RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
and by Mr. John Barrett, the American Minister to Panama. A private train was waiting to take us across the Isthmus and we lost no time in getting started. Our visit had been "programmed" almost to the last hour of our time, and the first event was to be an exchange of formalities between the Secretary of War and the President of Panama that very afternoon.
When we got to the city of Panama just before luncheon we went to the home of Mr. Wallace, the Chief Engineer, whose guests we were to be during our stay, and early in the afternoon Mr. Taft, accompanied by uniformed aides and other Army officers, with enough ceremony to satisfy even the most formal, went to call on President Amador. The call was promptly returned with due formality, and the decks were then considered "cleared for action."
Negotiations began at once, but the conferences were private, and in our daily round of sight-seeing and social diversions it did not seem that the delicate machinery of diplomatic transaction was in motion at all.
Our Minister, Mr. Barrett, had a charming house in the old tropic city and on the Monday evening after our arrival he gave a dinner at which were gathered many high officials of the Panama Republic as well as all the interesting Americans who were then directing our great Canal building enterprise. Mr. Barrett, being a bachelor, placed President Amador opposite himself; he took Madame Amador at his right; Mr. Taft sat next to her, while I occupied the place at the right of the President and had on my other side Señor Arias, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. General Davis, Mr. Wallace, Colonel Gorgas—"the man of the hour" during that cleaning-up period,—many Army officers and Cabinet Ministers in full regalia and many decorations, with their wives, were seated in order of rank along the sides of the great table, which, laden with flowers and gleaming glass and candles, made a picture long to be remembered even by one
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