Soon, however, we begin to catch occasional glimpses of the open sea—iridescent and exquisite—through gaps in the outer barrier of reefs. And now there are one or two houses to be seen. We stop at what seems to be a station. Some one in the car calls to a negro navvy on the line: “Say, what’s the name of this town?” Negro: “Illago, sa’.” Passenger: “How many people live here?” Negro: “None at all, sa’.”
Now we are practically out at sea, crossing miles of blue water between the islands, sometimes on limestone (or coral?) causeways, sometimes on long bridges of wooden trestles. At one point there lies, about half a mile from the line, a little island, perhaps a mile long, entirely covered with palm-trees, and with a single wooden house upon it—suggesting an atoll of the Southern Seas.
At a place called Long Key we stopped for lunch. Long Key is a settlement of some twenty one-storey wooden houses, all raised on piles about four feet from the ground, and with every doorway and window screened with wire gauze. The whole place is embowered in palms; and under the palms, twenty yards from the green sea, a wooden counter had been set up, with the word “lunch,” rudely painted on a shingle, displayed above it. Two white women served behind the counter and dispensed coffee (the milk poured through a gimlet hole in a tin), sandwiches, coco-nut milk, and little packages of coco-nut candy. I had never before tasted coco-nut milk and am not eager to quaff it again. It suggests nothing so much as weak _eau sucrée_. The frugal meal, in its romantic surroundings, was pleasant enough; but I could wish that the wire-gauze screens had been run round the lunch-counter. It was a “quick lunch”—only fifteen minutes allowed—yet when I returned to the train I found my neck quite rough with mosquito-bites.
From Long Key we presently ran out on an immense viaduct, some two miles long, I should say, of concrete arches. [Sidenote: Asia and Africa.] Then again across jungle-covered islands and some smaller lagoons. Here signs of life grew more frequent, for we were approaching the point where the extension of the line is actively proceeding. The labourers seem to be for the most part accommodated in huge house-boats, which we saw here and there moored in convenient creeks and channels. The majority, I think, are negroes, with a considerable intermixture of “Dagos” and some East Indian coolies.