contradiction, to bo the most valuable boy in the world, for if he succoeds to the Russian throne he will inherit the ononnous private fortune of the Romanoffs, which ie estimated at forty million pounds, and will ■have control over 500 estates, employing 30;000 servants. In addition the Government has made him an allowance of £15,000 a year since his birth.