RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
the differences between American and Panamanian interests.
It was in November, 1904. We went from Washington to New Orleans and were greeted in a kindly manner all along the way. When we arrived we were met by a most imposing committee of citizens who escorted us to our hotel. No sooner were we installed, in the midst of all the luxury that could be prepared for us, than Governor Blanchard, with due ceremony and accompanied by members of his staff in uniform, called to pay his official respects. We hadn't very long to stay, but every hour was filled with entertainments made memorable by the courteous and highbred lavishness for which New Orleans is famed, the only private event of our visit being a dinner with Archbishop Chapelle, now dead, who was Archbishop of Manila when Mr. Taft first went to the Philippines and with whom he good-naturedly, but persistently, disagreed on the important problems connected with the necessary disentanglement of the affairs of Church and State in the Islands.
We sailed on the little Dolphin from New Orleans to Pensacola, where the cruiser Columbia lay waiting to take us down to Panama, and it was to the boom of saluting guns, the cheers of hospitable Pensacola citizens and the strains of "The Star Spangled Banner" that we got under way on this first memorable trip to the Canal Zone.
We arrived at Colon on a Sunday morning, and I remember distinctly that it seemed more like "getting home" than like getting to a strange place. The whole atmosphere and surroundings, the people, the language they spoke, the houses and streets, the rank earth odours and the very feel of the air reminded me so strongly of the Philippines as to give me immediately a delightful sense of friendly familiarity with everything and everybody.
We were met at Colon by the vice-President of Panama, Señor Arosemana, and a number of other Panamanian officials, by General Davis, then Governor of the Canal Zone,
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