Read Online The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics) by John Steinbeck - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Steinbeck
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and boat owners provide a celebration. There is a huge barbecue on the end of the pier with free beef and beer and salad for all comers. The sardine fleet is decorated with streamers and bunting and serpentine, and the boat with the biggest season catch is queen of a strange nautical parade of boats; and every boat is an open house, receiving friends of owners and of crew. Wine flows beautifully, and the parade of boats that starts with dignity and precision sometimes ends in a turmoil. This fiesta took place on Sunday, and we were to sail on Monday morning. The Western Flyer was decorated like the rest with red and blue bunting and serpentine. Master and crew refused to sail before the fiesta was over. We rode in the parade of boats, some of us in the crow’s-nest and some on the house. With five thousand other people we crowded on the pier and ate great hunks of meat and drank beer and heard speeches. It was the biggest barbecue the sardine men had ever given, and the potato salad was served out of washtubs. The speeches rose to a crescendo of patriotism and good feeling beyond anything Monterey had ever heard.
There should be here some mention of the permits obtained from the Mexican government. At the time of our preparation, Mexico was getting ready for a presidential election, and the apparent issues were so complex as to cause apprehension that there might be violence. The nation was a little nervous, and it seemed to us that we should be armed with permits which clearly established us as men without politics or business interests. The work we intended to do might well have seemed suspicious to some patriotic customs official or soldier—a small boat that crept to uninhabited points on a barren coast, and a party which spent its time turning over rocks. It was not likely that we could explain our job to the satisfaction of a soldier. It would seem ridiculous to the military mind to travel fifteen hundred miles for the purpose of turning over rocks on the seashore and picking up small animals, very few of which were edible; and doing all this without shooting at anyone. Besides, our equipment might have looked subversive to one who had seen the war sections of Life and Pic and Look. We carried no firearms except a .22-caliber pistol and a very rusty ten-gauge shotgun. But an oxygen cylinder might look too much like a torpedo to an excitable rural soldier, and some of the laboratory equipment could have had a lethal look about it. We were not afraid for ourselves, but we imagined being held in some mud cuartel while the good low tides went on and we missed them. In our naivete, we considered that our State Department, having much business with the Mexican government, might include a paragraph about us in one of its letters, which would convince Mexico of our decent intentions. To this end, we wrote to the State Department explaining our project and giving a list of people who would confirm the purity of our motives. Then we waited with a childlike faith that when a thing is stated simply and evidence of its truth is included there need be no mix-up. Besides, we told ourselves, we were American citizens and the government was our servant. Alas, we did not know diplomatic procedure. In due course, we had an answer from the State Department. In language so diplomatic as to be barely intelligible it gently disabused us. In the first place, the State Department was not our servant, however other departments might feel about it. The State Department had little or no interest in the collection of marine invertebrates unless carried on by an institution of learning, preferably with Dr. Butler as its president. The government never made such representations for private citizens. Lastly, the State Department hoped to God we would not get into trouble and appeal to it for aid. All this was concealed in language so beautiful and incomprehensible that we began to understand why diplomats say they are “studying” a message
There should be here some mention of the permits obtained from the Mexican government. At the time of our preparation, Mexico was getting ready for a presidential election, and the apparent issues were so complex as to cause apprehension that there might be violence. The nation was a little nervous, and it seemed to us that we should be armed with permits which clearly established us as men without politics or business interests. The work we intended to do might well have seemed suspicious to some patriotic customs official or soldier—a small boat that crept to uninhabited points on a barren coast, and a party which spent its time turning over rocks. It was not likely that we could explain our job to the satisfaction of a soldier. It would seem ridiculous to the military mind to travel fifteen hundred miles for the purpose of turning over rocks on the seashore and picking up small animals, very few of which were edible; and doing all this without shooting at anyone. Besides, our equipment might have looked subversive to one who had seen the war sections of Life and Pic and Look. We carried no firearms except a .22-caliber pistol and a very rusty ten-gauge shotgun. But an oxygen cylinder might look too much like a torpedo to an excitable rural soldier, and some of the laboratory equipment could have had a lethal look about it. We were not afraid for ourselves, but we imagined being held in some mud cuartel while the good low tides went on and we missed them. In our naivete, we considered that our State Department, having much business with the Mexican government, might include a paragraph about us in one of its letters, which would convince Mexico of our decent intentions. To this end, we wrote to the State Department explaining our project and giving a list of people who would confirm the purity of our motives. Then we waited with a childlike faith that when a thing is stated simply and evidence of its truth is included there need be no mix-up. Besides, we told ourselves, we were American citizens and the government was our servant. Alas, we did not know diplomatic procedure. In due course, we had an answer from the State Department. In language so diplomatic as to be barely intelligible it gently disabused us. In the first place, the State Department was not our servant, however other departments might feel about it. The State Department had little or no interest in the collection of marine invertebrates unless carried on by an institution of learning, preferably with Dr. Butler as its president. The government never made such representations for private citizens. Lastly, the State Department hoped to God we would not get into trouble and appeal to it for aid. All this was concealed in language so beautiful and incomprehensible that we began to understand why diplomats say they are “studying” a message
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