The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

You are going to have the fever, Yellow eyes! In about ten days from now Iron bands will clamp your brow; Your tongue resemble curdled cream, A rusty streak the center seam; Your mouth will taste of untold things, With claws and horns and fins and wings; Your head will weigh a ton or more, And forty gales within it roar! The poem “Yellow Eyes” and others of much the same vein had just appeared in a little volume with a burgundy-colored binding, Panama Pathwork, published by the Star & Herald. The author, James Stanley Gilbert, an American resident of Colón for many years, had done for Panama something comparable to what Robert Service was to do for the Yukon. His themes—in “Funeral Train,” “The Isthmian Way,” “King Fever,” “Beyond the Chagres”—were disease, alcoholism, ever-encroaching death, and the futility of any and all human endeavor associated with the valley of the Chagres River. Beyond the Chagres River ’Tis said—the story’s old— Are paths that lead to mountains Of purest virgin gold; But ’tis my firm conviction, Whatever tales they tell, That beyond the Chagres River All paths lead straight to hell!