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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #69354 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69354)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Three gringos in Venezuela and Central
-America, by Richard Harding Davis
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Three gringos in Venezuela and Central America
-
-Author: Richard Harding Davis
-
-Release Date: November 14, 2022 [eBook #69354]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-             made using scans of public domain works put online by
-             Harvard University Library's Open Collections Program.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GRINGOS IN VENEZUELA
-AND CENTRAL AMERICA ***
-
-
-[Illustration: FORDING THE CHAMELICON RIVER]
-
-
-
-
-  THREE GRINGOS IN VENEZUELA
-  AND
-  CENTRAL AMERICA
-
-  BY
-  RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
-
-  ILLUSTRATED
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-  NEW YORK
-  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
-  1896
-
-
-
-
-BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
-
-_Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental._
-
-  ABOUT PARIS. $1 25.
-  THE PRINCESS ALINE. $1 25.
-  OUR ENGLISH COUSINS. $1 25.
-  THE RULERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. $1 25.
-  THE WEST FROM A CAR-WINDOW. $1 25.
-  THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES. $1 50.
-  VAN BIBBER, AND OTHERS. $1 00. (Paper, 60 cents.)
-
-PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
-
-
-Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
-
-_All rights reserved._
-
-
-
-
-  TO
-  MY FRIENDS
-  H. SOMERS SOMERSET
-  AND
-  LLOYD GRISCOM
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                  PAGE
-
-  ON THE CARIBBEAN SEA               1
-
-  THE EXILED LOTTERY                27
-
-  IN HONDURAS                       56
-
-  AT CORINTO                       160
-
-  ON THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA         193
-
-  THE PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA       221
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-                                                       PAGE
-
-  FORDING THE CHAMELICON RIVER               _Frontispiece_
-
-  MAP OF VENEZUELA AND CENTRAL AMERICA, SHOWING
-    THE ROUTE OF THE “THREE GRINGOS”                   xiii
-
-  GOVERNMENT HOUSE, BELIZE                                7
-
-  SIR ALFRED MOLONEY                                     10
-
-  NATIVE CONSTABULARY, BELIZE                            13
-
-  MAIN STREET, BELIZE                                    17
-
-  NATIVE WOMEN OF LIVINGSTON                             20
-
-  GUATEMALLECAN ARMY AT LIVINGSTON                       23
-
-  BARRACKS AT PORT BARRIOS                               25
-
-  THE EXILED LOTTERY BUILDING                            35
-
-  THE IGUANAS OF HONDURAS                                51
-
-  OUR NAVAL ATTACHÉ                                      57
-
-  OUR MILITARY ATTACHÉ                                   60
-
-  A STRETCH OF CENTRAL-AMERICAN RAILWAY                  62
-
-  THE THREE GRINGOS                                      64
-
-  SETTING OUT FROM SAN PEDRO SULA                        67
-
-  THE HIGHLANDS OF HONDURAS                              71
-
-  SOMERSET                                               74
-
-  A DRAWER OF WATER                                      77
-
-  NATIVE METHOD OF DRYING COFFEE                         85
-
-  IN A CENTRAL-AMERICAN FOREST                           89
-
-  ON THE TRAIL TO SANTA BARBARA                          97
-
-  A HALT AT TRINIDAD                                    101
-
-  GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN                                  105
-
-  OUR PACK-TRAIN AT SANTA BARBARA                       107
-
-  A VILLAGE IN THE INTERIOR                             114
-
-  BRIDGE CONNECTING TEGUCIGALPA WITH ITS SUBURB         123
-
-  BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TEGUCIGALPA                        127
-
-  THE BANK OF HONDURAS                                  129
-
-  STATUE OF MORAZAN                                     132
-
-  P. BONILLA                                            135
-
-  GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN, EX-PRESIDENT                    138
-
-  BARRACKS OF TEGUCIGALPA AFTER THE ATTACK OF THE
-    REVOLUTIONISTS                                      141
-
-  MORAZAN, THE LIBERATOR OF HONDURAS                    145
-
-  ON THE WAY TO CORINTO                                 155
-
-  PRINCIPAL HOTEL AND PRINCIPAL HOUSE AT CORINTO        162
-
-  HARBOR OF CORINTO                                     175
-
-  THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE AT MANAGUA                      179
-
-  PRESIDENT ZELAYA OF NICARAGUA                         183
-
-  MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING CHANGES IN TRADE
-    ROUTES AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE NICARAGUA
-    CANAL                                               191
-
-  DREDGES IN THE CANAL                                  195
-
-  THE BAY OF PANAMA                                     199
-
-  PANAMA CANAL ON THE PACIFIC SIDE                      203
-
-  HUTS OF WORKMEN EMPLOYED ON THE CANAL                 206
-
-  THE TOP OF A DREDGE                                   209
-
-  STREET SCENE IN PANAMA                                213
-
-  THE CANAL IN THE INTERIOR                             217
-
-  STATUE OF SIMON BOLIVAR, CARACAS                      223
-
-  STATUE OF WASHINGTON DECORATED WITH FLORAL
-    WREATHS BY THE VENEZUELANS                          227
-
-  DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS,
-    VENEZUELA, DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN
-    RESIDENTS                                           231
-
-  SIMON BOLIVAR                                         234
-
-  VIEW OF LA GUAYRA                                     235
-
-  THE RAILROAD UP THE MOUNTAIN                          239
-
-  COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS                      243
-
-  THE MARKET OF CARACAS                                 247
-
-  VIEW OF CARACAS                         _Facing_      250
-
-  PRESIDENT CRESPO, OF VENEZUELA                        251
-
-  LEGISLATIVE BUILDING, CARACAS                         253
-
-  THE PRESIDENT’S BODY-GUARD OF COWBOYS                 255
-
-  BAPTIZING INDIANS AT A VENEZUELA STATION ON THE
-    CUYUNI RIVER                                        259
-
-  A TYPICAL HUNTING-PARTY IN VENEZUELA                  263
-
-  A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY                             267
-
-  THE CUYUNI RIVER                                      271
-
-  VENEZUELAN STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER                274
-
-  ENGLISH STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER                   275
-
-  DR. PEDRO EZEQUIEL ROJAS                              277
-
-  MAP EXPLAINING VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE            278
-
-  THE CITY OF CARACAS                                   279
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: MAP OF VENEZUELA AND CENTRAL AMERICA, SHOWING THE ROUTE
-OF THE “THREE GRINGOS”]
-
-
-
-
-ON THE CARIBBEAN SEA
-
-
-THE steamer _Breakwater_ lay at the end of a muddy fruit-wharf a mile
-down the levee.
-
-She was listed to sail that morning for Central-American ports, and we
-were going with her in search of warm weather and other unusual things.
-When we left New York the streets were lined with frozen barricades of
-snow, upon which the new brooms of a still newer administration had
-made so little impression that people were using them as an excuse
-for being late for dinners; and at Washington, while the snow had
-disappeared, it was still bitterly cold. And now even as far south as
-New Orleans we were shivering in our great-coats, and the newspapers
-were telling of a man who, the night before, had been found frozen to
-death in the streets. It seemed as though we were to keep on going
-south, forever seeking warmth, only to find that Nature at every point
-of lower latitude had paid us the compliment of changing her season to
-spite us.
-
-So the first question we asked when we came over the side of the
-_Breakwater_ was not when we should first see land, but when we should
-reach warm weather.
-
-There were four of us, counting Charlwood, young Somerset’s servant.
-There was Henry Somers Somerset, who has travelled greater distances
-for a boy still under age than any other one of his much-travelled
-countrymen that I have ever met. He has covered as many miles in the
-last four years as would make five trips around the world, and he
-came with me for the fun of it, and in what proved the vain hope of
-big game. The third was Lloyd Griscom, of Philadelphia, and later of
-London, where he has been attaché at our embassy during the present
-administration. He had been ordered south by his doctor, and only
-joined us the day before we sailed.
-
-We sat shivering under the awning on the upper deck, and watched the
-levees drop away on either side as we pushed down the last ninety
-miles of the Mississippi River. Church spires and the roofs of houses
-showed from the low-lying grounds behind the dikes, and gave us the
-impression that we were riding on an elevated road. The great river
-steamers, with paddle-wheels astern and high double smoke-stacks, that
-were associated in our minds with pictures of the war and those in
-our school geographies, passed us, pouring out heavy volumes of black
-smoke, on their way to St. Louis, and on each bank we recognized, also
-from pictures, magnolia-trees and the ugly cotton-gins and the rows of
-negroes’ quarters like the men’s barracks in a fort.
-
-At six o’clock, when we had reached the Gulf, the sun sank a blood-red
-disk into great desolate bayous of long grass and dreary stretches of
-vacant water. Dead trees with hanging gray moss and mistletoe on their
-bare branches reared themselves out of the swamps like gallows-trees
-or giant sign-posts pointing the road to nowhere; and the herons,
-perched by dozens on their limbs or moving heavily across the sky
-with harsh, melancholy cries, were the only signs of life. On each
-side of the muddy Mississippi the waste swamp-land stretched as far
-as the eye could reach, and every blade of the long grass and of the
-stunted willows and every post of the dikes stood out black against
-the red sky as vividly as though it were lit by a great conflagration,
-and the stagnant pools and stretches of water showed one moment like
-flashing lakes of fire, and the next, as the light left them, turned
-into mirrors of ink. It was a scene of the most awful and beautiful
-desolation, and the silence, save for the steady breathing of the
-steamer’s engine, was the silence of the Nile at night.
-
-For the next three days we dropped due south as the map lies from the
-delta of the Mississippi through the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean
-Sea. It was moonlight by night, and sun and blue water by day, and the
-decks kept level, and the vessel was clean.
-
-Our fellow-passengers were banana-planters and engineers going to
-Panama and Bluefields, and we asked them many questions concerning
-rates of exchange and the rainy season and distances and means of
-transportation, to which they gave answers as opposite as can only come
-from people who have lived together in the same place for the greater
-part of their lives.
-
-Land, when it came, appeared in the shape of little islands that
-floated in mid-air above the horizon like the tops of trees, without
-trunks to support them, or low-lying clouds. They formed the
-skirmish-line of Yucatan, the northern spur of Central America, and
-seemed from our decks as innocent as the Jersey sand-hills, but were,
-the pilot told us, inhabited by wild Indians who massacre people who
-are so unfortunate as to be shipwrecked there, and who will not pay
-taxes to Mexico. But the little we saw of their savagery was when we
-passed within a ship’s length of a ruined temple to the Sun, standing
-conspicuously on a jutting point of land, with pillars as regular and
-heavily cut as some of those on the Parthenon. It was interesting to
-find such a monument a few days out from New Orleans.
-
-Islands of palms on one side and blue mountains on the other, and water
-as green as corroded copper, took the place of the white sand-banks of
-Yucatan, and on the third day out we had passed the Mexican state and
-steamed in towards the coast of British Honduras, and its chief seaport
-and capital, Belize.
-
-British Honduras was formerly owned by Spain, as was all of Central
-America, and was, on account of its bays and islands, a picturesque
-refuge for English and other pirates. In the seventeenth century
-English logwood-cutters visited the place and obtained a footing, which
-has been extended since by concessions and by conquest, so that the
-place is now a British dependency. It forms a little slice of land
-between Yucatan and Guatemala, one hundred and seventy-four miles in
-its greatest length, and running sixty-eight miles inland.
-
-Belize is a pretty village of six thousand people, living in low,
-broad-roofed bungalows, lying white and cool-looking in the border of
-waving cocoanut-trees and tall, graceful palms. It was not necessary
-to tell us that Belize would be the last civilized city we should see
-until we reached the capital of Spanish Honduras. A British colony is
-always civilized; it is always the same, no matter in what latitude
-it may be, and it is always distinctly British. Every one knows that
-an Englishman takes his atmosphere with him wherever he goes, but the
-truth of it never impressed me so much as it did at Belize. There were
-not more than two hundred English men and women in the place, and
-yet, in the two halves of two days that I was there I seemed to see
-everything characteristic of an Englishman in his native land. There
-were a few concessions made to the country and to the huge native
-population, who are British subjects themselves; but the colony, in
-spite of its surroundings, was just as individually English as is
-the shilling that the ship’s steward pulls out of his pocket with a
-handful of the queer coin that he has picked up at the ports of a
-half-dozen Spanish republics. They may be of all sizes and designs,
-and of varying degrees of a value, or the lack of it, which changes
-from day to day, but the English shilling, with the queen’s profile
-on one side and its simple “one shilling” on the other, is worth just
-as much at that moment and at that distance from home as it would
-be were you handing it to a hansom-cab driver in Piccadilly. And we
-were not at all surprised to find that the black native police wore
-the familiar blue-and-white-striped cuff of the London bobby, and
-the district-attorney a mortar-board cap and gown, and the colonial
-bishop gaiters and an apron.
-
-[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, BELIZE]
-
-It was quite in keeping, also, that the advertisements on the
-boardings should announce and give equal prominence to a “Sunday-school
-treat” and a boxing-match between men of H.M.S. _Pelican_, and that
-the officers of that man-of-war should be playing cricket with a
-local eleven under the full tropical sun, and that the chairs in the
-Council-room and Government House should be of heavy leather stamped
-V.R., with a crown above the initials. An American official in as hot
-a climate, being more adaptable, would have had bamboo chairs with
-large, open-work backs, or would have even supplied the council with
-rocking-chairs.
-
-Lightfoot agreed to take us ashore at a quarter of a dollar apiece.
-He had a large open sail-boat, and everybody called him Lightfoot and
-seemed to know him intimately, so we called him Lightfoot too. He
-was very black, and light-hearted at least, and spoke English with
-the soft, hesitating gentleness that marks the speech of all these
-natives. It was Sunday on land, and Sunday in an English colony is
-observed exactly as it should be, and so the natives were in heavily
-starched white clothes, and were all apparently going somewhere to
-church in rigid rows of five or six. But there were some black soldiers
-of the West India Regiment in smart Zouave uniforms and turbans that
-furnished us with local color, and we pursued one of them for some time
-admiringly, until he become nervous and beat a retreat to the barracks.
-
-[Illustration: SIR ALFRED MOLONEY
-
-(Central Figure)]
-
-Somerset had a letter from his ambassador in Washington to Sir Alfred
-Moloney, K.C.M.G., the governor of British Honduras, and as we hoped it
-would get us all an invitation to dinner, we urged him to present it at
-once. Four days of the ship’s steward’s bountiful dinners, served at
-four o’clock in the afternoon, had made us anxious for a change both in
-the hour and the diet. The governor’s house at Belize is a very large
-building, fronting the bay, with one of the finest views from and most
-refreshing breezes on its veranda that a man could hope to find on a
-warm day, and there is a proud and haughty sentry at each corner of the
-grounds and at the main entrance. A fine view of blue waters beyond a
-green turf terrace covered with cannon and lawn-tennis courts, and four
-sentries marching up and down in the hot sun, ought to make any man, so
-it seems to me, content to sit on his porch in the shade and feel glad
-that he is a governor.
-
-Somerset passed the first sentry with safety, and we sat down on the
-grass by the side of the road opposite to await developments, and were
-distressed to observe him make directly for the kitchen, with the
-ambassador’s letter held firmly in his hand. So we stood up and shouted
-to him to go the other way, and he became embarrassed, and continued to
-march up and down the gravel walk with much indecision, and as if he
-could not make up his mind where he wanted to go, like the grenadiers
-in front of St. James’s Palace. It happened that his excellency was
-out, so Somerset left our cards and his letter, and we walked off
-through the green, well-kept streets and wondered at the parrots and
-the chained monkeys and the Anglicized little negro girls in white
-cotton stockings and with Sunday-school books under their arms. All
-the show-places of interest were closed on that day, so, after an
-ineffectual attempt to force our way into the jail, which we mistook
-for a monastery, we walked back through an avenue of cocoanut-palms to
-the International Hotel for dinner.
-
-[Illustration: NATIVE CONSTABULARY, BELIZE]
-
-We had agreed that as it was our first dinner on shore, it should be a
-long and excellent one, with several kinds of wine. The International
-Hotel is a large one, with four stories, and a balcony on each floor;
-and after wandering over the first three of these in the dark we came
-upon a lonely woman with three crying children, who told us with
-reproving firmness that in Belize the dinner-hour is at four in the
-afternoon, and that no one should expect a dinner at seven. We were
-naturally cast down at this rebuff, and even more so when her husband
-appeared out of the night and informed us that keeping a hotel did
-not pay--at least, that it did not pay him--and that he could not
-give us anything to drink because he had not renewed his license, and
-even if he had a license he would not sell us anything on Sunday.
-He had a touch of malaria, he said, and took a gloomy view of life
-in consequence, and our anxiety to dine well seemed, in contrast,
-unfeeling and impertinent. But we praised the beauty of the three
-children, and did not set him right when he mistook us for officers
-from the English gunboats in the harbor, and for one of these
-reasons he finally gave us a cold dinner by the light of a smoking
-lamp, and made us a present of a bottle of stout, for which he later
-refused any money. We would have enjoyed our dinner at Belize in spite
-of our disappointment had not an orderly arrived in hot search after
-Somerset, and borne him away to dine at Government House, where Griscom
-and I pictured him, as we continued eating our cold chicken and beans,
-dining at her majesty’s expense, with fine linen and champagne, and
-probably ice. Lightfoot took us back to the boat in mournful silence,
-and we spent the rest of the evening on the quarter-deck telling
-each other of the most important people with whom we had ever dined,
-and had nearly succeeded in re-establishing our self-esteem, when
-Somerset dashed up in a man-of-war’s launch glittering with brass
-and union-jacks, and left it with much ringing of electric bells
-and saluting and genial farewells from admirals and midshipmen in
-gold-lace, with whom he seemed to be on a most familiar and friendly
-footing. This was the final straw, and we held him struggling over
-the ship’s side, and threatened to drop him to the sharks unless he
-promised never to so desert us again. And discipline was only restored
-when he assured us that he was the bearer of an invitation from the
-governor to both breakfast and luncheon the following morning. The
-governor apologized the next day for the informality of the manner in
-which he had sent us the invitation, so I thought it best not to tell
-him that it had been delivered by a young man while dangling by his
-ankles from the side of the ship, with one hand holding his helmet and
-the other clutching at the rail of the gangway.
-
-There is much to be said of Belize, for in its way it was one of the
-prettiest ports at which we touched, and its cleanliness and order,
-while they were not picturesque or foreign to us then, were in so great
-contrast to the ports we visited later as to make them most remarkable.
-It was interesting to see the responsibilities and the labor of
-government apportioned out so carefully and discreetly, and to find
-commissioners of roads, and then district commissioners, and under them
-inspectors, and to hear of boards of education and boards of justice,
-each doing its appointed work in this miniature government, and all
-responsible to the representative of the big government across the sea.
-And it was reassuring to read in the blue-books of the colony that the
-health of the port has improved enormously during the last three years.
-
-[Illustration: MAIN STREET, BELIZE]
-
-Monday showed an almost entirely different Belize from the one we had
-seen on the day before. Shops were open and busy, and the markets were
-piled high with yellow oranges and bananas and strange fruits, presided
-over by negresses in rich-colored robes and turbans, and smoking
-fat cigars. There was a show of justice also in a parade of prisoners,
-who, in spite of their handcuffs, were very anxious to halt long enough
-to be photographed, and there was a great bustle along the wharves,
-where huge rafts of logwood and mahogany floated far into the water.
-The governor showed us through his botanical station, in which he has
-collected food-giving products from over all the world, and plants
-that absorb the malaria in the air, and he hinted at the social life
-of Belize as well, tempting us with a ball and dinners to the officers
-of the men-of-war; but the _Breakwater_ would not wait for such
-frivolities, so we said farewell to Belize and her kindly governor,
-and thereafter walked under strange flags, and were met at every step
-with the despotic little rules and safeguards which mark unstable
-governments.
-
-Livingston was like a village on the coast of East Africa in comparison
-with Belize. It is the chief seaport of Guatemala on the Atlantic side,
-and Guatemala is the furthest advanced of all the Central-American
-republics; but her civilization lies on the Pacific side, and does not
-extend so far as her eastern boundary.
-
-[Illustration: NATIVE WOMEN AT LIVINGSTON]
-
-There are two opposite features of landscape in the tropics which
-are always found together--the royal palm, which is one of the most
-beautiful of things, and the corrugated zinc-roof custom-house, which
-is one of the ugliest. Nature never appears so extravagant or so
-luxurious as she does in these hot latitudes; but just as soon as she
-has fashioned a harbor after her own liking, and set it off at her best
-so that it is a haven of delight to those who approach it from the sea,
-civilized man comes along and hammers square walls of zinc together and
-spoils the beauty of the place forever. The natives, who do not care
-for customs dues, help nature out with thatch-roofed huts and walls of
-adobe or yellow cane, or add curved red tiles to the more pretentious
-houses, and so fill out the picture. But the “gringo,” or the man from
-the interior, is in a hurry, and wants something that will withstand
-earthquakes and cyclones, and so wherever you go you can tell that he
-has been there before you by his architecture of zinc.
-
-When you turn your back on the custom-house at Livingston and the rows
-of wooden shops with open fronts, you mount the hill upon which the
-town stands, and there you will find no houses but those which have
-been created out of the mud and the trees of the place itself. There
-are no streets to the village nor doors to the houses; they are all
-exactly alike, and the bare mud floor of one is as unindividual, except
-for the number of naked children crawling upon it, as is any of the
-others. The sun and the rain are apparently free to come and go as they
-like, and every one seems to live in the back of the house, under the
-thatched roof which shades the clay ovens. Most of the natives were
-coal-black, and the women, in spite of the earth floors below and the
-earth walls round about them, were clean, and wore white gowns that
-trailed from far down their arms, leaving the chest and shoulders bare.
-They were a very simple, friendly lot of people, and rail from all
-parts of the settlement to be photographed, and brought us flowers
-from their gardens, for which they refused money.
-
-We had our first view of the Central-American soldier at Livingston,
-and, in spite of all we had heard, he surprised us very much. The
-oldest of those whom we saw was eighteen years, and the youngest
-soldiers were about nine. They wore blue jean uniforms, ornamented with
-white tape, and the uniforms differed in shade according to the number
-of times they had been washed. These young men carried their muskets
-half-way up the barrel, or by the bayonet, dragging the stock on the
-ground.
-
-General Barrios, the young President of Guatemala, has some very smart
-soldiers at the capital, and dresses them in German uniforms, which
-is a compliment he pays to the young German emperor, for whom he has
-a great admiration; but his discipline does not extend so far as the
-Caribbean Sea.
-
-[Illustration: THE GUATEMALLECAN ARMY AT LIVINGSTON]
-
-The river Dulce goes in from Livingston, and we were told it was one of
-the things in Central America we ought to see, as its palisades were
-more beautiful than those of the Rhine. The man who told us this said
-he spoke from hearsay, and that he had never been on the Rhine, but
-that he knew a gentleman who had. You can well believe that it is very
-beautiful from what you can see of its mouth, where it flows into the
-Caribbean between great dark banks as high as the palisades opposite
-Dobbs Ferry, and covered with thick, impenetrable green.
-
-[Illustration: BARRACKS AT PORT BARRIOS]
-
-Port Barrios, to which one comes in a few hours, is at one end of
-a railroad, and surrounded by all the desecration that such an
-improvement on nature implies, in the form of zinc depots, piles of
-railroad-ties, and rusty locomotives. The town consists of a single
-row of native huts along the coast, terminating in a hospital. Every
-house is papered throughout with copies of the New York _Police
-Gazette_, which must give the Guatemallecan a lurid light on the habits
-and virtues of his cousins in North America. Most of our passengers
-left the ship here, and we met them, while she was taking on bananas,
-wandering about the place with blank faces, or smiling grimly at the
-fate which condemned them and their blue-prints and transits to a place
-where all nature was beautiful and only civilized man was discontented.
-
-We lay at Barrios until late at night, wandering round the deserted
-decks, or watching the sharks sliding through the phosphorus and the
-lights burning in the huts along the shore. At midnight we weighed
-anchor, and in the morning steamed into Puerto Cortez, the chief port
-of Spanish Honduras, where the first part of our journey ended, and
-where we exchanged the ship’s deck for the Mexican saddle, and hardtack
-for tortillas.
-
-
-
-
-THE EXILED LOTTERY
-
-
-TWO years ago, while I was passing through Texas, I asked a young man
-in the smoking-car if he happened to know where I could find the United
-States troops, who were at that time riding somewhere along the borders
-of Texas and Mexico, and engaged in suppressing the so-called Garza
-revolution.
-
-The young man did not show that he was either amused or surprised at
-the abruptness of the question, but answered me promptly, as a matter
-of course, and with minute detail. “You want to go to San Antonio,” he
-said, “and take the train to Laredo, on the Mexican boundary, and then
-change to the freight that leaves once a day to Corpus Christi, and
-get off at Pena station. Pena is only a water-tank, but you can hire
-a horse there and ride to the San Rosario Ranch. Captain Hardie is at
-Rosario with Troop G, Third Cavalry. They call him the Riding Captain,
-and if any one can show you all there is to see in this Garza outfit,
-he can.”
-
-The locomotive whistle sounded at that moment, the train bumped itself
-into a full stop at a station, and the young man rose. “Good-day,” he
-said, smiling pleasantly; “I get off here.”
-
-He was such an authoritative young man, and he had spoken in so
-explicit a manner, that I did as he had directed; and if the story that
-followed was not interesting, the fault was mine, and not that of my
-chance adviser.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-A few months ago I was dining alone in Delmonico’s, when the same young
-man passed out through the room, and stopped on his way beside my table.
-
-“Do you remember me?” he said. “I met you once in a smoking-car in
-Texas. Well, I’ve got a story now that’s better than any you’ll find
-lying around here in New York. You want to go to a little bay called
-Puerto Cortez, on the eastern coast of Honduras, in Central America,
-and look over the exiled Louisiana State Lottery there. It used to be
-the biggest gambling concern in the world, but now it’s been banished
-to a single house on a mud-bank covered with palm-trees, and from there
-it reaches out all over the United States, and sucks in thousands and
-thousands of victims like a great octopus. You want to go there and
-write a story about it. Good-night,” he added; then he nodded again,
-with a smile, and walked across the room and disappeared into Broadway.
-
-When a man that you have met once in a smoking-car interrupts you
-between courses to suggest that you are wasting your time in New York,
-and that you ought to go to a coral reef in Central America and write
-a story of an outlawed lottery, it naturally interests you, even if it
-does not spoil your dinner. It interested me, at least, so much that I
-went back to my rooms at once, and tried to find Puerto Cortez on the
-map; and later, when the cold weather set in, and the grass-plots in
-Madison Square turned into piled-up islands of snow, surrounded by seas
-of slippery asphalt, I remembered the palm-trees, and went South to
-investigate the exiled lottery. That is how this chapter and this book
-came to be written.
-
-Every one who goes to any theatre in the United States may have read
-among the advertisements on the programme an oddly worded one which
-begins, “Conrad! Conrad! Conrad!” and which goes on to say that--
-
-  “In accepting the Presidency of the Honduras National Lottery
-  Company (Louisiana State Lottery Company) I shall not surrender the
-  Presidency of the Gulf Coast Ice and Manufacturing Company, of Bay
-  St. Louis, Miss.
-
-  “Therefore address all proposals for supplies, machinery, etc., as
-  well as all business communications, to
-
-               “PAUL CONRAD, Puerto Cortez, Honduras,
-                              “Care Central America Express,
-                                                “FORT TAMPA CITY,
-                                                   “FLORIDA, U. S. A.”
-
-
-You have probably read this advertisement often, and enjoyed the
-naïve manner in which Mr. Conrad asks for correspondence on different
-subjects, especially on that relating to “all business communications,”
-and how at the same time he has so described his whereabouts that no
-letters so addressed would ever reach his far-away home in Puerto
-Cortez, but would be promptly stopped at Tampa, as he means that they
-should.
-
-After my anonymous friend had told me of Puerto Cortez, I read of it
-on the programme with a keener interest, and Puerto Cortez became to
-me a harbor of much mysterious moment, of a certain dark significance,
-and of possible adventure. I remembered all that the lottery had been
-before the days of its banishment, and all that it had dared to be
-when, as a corporation legally chartered by the State of Louisiana, it
-had put its chain and collar upon legislatures and senators, judges and
-editors, when it had silenced the voice of the church and the pulpit
-by great gifts of money to charities and hospitals, so giving out in
-a lump sum with one hand what it had taken from the people in dollars
-and half-dollars, five hundred and six hundred fold, with the other.
-I remembered when its trade-mark, in open-faced type, “La. S. L.,” was
-as familiar in every newspaper in the United States as were the names
-of the papers themselves, when it had not been excommunicated by the
-postmaster-general, and it had not to hide its real purpose under a
-carefully worded paragraph in theatrical programmes or on “dodgers” or
-handbills that had an existence of a moment before they were swept out
-into the street, and which, as they were not sent through mails, were
-not worthy the notice of the federal government.
-
-It was not so very long ago that it requires any effort to remember it.
-It is only a few years since the lottery held its drawings freely and
-with much pomp and circumstance in the Charles Theatre, and Generals
-Beauregard and Early presided at these ceremonies, selling the names
-they had made glorious in a lost cause to help a cause which was, for
-the lottery people at least, distinctly a winning one. For in those
-days the state lottery cleared above all expenses seven million dollars
-a year, and Generals Beauregard and Early drew incomes from it much
-larger than the government paid to the judges of the Supreme Court and
-the members of the cabinet who finally declared against the company and
-drove it into exile.
-
-There had been many efforts made to kill it in the past, and the state
-lottery was called “the national disgrace” and “the modern slavery,”
-and Louisiana was spoken of as a blot on the map of our country, as was
-Utah when polygamy flourished within her boundaries and defied the laws
-of the federal government. The final rally against the lottery occurred
-in 1890, when the lease of the company expired, and the directors
-applied to the legislature for a renewal. At that time it was paying
-out but very little and taking in fabulous sums; how much it really
-made will probably never be told, but its gains were probably no more
-exaggerated by its enemies than was the amount of its expenses by the
-company itself. Its outlay for advertising, for instance, which must
-have been one of its chief expenses, was only forty thousand dollars
-a year, which is a little more than a firm of soap manufacturers pay
-for their advertising for the same length of time; and it is rather
-discouraging to remember that for a share of this bribe every newspaper
-in the city of New Orleans and in the State of Louisiana, with a few
-notable exceptions, became an organ of the lottery, and said nothing
-concerning it but what was good. To this sum may be added the salaries
-of its officers, the money paid out in prizes, the cost of printing
-and mailing the tickets, and the sum of forty thousand dollars paid
-annually to the State of Louisiana. This tribute was considered
-as quite sufficient when the lottery was first started, and while
-it struggled for ten years to make a living; but in 1890, when its
-continued existence was threatened, the company found it could very
-well afford to offer the state not forty thousand, but a million
-dollars a year, which gives a faint idea of what its net earnings must
-have been. As a matter of fact, in those palmy times when there were
-daily drawings, the lottery received on some days as many as eighteen
-to twenty thousand letters, with orders for tickets enclosed which
-averaged five dollars a letter.
-
-It was Postmaster-general Wanamaker who put a stop to all this by
-refusing to allow any printed matter concerning the lottery to pass
-outside of the State of Louisiana, which decision, when it came, proved
-to be the order of exile to the greatest gambling concern of modern
-times.
-
-The lottery, of course, fought this decision in the courts, and the
-case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and was
-upheld, and from that time no letter addressed to the lottery in this
-country, or known to contain matter referring to the lottery, and no
-newspaper advertising it, can pass through the mails. This ruling
-was known before the vote on the renewal of the lease came up in the
-Legislature of Louisiana, and the lottery people say that, knowing that
-they could not, under these new restrictions, afford to pay the sum
-of one million dollars a year, they ceased their efforts to pass the
-bill granting a renewal of their lease, and let it go without a fight.
-This may or may not be true, but in any event the bill did not pass,
-and the greatest lottery of all times was without a place in which to
-spin its wheel, without a charter or a home, and was cut off from the
-most obvious means of communication with its hundreds of thousands of
-supporters. But though it was excommunicated, outlawed, and exiled, it
-was not beaten; it still retained agents all over the country, and it
-still held its customers, who were only waiting to throw their money
-into its lap, and still hoping that the next drawing would bring the
-grand prize.
-
-For some long time the lottery was driven about from pillar to post,
-and knocked eagerly here and there for admittance, seeking a home and
-resting-place. It was not at first successful. The first rebuff came
-from Mexico, where it had proposed to move its plant, but the Mexican
-government was greedy, and wanted too large a sum for itself, or, what
-is more likely, did not want so well-organized a rival to threaten the
-earnings of her own national lottery. Then the republics of Colombia
-and Nicaragua were each tempted with the honor of giving a name to the
-new company, but each declined that distinction, and so it finally came
-begging to Honduras, the least advanced of all of the Central-American
-republics, and the most heavily burdened with debt.
-
-[Illustration: THE EXILED LOTTERY BUILDING]
-
-Honduras agreed to receive the exile, and to give it her name and
-protection for the sum of twenty thousand dollars a year and twenty
-per cent. of its gross earnings. It would seem that this to a country
-that has not paid the interest on her national debt for twelve years
-was a very advantageous bargain; but as four presidents and as many
-revolutions and governments have appeared and disappeared in the
-two years in which the lottery people have received their charter
-in Honduras, the benefit of the arrangement to them has not been an
-obvious one, and it was not until two years ago that the first drawing
-of the lottery was held at Puerto Cortez. The company celebrated this
-occasion with a pitiful imitation of its former pomp and ceremony, and
-there was much feasting and speech-making, and a special train was run
-from the interior to bring important natives to the ceremonies. But
-the train fell off the track four times, and was just a day late in
-consequence. The young man who had charge of the train told me this,
-and he also added that he did not believe in lotteries.
-
-During these two years, when representatives of the company were taking
-rides of nine days each to the capital to overcome the objections
-of the new presidents who had sprung into office while these same
-representatives had been making their return trip to the coast, others
-were seeking a foothold for the company in the United States. The need
-of this was obvious and imperative. The necessity which had been forced
-upon them of holding the drawings out of this country, and of giving up
-the old name and trade-mark, was serious enough, though it had been
-partially overcome. It did not matter where they spun their wheel; but
-if the company expected to live, there must be some place where it
-could receive its mail and distribute its tickets other than the hot
-little Honduranian port, locked against all comers by quarantine for
-six months of the year, and only to be reached during the other six by
-a mail that arrives once every eight days.
-
-The lottery could not entirely overcome this difficulty, of course,
-but through the aid of the express companies of this country it was
-able to effect a substitute, and through this cumbersome and expensive
-method of transportation its managers endeavored to carry on the
-business which in the days when the post-office helped them had brought
-them in twenty thousand letters in twenty-four hours. They selected
-for their base of operations in the United States the port of Tampa,
-in the State of Florida--that refuge of prize-fighters and home of
-unhappy Englishmen who have invested in the swamp-lands there, under
-the delusion that they were buying town sites and orange plantations,
-and which masquerades as a winter resort with a thermometer that not
-infrequently falls below freezing. So Tampa became their home; and
-though the legislature of that state proved incorruptible, so the
-lottery people themselves tell me, there was at least an understanding
-between them and those in authority that the express company was not
-to be disturbed, and that no other lottery was to have a footing in
-Florida for many years to come.
-
-If Puerto Cortez proved interesting when it was only a name on a
-theatre programme, you may understand to what importance it grew when
-it could not be found on the map of any steamship company in New York,
-and when no paper of that city advertised dates of sailing to that
-port. For the first time Low’s Exchange failed me and asked for time,
-and the ubiquitous Cook & Sons threw up their hands, and offered in
-desperation and as a substitute a comfortable trip to upper Burmah or
-to Mozambique, protesting that Central America was beyond even their
-finding out. Even the Maritime Exchange confessed to a much more
-intimate knowledge of the west coast of China than of the little group
-of republics which lies only a three or four days’ journey from the
-city of New Orleans. So I was forced to haunt the shipping-offices of
-Bowling Green for days together, and convinced myself while so engaged
-that that is the only way properly to pursue the study of geography,
-and I advise every one to try it, and submit the idea respectfully
-to instructors of youth. For you will find that by the time you have
-interviewed fifty shipping-clerks, and learned from them where they
-can set you down and pick you up and exchange you to a fruit-vessel
-or coasting steamer, you will have obtained an idea of foreign ports
-and distances which can never be gathered from flat maps or little
-revolving globes. I finally discovered that there was a line running
-from New York and another from New Orleans, the fastest steamer of
-which latter line, as I learned afterwards, was subsidized by the
-lottery people. They use it every month to take their representatives
-and clerks to Puerto Cortez, when, after they have held the monthly
-drawing, they steam back again to New Orleans or Tampa, carrying with
-them the list of winning numbers and the prizes.
-
-It was in the boat of this latter line that we finally awoke one
-morning to find her anchored in the harbor of Puerto Cortez.
-
-The harbor is a very large one and a very safe one. It is encircled
-by mountains on the sea-side, and by almost impenetrable swamps and
-jungles on the other. Close around the waters of the bay are bunches
-and rows of the cocoanut palm, and a village of mud huts covered
-with thatch. There is also a tin custom-house, which includes the
-railroad-office and a comandancia, and this and the jail or barracks
-of rotting whitewashed boards, and the half-dozen houses of one story
-belonging to consuls and shipping agents, are the only other frame
-buildings in the place save one. That is a large mansion with broad
-verandas, painted in colors, and set in a carefully designed garden of
-rare plants and manaca palms. Two poles are planted in the garden, one
-flying the blue-and-white flag of Honduras, the other with the stripes
-and stars of the United States. This is the home of the exiled lottery.
-It is the most pretentious building and the cleanest in the whole
-republic of Honduras, from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific slope.
-
-I confess that I was foolish enough to regard this house of magnificent
-exterior, as I viewed it from the wharf, as seriously as a general
-observes the ramparts and defences of the enemy before making his
-advance. I had taken a nine days’ journey with the single purpose of
-seeing and getting at the truth concerning this particular building,
-and whether I was now to be viewed with suspicion and treated as an
-intruder, whether my object would be guessed at once and I should be
-forced to wait on the beach for the next steamer, or whether I would be
-received with kindness which came from ignorance of my intentions, I
-could not tell. And while I considered, a black Jamaica negro decided
-my movements for me. There was a hotel, he answered, doubtfully, but he
-thought it would be better, if Mr. Barross would let me in, to try for
-a room in the Lottery Building.
-
-“Mr. Barross sometimes takes boarders,” he said, “and the Lottery
-Building is a fine house, sir--finest house this side Mexico city.” He
-added, encouragingly, that he spoke English “very good,” and that he
-had been in London.
-
-Sitting on the wide porch of the Lottery Building was a dark-faced,
-distinguished-looking little man, a creole apparently, with white hair
-and white goatee. He rose and bowed as I came up through the garden
-and inquired of him if he was the manager of the lottery, Mr. Barross,
-and if he could give me food and shelter. The gentleman answered
-that he was Mr. Barross, and that he could and would do as I asked,
-and appealed with hospitable warmth to a tall, handsome woman, with
-beautiful white hair, to support him in his invitation. Mrs. Barross
-assented kindly, and directed her servants to place a rocking-chair in
-the shade, and requested me to be seated in it; luncheon, she assured
-me, would be ready in a half-hour, and she hoped that the voyage south
-had been a pleasant one.
-
-And so within five minutes after arriving in the mysterious harbor of
-Puerto Cortez I found myself at home under the roof of the outlawed
-lottery, and being particularly well treated by its representative, and
-feeling particularly uncomfortable in consequence. I was heartily sorry
-that I had not gone to the hotel. And so, after I had been in my room,
-I took pains to ascertain exactly what my position in the house might
-be, and whether or not, apart from the courtesy of Mr. Barross and
-his wife, for which no one could make return, I was on the same free
-footing that I would have been in a hotel. I was assured that I was
-regarded as a transient boarder, and that I was a patron rather than a
-guest; but as I did not yet feel at ease, I took courage, and explained
-to Mr. Barross that I was not a coffee-planter or a capitalist looking
-for a concession from the government, but that I was in Honduras to
-write of what I found there. Mr. Barross answered that he knew already
-why I was there from the New Orleans papers which had arrived in the
-boat with me, and seemed rather pleased than otherwise to have me about
-the house. This set my mind at rest, and though it may not possibly be
-of the least interest to the reader, it is of great importance to me
-that the same reader should understand that all which I write here of
-the lottery was told to me by the lottery people themselves, with the
-full knowledge that I was going to publish it. And later, when I had
-the pleasure of meeting Mr. Duprez, the late editor of the _States_, in
-New Orleans, and then in Tegucigalpa, as representative of the lottery,
-I warned him in the presence of several of our friends to be careful,
-as I would probably make use of all he told me. To which he agreed,
-and continued answering questions for the rest of the evening. I may
-also add that I have taken care to verify the figures used here, for
-the reason that the lottery people are at such an obvious disadvantage
-in not being allowed by law to reply to what is said of them, nor
-to correct any mistake in any statements that may be made to their
-disadvantage.
-
-I had never visited a hotel or a country-house as curious as the
-one presided over by Mr. Barross. It was entirely original in its
-decoration, unique in its sources of entertainment, and its business
-office, unlike most business offices, possessed a peculiar fascination.
-The stationery for the use of the patrons, and on which I wrote to
-innocent friends in the North, bore the letter-head of the Honduras
-Lottery Company; the pictures on the walls were framed groups of
-lottery tickets purchased in the past by Mr. Barross, which had _not_
-drawn prizes; and the safe in which the guest might place his valuables
-contained a large canvas-bag sealed with red wax, and holding in prizes
-for the next drawing seventy-five thousand dollars.
-
-Wherever you turned were evidences of the peculiar business that was
-being carried on under the roof that sheltered you, and outside in
-the garden stood another building, containing the printing-presses on
-which the lists of winning numbers were struck off before they were
-distributed broadcast about the world. But of more interest than all
-else was the long, sunshiny, empty room running the full length of the
-house, in which, on a platform at one end, were two immense wheels,
-one of glass and brass, and as transparent as a bowl of goldfish, and
-the other closely draped in a heavy canvas hood laced and strapped
-around it, and holding sealed and locked within its great bowels one
-hundred thousand paper tickets in one hundred thousand rubber tubes.
-In this atmosphere and with these surroundings my host and hostess
-lived their life of quiet conventional comfort--a life full of the
-lesser interests of every day, and lighted for others by their most
-gracious and kindly courtesy and hospitable good-will. When I sat at
-their table I was always conscious of the great wheels, showing through
-the open door from the room beyond like skeletons in a closet; but it
-was not so with my host, whose chief concern might be that our glasses
-should be filled, nor with my hostess, who presided at the head of the
-table--which means more than sitting there--with that dignity and charm
-which is peculiar to a Southern woman, and which made dining with her
-an affair of state, and not one of appetite.
-
-I had come to see the working of a great gambling scheme, and I had
-anticipated that there might be some difficulty put in the way of
-my doing so; but if the lottery plant had been a cider-press in an
-orchard I could not have been more welcome to examine and to study it
-and to take it to pieces. It was not so much that they had nothing
-to conceal, or that now, while they are fighting for existence, they
-would rather risk being abused than not being mentioned at all. For
-they can fight abuse; they have had to do that for a long time. It is
-silence and oblivion that they fear now; the silence that means they
-are forgotten, that their arrogant glory has departed, that they are
-only a memory. They can fight those who fight them, but they cannot
-fight with people who, if they think of them at all, think of them as
-already dead and buried. It was neither of these reasons that gave me
-free admittance to the workings of the lottery; it was simply that to
-Mr. and Mrs. Barross the lottery was a religion; it was the greatest
-charitable organization of the age, and the purest philanthropist of
-modern times could not have more thoroughly believed in his good works
-than did Mrs. Barross believe that noble and generous benefits were
-being bestowed on mankind at every turn of the great wheel in her back
-parlor.
-
-This showed itself in the admiration which she shares with her husband
-for the gentlemen of the company, and their coming once a month is an
-event of great moment to Mrs. Barross, who must find it dull sometimes,
-in spite of the great cool house, with its many rooms and broad
-porches, and gorgeous silk hangings over the beds, and the clean linen,
-and airy, sunlit dining-room. She is much more interested in telling
-the news that the gentlemen brought down with them when they last came
-than in the result of the drawing, and she recalls the compliments
-they paid her garden, but she cannot remember the number that drew the
-capital prize. It was interesting to find this big gambling scheme in
-the hands of two such simple, kindly people, and to see how commonplace
-it was to them, how much a matter of routine and of habit. They sang
-its praises if you wished to talk of it, but they were more deeply
-interested in the lesser affairs of their own household. And at one
-time we ceased discussing it to help try on the baby’s new boots that
-had just arrived on the steamer, and patted them on the place where the
-heel should have been to drive them on the extremities of two waving
-fat legs. We all admired the tassels which hung from them, and which
-the baby tried to pull off and put in his mouth. They were bronze boots
-with black buttons, and the first the baby had ever worn, and the event
-filled the home of the exiled lottery with intense excitement.
-
-In the cool of the afternoon Mr. Barross sat on the broad porch rocking
-himself in a big bentwood chair and talked of the civil war, in which
-he had taken an active part, with that enthusiasm and detail with which
-only a Southerner speaks of it, not knowing that to this generation in
-the North it is history, and something of which one reads in books,
-and is not a topic of conversation of as fresh interest as the fall
-of Tammany or the Venezuela boundary dispute. And as we listened we
-watched Mrs. Barross moving about among her flowers with a sunshade
-above her white hair and holding her train in her hand, stopping to cut
-away a dead branch or to pluck a rose or to turn a bud away from the
-leaves so that it might feel the sun.
-
-And inside, young Barross was going over the letters which had arrived
-with the morning’s steamer, emptying out the money that came with
-them on the table, filing them away, and noting them as carefully and
-as methodically as a bank clerk, and sealing up in return the little
-green and yellow tickets that were to go out all over the world, and
-which had been paid for by clerks on small salaries, laboring-men of
-large families, idle good-for-nothings, visionaries, born gamblers
-and ne’er-do-wells, and that multitude of others of this world who
-want something for nothing, and who trust that a turn of luck will
-accomplish for them what they are too listless and faint-hearted and
-lazy ever to accomplish for themselves. It would be an excellent thing
-for each of these gamblers if he could look in at the great wheel at
-Puerto Cortez, and see just what one hundred thousand tickets look
-like, and what chance his one atom of a ticket has of forcing its way
-to the top of that great mass at the exact moment that the capital
-prize rises to the surface in the other wheel. He could have seen it
-in the old days at the Charles Theatre, and he is as free as is any
-one to see it to-day at Puerto Cortez; but I should think it would be
-unfortunate for the lottery if any of its customers became too thorough
-a student of the doctrine of chances.
-
-The room in which the drawings are held is about forty feet long, well
-lighted by many long, wide windows, and with the stage upon which
-the wheels stand blocking one end. It is unfurnished, except for the
-chairs and benches, upon which the natives or any chance or intentional
-visitors are welcome to sit and to watch the drawing. The larger wheel,
-which holds, when all the tickets are sold, the hopes of one hundred
-thousand people, is about six feet in diameter, with sides of heavy
-glass, bound together by a wooden tire two feet wide. This tire or rim
-is made of staves, formed like those of a hogshead, and in it is a
-door a foot square. After the tickets have been placed in their little
-rubber jackets and shovelled into the wheel, this door is locked with
-a padlock, and strips of paper are pasted across it and sealed at each
-end, and so it remains until the next drawing. One hundred thousand
-tickets in rubber tubes an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide take
-up a great deal of space, and make such an appreciable difference
-in the weight of the wheel that it requires the efforts of two men
-pulling on the handles at either side to even budge it. Another man and
-myself were quite satisfied when we had put our shoulders to it and
-had succeeded in turning it a foot or two. But it was interesting to
-watch the little black tubes with even that slow start go slipping and
-sliding down over the others, leaving the greater mass undisturbed and
-packed together at the bottom as a wave sweeps back the upper layer of
-pebbles on a beach. This wheel was manufactured by Jackson & Sharp, of
-Wilmington, Delaware. The other wheel is much smaller, and holds the
-prizes. It was made by John Robinson, of Baltimore.
-
-Whenever there is a drawing, General W. L. Cabell, of Texas, and
-Colonel C. J. Villere, of Louisiana, who have taken the places of the
-late General Beauregard and of the late General Early, take their stand
-at different wheels, General Cabell at the large and Colonel Villere at
-the one holding the prizes. They open the doors which they had sealed
-up a month previous, and into each wheel a little Indian girl puts her
-hand and draws out a tube. The tube holding the ticket is handed to
-General Cabell, and the one holding the prize won is given to Colonel
-Villere, and they read the numbers aloud and the amount won six times,
-three times in Spanish and three times in English, on the principle
-probably of the man in the play who had only one line, and who spoke
-that twice, “so that the audience will know I am saying it.”
-
-The two tickets are then handed to young Barross, who fastens them
-together with a rubber band and throws them into a basket for further
-reference. Three clerks with duplicate books keep tally of the numbers
-and of the prizes won. The drawing begins generally at six in the
-morning and lasts until ten, and then, everybody having been made rich,
-the philanthropists and generals and colonels and Indian girls--and,
-let us hope, the men who turned the wheel--go in to breakfast.
-
-So far as I could see, the drawings are conducted with fairness.
-But with only 3434 prizes and 100,000 tickets the chances are so
-infinitesimal and the advantage to the company so enormous that honesty
-in manipulating the wheel ceases to be a virtue, and becomes the
-lottery’s only advertisement.
-
-[Illustration: THE IGUANAS OF HONDURAS]
-
-But what is most interesting about the lottery at present is not
-whether it is or it is not conducted fairly, but that it should exist
-at all; that its promoters should be willing to drag out such an
-existence at such a price and in so fallen a state. This becomes all
-the more remarkable because the men who control the lottery belong to a
-class which, as a rule, cares for the good opinion of its fellows, and
-is willing to sacrifice much to retain it. But the lottery people do
-not seem anxious for the good opinion of any one, and they have made
-such vast sums of money in the past, and they have made it so easily,
-that they cannot release their hold on the geese that are laying the
-golden eggs for them, even though they find themselves exiled and
-excommunicated by their own countrymen. If they were thimble-riggers
-or Confidence men in need of money their persistence would not
-appear so remarkable, but these gentlemen of the lottery are men of
-enormous wealth, their daughters are in what is called society in New
-Orleans and in New York, their sons are at the universities, and they
-themselves belong to those clubs most difficult of access. One would
-think that they had reached that point when they could say “we are rich
-enough now, and we can afford to spend the remainder of our lives in
-making ourselves respectable.” Becky Sharp is authority for the fact
-that it is easy to be respectable on as little as five hundred pounds a
-year, but these gentlemen, having many hundreds of thousands of pounds,
-are not even willing to make the effort. Two years ago, when, according
-to their own account, they were losing forty thousand dollars a month,
-and which, after all, is only what they once cleared in a day, and
-when they were being driven out of one country after another, like the
-cholera or any other disease, it seems strange that it never occurred
-to them to stop fighting, and to get into a better business while there
-was yet time.
-
-Even the keeper of a roulette wheel has too much self-respect to
-continue turning when there is only one man playing against the table,
-and in comparison with him the scramble of the lottery company after
-the Honduranian tin dollar, and the scant savings of servant-girls and
-of brakesmen and negro barbers in the United States, is to me the most
-curious feature of this once great enterprise.
-
-What a contrast it makes with those other days, when the Charles
-Theatre was filled from boxes to gallery with the “flower of Southern
-chivalry and beauty,” when the band played, and the major-generals
-proclaimed the result of the drawings. It is hard to take the lottery
-seriously, for the day when it was worthy of abuse has passed away.
-And, indeed, there are few men or measures so important as to deserve
-abuse, while there is no measure if it be for good so insignificant
-that it is not deserving the exertion of a good word or a line of
-praise and gratitude.
-
-And only the emotion one can feel for the lottery now is the pity which
-you might have experienced for William M. Tweed when, as a fugitive
-from justice, he sat on the beach at Santiago de Cuba and watched a
-naked fisherman catch his breakfast for him beyond the first line of
-breakers, or that you might feel for Monte Carlo were it to be exiled
-to a fever-stricken island off the swampy coast of West Africa, or, to
-pay the lottery a very high compliment indeed, that which you give to
-that noble adventurer exiled to the Isle of Elba.
-
-There was something almost pathetic to me in the sight of this great,
-arrogant gambling scheme, that had in its day brought the good name
-of a state into disrepute, that had boasted of the prices it paid for
-the honor of men, and that had robbed a whole nation willing to be
-robbed, spinning its wheel in a back room in a hot, half-barbarous
-country, and to an audience of gaping Indians and unwashed Honduranian
-generals. Sooner than fall as low as that it would seem to be better to
-fall altogether; to own that you are beaten, that the color has gone
-against you too often, and, like that honorable gambler and gentleman,
-Mr. John Oakhurst, who “struck a streak of bad luck, about the middle
-of February, 1864,” to put a pistol to your head, and go down as
-arrogantly and defiantly as you had lived.[A]
-
-
-
-
-IN HONDURAS
-
-
-I
-
-TEGUCIGALPA is the odd name of the capital of the republic of Honduras,
-the least advanced of the republics of Central or South America.
-
-Somerset had learned that there were no means of getting to this
-capital from either the Pacific Ocean on one side or from the Caribbean
-Sea on the other except on muleback, and we argued that while there
-were many mining-camps and military outposts and ranches situated a
-nine days’ ride from civilization, capitals at such a distance were
-rare, and for that reason might prove entertaining. Capitals at the
-mouths of great rivers and at the junction of many railway systems we
-knew, but a capital hidden away behind almost inaccessible mountains,
-like a monastery of the Greek Church, we had never seen. A door-mat in
-the front hall of a house is useful, and may even be ornamental, though
-it is never interesting; but if the door-mat be hidden away in the
-third-story back room it instantly assumes an importance and a value
-which it never could have attained in its proper sphere of usefulness.
-
-[Illustration: OUR NAVAL ATTACHÉ]
-
-Our ideas as to the characteristics of Honduras were very vague, and it
-is possible that we might never have seen Tegucigalpa had it not been
-for Colonel Charles Jeffs, whom we found apparently waiting for us
-at Puerto Cortez, and who, we still believe, had been stationed there
-by some guardian spirit to guide us in safety across the continent.
-Colonel Jeffs is a young American mining engineer from Minneapolis,
-and has lived in Honduras for the past eleven years. Some time ago
-he assisted Bogran, when that general was president, in one of the
-revolutions against him, and was made a colonel in consequence. So we
-called him our military attaché, and Griscom our naval attaché, because
-he was an officer of the Naval Brigade of Pennsylvania. Jeffs we found
-at Puerto Cortez. It was there that he first made himself known to us
-by telling our porters they had no right to rob us merely because we
-were gringos, and so saved us some dollars. He made us understand at
-the same time that it was as gringos, or foreigners, we were thereafter
-to be designated and disliked. We had no agreement with Jeffs, nor
-even what might be called an understanding. He had, as I have said,
-been intended by Providence to convey us across Honduras, and every
-one concerned in the outfit seemed to accept that act of kindly fate
-without question. We told him we were going to the capital, and were
-on pleasure bent, and he said he had business at the capital himself,
-and would like a few days’ shooting on the way, so we asked him to come
-with us and act as guide, philosopher, and friend, and he said, “The
-train starts at eight to-morrow morning for San Pedro Sula, where I
-will hire the mules.” And so it was settled, and we went off to get our
-things out of the custom-house with a sense of perfect confidence in
-our new acquaintance and of delightful freedom from all responsibility.
-And though, perhaps, it is not always best to put the entire charge of
-an excursion through an unknown country into the hands of the first
-kindly stranger whom you see sitting on a hotel porch on landing,
-we found that it worked admirably, and we depended on our military
-attaché so completely that we never pulled a cinch-strap or interviewed
-an ex-president without first asking his permission. I wish every
-traveller as kindly a guide and as good a friend.
-
-[Illustration: OUR MILITARY ATTACHÉ]
-
-The train to San Pedro Sula was made up of a rusty engine and three
-little cars, with no glass in the windows, and with seats too wide
-for one person, and not at all large enough for two. The natives made
-a great expedition of this journey, and piled the cramped seats with
-bananas and tortillas and old bottles filled with drinking-water. We
-carried no luncheons ourselves, but we had the greater advantage of
-them in that we were enjoying for the first time the most beautiful
-stretch of tropical swamp-land and jungle that we came across during
-our entire trip through Honduras. Sometimes the train moved through
-tunnels of palms as straight and as regular as the elms leading to an
-English country-house, and again through jungles where they grew in
-the most wonderful riot and disorder, so that their branches swept in
-through the car-windows and brushed the cinders from the roof. The
-jungle spread out within a few feet of the track on either side, and we
-peered into an impenetrable net-work of vines and creepers and mammoth
-ferns and cacti and giant trees covered with orchids, and so tall that
-one could only see their tops by looking up at them from the rear
-platform.
-
-The railroad journey from Puerto Cortez to San Pedro Sula lasts four
-hours, but the distance is only thirty-seven miles. This was, until
-a short time ago, when the line was extended by a New York company,
-the only thirty-seven miles of railroad track in Honduras, and as it
-has given to the country a foreign debt of $27,992,850, the interest
-on which has not been paid since 1872, it would seem to be quite
-enough. About thirty years ago an interoceanic railroad was projected
-from Puerto Cortez to the Pacific coast, a distance of one hundred
-and forty-eight miles, but the railroad turned out to be a colossal
-swindle, and the government was left with this debt on its hands, an
-army of despoiled stockholders to satisfy, and only thirty-seven miles
-of bad road for itself. The road was to have been paid for at a certain
-rate per mile, and the men who mapped it out made it in consequence
-twice as long as it need to have been, and its curves and grades and
-turns would cause an honest engineer to weep with disapproval.
-
-[Illustration: A STRETCH OF CENTRAL-AMERICAN RAILWAY]
-
-The grades are in some places very steep, and as the engine was not as
-young as it had been, two negro boys and a box of sand were placed
-on the cow-catcher, and whenever the necessity of stopping the train
-was immediate, or when it was going downhill too quickly, they would
-lean forward and pour this sand on the rails. As soon as Griscom and
-Somerset discovered these assistant engineers they bribed them to give
-up their places to them, and after the first station we all sat for
-the remainder of the journey on the cow-catcher. It was a beautiful
-and exhilarating ride, and suggested tobogganing, or those thrilling
-little railroads on trestles at Coney Island and at the fêtes around
-Paris. It was even more interesting, because we could see each rusty
-rail rise as the wheel touched its nearer end as though it meant to fly
-up in our faces, and when the wheel was too quick for it and forced it
-down again, it contented itself by spreading out half a foot or so to
-one side, which was most alarming. And the interest rose even higher at
-times when a stray steer would appear on the rails at the end of the
-tunnel of palms, as at the end of a telescope, and we saw it growing
-rapidly larger and larger as the train swept down upon it. It always
-lurched off to one side before any one was killed, but not until there
-had been much ringing of bells and blowing of whistles, and, on our
-part, some inward debate as to whether we had better jump and abandon
-the train to its fate, or die at our post with our hands full of sand.
-
-We lay idly at San Pedro Sula for four days, while Jeffs hurried about
-collecting mules and provisions. When we arrived we insisted on setting
-forth that same evening, but the place put its spell upon us gently but
-firmly, and when we awoke on the third day and found we were no nearer
-to starting than at the moment of our arrival, Jeffs’s perplexities
-began to be something of a bore, and we told him to put things off to
-the morrow, as did every one else.
-
-[Illustration: THE THREE GRINGOS]
-
-San Pedro Sula lay in peaceful isolation in a sunny valley at the
-base of great mountains, and from the upper porch of our hotel, that
-had been built when the railroad was expected to continue on across
-the continent, we could see above the palms in the garden the clouds
-moving from one mountain-top to another, or lying packed like drifts
-of snow in the hollows between. We used to sit for hours on this porch
-in absolute idleness, watching Jeffs hurrying in and out below with
-infinite pity, while we listened to the palms rustling and whispering
-as they bent and courtesied before us, and saw the sunshine turn
-the mountains a light green, like dry moss, or leave half of them
-dark and sombre when a cloud passed in between. It was a clean, lazy
-little place of many clay huts, with gardens back of them filled with
-banana-palms and wide-reaching trees, which were one mass of brilliant
-crimson flowers. In the centre of the town was a grass-grown plaza
-where the barefooted and ragged boy-soldiers went through leisurely
-evolutions, and the mules and cows gazed at them from the other end.
-
-Our hotel was leased by an American woman, who was making an
-unappreciated fight against dirt and insects, and the height of whose
-ambition was to get back to Brooklyn and take in light sewing and
-educate her two very young daughters. Her husband had died in the
-interior, and his portrait hung in the dining-room of the hotel. She
-used to talk about him while she was waiting at dinner, and of what a
-well-read and able man he had been. She would grow so interested in
-her stories that the dinner would turn cold while she stood gazing at
-the picture and shaking her head at it. We became very much interested
-in the husband, and used to look up over our shoulders at his portrait
-with respectful attention, as though he were present. His widow did
-not like Honduranians; and though she might have made enough money to
-take her home, had she consented to accept them as boarders, she would
-only receive gringos at her hotel, which she herself swept and scrubbed
-when she was not cooking the dinner and making the beds. She had saved
-eight dollars of the sum necessary to convey her and her children home,
-and to educate them when they got there; and as American travellers
-in Honduras are few, and as most of them ask you for money to help
-them to God’s country, I am afraid her chance of seeing the Brooklyn
-Bridge is very doubtful.
-
-[Illustration: SETTING OUT FROM SAN PEDRO SULA]
-
-We contributed to her fund, and bought her a bundle of lottery tickets,
-which we told her were the means of making money easily; and I should
-like to add that she won the grand prize, and lived happily on Brooklyn
-Heights ever after; but when we saw the list at Panama, her numbers
-were not on it, and so, I fear, she is still keeping the only clean
-hotel in Honduras, which is something more difficult to accomplish and
-a much more public-spirited thing to do than to win a grand prize in
-a lottery.
-
-We left San Pedro Sula on a Sunday morning, with a train of eleven
-mules; five to carry our luggage and the other six for ourselves,
-Jeffs, Charlwood, Somerset’s servant, and Emilio, our chief moso, or
-muleteer. There were two other mosos, who walked the entire distance,
-and in bull-hide sandals at that, guarding and driving the pack-mules,
-and who were generally able to catch up with us an hour or so after
-we had halted for the night. I do not know which was the worst of the
-mosos, although Emilio seems to have been first choice with all of us.
-We agreed, after it was all over, that we did not so much regret not
-having killed them as that they could not know how frequently they had
-been near to sudden and awful death.
-
-The people of Honduras, where all the travelling is done on mule or
-horseback, have a pretty custom of riding out to meet a friend when
-he is known to be coming to town, and of accompanying him when he
-departs. This latter ceremony always made me feel as though I were an
-undesirable citizen who was being conveyed outside of the city limits
-by a Vigilance Committee; but it is very well meant, and a man in
-Honduras measures his popularity by the number of friends who come
-forth to greet him on his arrival, or who speed him on his way when
-he sets forth again. We were accompanied out of San Pedro Sula by the
-consular agent, the able American manager of the thirty-seven miles of
-railroad, and his youthful baggage-master, a young gentleman whom I had
-formerly known in the States.
-
-Our escort left us at the end of a few miles, at the foot of the
-mountains, and we began the ascent alone. From that time on until we
-reached the Pacific Ocean we moved at the rate of three miles an hour,
-or some nine leagues a day, as distances are measured in Honduras, ten
-hours being a day’s journey. Our mules were not at all the animals
-that we know as mules in the States, but rather overgrown donkeys
-or burros, and not much stouter than those in the streets of Cairo,
-whether it be the Street in Cairo of Chicago, or the one that runs in
-front of Shepheard’s Hotel. They were patient, plucky, and wonderfully
-sure-footed little creatures, and so careful of their own legs and
-necks that, after the first few hours, we ceased to feel any anxiety
-about our own, and left the entire charge of the matter to them.
-
-[Illustration: THE HIGHLANDS OF HONDURAS]
-
-[Illustration: SOMERSET]
-
-I think we were all a little startled at sight of the trail we were
-expected to follow, but if we were we did not say so--at least, not
-before Jeffs. It led almost directly up the face of the mountain, along
-little ledges and pathways cut in the solid rock, and at times was so
-slightly marked that we could not see it five yards ahead of us.
-On that first day, during which the trail was always leading upward,
-the mules did not once put down any one of their four little feet
-without first testing the spot upon which it was to rest. This made our
-progress slow, but it gave one a sense of security, which the angle
-and attitude of the body of the man in front did much to dissipate.
-I do not know the name of the mountains over which we passed, nor do
-I know the name of any mountain in Honduras, except those which we
-named ourselves, for the reason that there is not much in Honduras
-except mountains, and it would be as difficult to give a name to each
-of her many peaks as to christen every town site on a Western prairie.
-When the greater part of all the earth of a country stands on edge in
-the air, it would be invidious to designate any one particular hill
-or chain of hills. A Honduranian deputy once crumpled up a page of
-letter-paper in his hand and dropped it on the desk before him. “That,”
-he said, “is an outline map of Honduras.”
-
-We rode in single file, with Jeffs in front, followed by Somerset, with
-Griscom and myself next, and Charlwood, the best and most faithful of
-servants, bringing up the rear. The pack-mules, as I have said, were
-two hours farther back, and we could sometimes see them over the edge
-of a precipice crawling along a thousand feet below and behind us.
-It seemed an unsociable way for friends to travel through a strange
-country, and I supposed that in an hour or so we would come to a
-broader trail and pull up abreast and exchange tobacco pouches and
-grow better acquainted. But we never came to that broad trail until we
-had travelled sixteen days, and had left Tegucigalpa behind us, and
-in the foreground of all the pictures I have in my mind of Honduras
-there is always a row of men’s backs and shoulders and bobbing helmets
-disappearing down a slippery path of rock, or rising above the edge of
-a mountain and outlined against a blazing blue sky. We were generally
-near enough to one another to talk if we spoke in a loud voice or
-turned in the saddle, though sometimes we rode silently, and merely
-raised an arm to point at a beautiful valley below or at a strange bird
-on a tree, and kept it rigid until the man behind said, “Yes, I see,”
-when it dropped, like a semaphore signal after the train has passed.
-
-Early in the afternoon of the day of our setting forth we saw for the
-last time the thatched roofs of San Pedro Sula, like a bare spot in the
-great green plain hundreds of feet below us, and then we passed through
-the clouds we had watched from the town itself, and bade the eastern
-coast of Honduras a final farewell.
-
-The trail we followed was so rough and uncertain that at first I
-conceived a very poor opinion of the Honduranians for not having
-improved it, but as we continued scrambling upward I admired them for
-moving about at all under such conditions. After all, we who had chosen
-to take this road through curiosity had certainly no right to complain
-of what was to the natives their only means of communication with the
-Atlantic seaboard. It is interesting to think of a country absolutely
-and entirely dependent on such thoroughfares for every necessity of
-life. For whether it be a postal card or a piano, or a bale of cotton,
-or a box of matches, it must be brought to Tegucigalpa on the back
-of a mule or on the shoulders of a man, who must slip and slide and
-scramble either over this trail or the one on the western coast.
-
-Sometimes this high-road of commerce was cut through the living rock
-in steps as even and sharp as those in front of a brownstone house on
-Fifth Avenue, and so narrow that we had to draw up our knees to keep
-them from being scratched and cut on the rough walls of the passageway,
-and again it led through jungle so dense that if one wandered three
-yards from the trail he could not have found his way back again; but
-this danger was not imminent, as no one could go that far from the
-trail without having first hacked and cut his way there.
-
-It was not always so difficult; at times we came out into bare open
-spaces, and rode up the dry bed of a mountain stream, and felt the full
-force of the sun, or again it led along a ledge of rock two feet wide
-at the edge of a precipice, and we were fanned with cool, damp breaths
-from the pit a thousand feet below, where the sun had never penetrated,
-and where the moss and fern of centuries grew in a thick, dark tangle.
-
-[Illustration: A DRAWER OF WATER]
-
-We stopped for our first meal at a bare place on the top of a mountain,
-where there were a half-dozen mud huts. Jeffs went from one to another
-of these and collected a few eggs, and hired a woman to cook them
-and to make us some coffee. We added tinned things and bread to this
-luncheon, which, as there were no benches, we ate seated on the
-ground, kicking at the dogs and pigs and chickens, that snatched in a
-most familiar manner at the food in our hands. In Honduras there are
-so few hotels that travellers are entirely dependent for food and for
-a place in which to sleep upon the people who live along the trail,
-who are apparently quite hardened to having their homes invaded by
-strangers, and their larders levied upon at any hour of the day or
-night.
-
-Even in the larger towns and so-called cities we slept in private
-houses, and on the solitary occasion when we were directed to a hotel
-we found a bare room with a pile of canvas cots heaped in one corner,
-to which we were told to help ourselves. There was a real hotel,
-and a very bad one, at the capital, where we fared much worse than
-we had often done in the interior; but with these two exceptions we
-were dependent for shelter during our entire trip across Honduras
-upon the people of the country. Sometimes they sent us to sleep in
-the town-hall, which was a large hut with a mud floor, and furnished
-with a blackboard and a row of-benches, and sometimes with stocks for
-prisoners; for it served as a school or prison or hotel, according to
-the needs of the occasion.
-
-We were equally dependent upon the natives for our food. We carried
-breakfast bacon and condensed milk and sardines and bread with us, and
-to these we were generally able to add, at least once a day, coffee
-and eggs and beans. The national bread is the tortilla. It is made of
-cornmeal, patted into the shape of a buckwheat cake between the palms
-of the hands, and then baked. They were generally given to us cold,
-in a huge pile, and were burned on both sides, but untouched by heat
-in the centre. The coffee was always excellent, as it should have
-been, for the Honduranian coffee is as fine as any grown in Central
-America, and we never had too much of it; but of eggs and black beans
-there was no end. The black-bean habit in Honduras is very general;
-they gave them to us three times a day, sometimes cold and sometimes
-hot, sometimes with bacon and sometimes alone. They were frequently
-served to us in the shape of sandwiches between tortillas, and again
-in the form of pudding with chopped-up goat’s meat. At first, and
-when they were served hot, I used to think them delicious. That seems
-very long ago now. When I was at Johnstown at the time of the flood,
-there was a soda cracker, with jam inside, which was served out to
-the correspondents in place of bread; and even now, if it became a
-question of my having to subsist on those crackers, and the black
-beans of Central America, or starve, I am sure I should starve, and by
-preference.
-
-We were naturally embarrassed at first when we walked into strange
-huts; but the owners seemed to take such invasions with apathy and as
-a matter of course, and were neither glad to see us when we came, nor
-relieved when we departed. They asked various prices for what they gave
-us--about twice as much as they would have asked a native for the same
-service; at least, so Jeffs told us; but as our bill never amounted
-to more than fifty cents apiece for supper, lodging, and a breakfast
-the next morning, they cannot be said to have robbed us. While the
-woman at the first place at which we stopped boiled the eggs, her
-husband industriously whittled a lot of sharp little sticks, which he
-distributed among us, and the use of which we could not imagine, until
-we were told we were expected to spike holes in the eggs with them,
-and then suck out the meat. We did not make a success of this, and our
-prejudice against eating eggs after that fashion was such that we were
-particular to ask to have them fried during the rest of our trip. This
-was the only occasion when I saw a Honduranian husband help his wife to
-work.
-
-After our breakfast on the top of the mountain, we began its descent
-on the other side. This was much harder on the mules than the climbing
-had been, and they stepped even more slowly, and so gave us many
-opportunities to look out over the tops of trees and observe with some
-misgivings the efforts of the man in front to balance the mule by lying
-flat on its hind-quarters. The temptation at such times to sit upright
-and see into what depths you were going next was very great. We struck
-a level trail about six in the evening, and the mules were so delighted
-at this that they started off of their own accord at a gallop, and
-were further encouraged by our calling them by the names of different
-Spanish generals. This inspired them to such a degree that we had to
-change their names to Bob Ingersoll or Senator Hill, or others to the
-same effect, at which they grew discouraged and drooped perceptibly.
-
-We slept that night at a ranch called La Pieta, belonging to Dr. Miguel
-Pazo, where we experimented for the first time with our hammocks, and
-tried to grow accustomed to going to bed under the eyes of a large
-household of Indian maidens, mosos, and cowboys. There are men who will
-tell you that they like to sleep in a hammock, just as there are men
-who will tell you that they like the sea best when it is rough, and
-that they are happiest when the ship is throwing them against the sides
-and superstructure, and when they cannot sit still without bracing
-their legs against tables and stanchions. I always want to ask such men
-if they would prefer land in a state of perpetual earthquake, or in its
-normal condition of steadiness, and I have always been delighted to
-hear sea-captains declare themselves best pleased with a level keel,
-and the chance it gives them to go about their work without having to
-hang on to hand-rails. And I had a feeling of equal satisfaction when
-I saw as many sailors as could find room sleeping on the hard deck
-of a man-of-war at Colon, in preference to suspending themselves in
-hammocks, which were swinging empty over their heads. The hammock keeps
-a man at an angle of forty-five degrees, with the weight of both his
-legs and his body on the base of the spinal column, which gets no rest
-in consequence.
-
-The hammock is, however, almost universally used in Honduras, and is
-a necessity there on account of the insects and ants and other beasts
-that climb up the legs of cots and inhabit the land. But the cots of
-bull-hide stretched on ropes are, in spite of the insects, greatly to
-be preferred; they are at least flat, and one can lie on them without
-having his legs three feet higher than his head. Their manufacture
-is very simple. When a steer is killed its hide is pegged out on the
-ground, and left where the dogs can eat what flesh still adheres to it;
-and when it has been cleaned after this fashion and the sun has dried
-it, ropes of rawhide are run through its edges, and it is bound to a
-wooden frame with the hairy side up. It makes a cool, hard bed. In the
-poorer huts the hides are given to the children at night, and spread
-directly on the earth floor. During the day the same hides are used to
-hold the coffee, which is piled high upon them and placed in the sun to
-dry.
-
-We left La Pieta early the next morning, in the bright sunlight,
-but instead of climbing laboriously into the sombre mountains of
-the day before, we trotted briskly along a level path between sunny
-fields and delicate plants, and trees with a pale-green foliage,
-and covered with the most beautiful white-and-purple flowers. There
-were hundreds of doves in the air, and in the bushes many birds of
-brilliant blue-and-black or orange-and-scarlet plumage, and one of
-more sober colors with two long white tail-feathers and a white crest,
-like a macaw that had turned Quaker. None of these showed the least
-inclination to disturb himself as we approached. An hour after our
-setting forth we plunged into a forest of manacca-palms, through which
-we rode the rest of the morning. This was the most beautiful and
-wonderful experience of our journey. The manacca-palm differs from the
-cocoanut or royal palm in that its branches seem to rise directly from
-the earth, and not to sprout, as do the others, from the top of a tall
-trunk. Each branch has a single stem, and the leaf spreads and falls
-from either side of this, cut into even blades, like a giant fern.
-
-[Illustration: NATIVE METHOD OF DRYING COFFEE]
-
-There is a plant that looks like the manacca-palm at home which you
-see in flower-pots in the corners of drawing-rooms at weddings, and
-consequently when we saw the real manacca-palm the effect was
-curious. It did not seem as though they were monster specimens of
-these little plants in the States, but as though we had grown smaller.
-We felt dwarfed, as though we had come across a rose-bush as large
-as a tree. The branches of these palms were sixty feet high, and
-occasionally six feet broad, and bent and swayed and interlaced in the
-most graceful and exquisite confusion. Every blade trembled in the air,
-and for hours we heard no other sound save their perpetual murmur and
-rustle. Not even the hoofs of our mules gave a sound, for they trod
-on the dead leaves of centuries. The palms made a natural archway for
-us, and the leaves hung like a portière across the path, and you would
-see the man riding in front raise his arm and push the long blades
-to either side, and disappear as they fell again into place behind
-him. It was like a scene on the tropical island of a pantomime, where
-everything is exaggerated both in size and in beauty. It made you think
-of a giant aquarium or conservatory which had been long neglected.
-
-At every hundred yards or so there were giant trees with smooth
-gray trunks, as even and regular as marble, and with roots like
-flying-buttresses, a foot in thickness, and reaching from ten to
-fifteen feet up from the ground. If these flanges had been covered
-over, a man on muleback could have taken refuge between them. Some
-of the trunks of these trees were covered with intricate lace-work
-of a parasite which twisted in and out, and which looked as though
-thousands of snakes were crawling over the white surface of the tree;
-they were so much like snakes that one passed beneath them with an
-uneasy shrug. Hundreds of orchids clung to the branches of the trees,
-and from these stouter limbs to the more pliable branches of the palms
-below white-faced monkeys sprang and swung from tree to tree, running
-along the branches until they bent with the weight like a trout-rod,
-and sprang upright again with a sweep and rush as the monkeys leaped
-off chattering into the depths of the forest. We rode through this
-enchanted wilderness of wavering sunlight and damp, green shadows for
-the greater part of the day, and came out finally into a broad, open
-plain, cut up by little bubbling streams, flashing brilliantly in the
-sun. It was like an awakening from a strange and beautiful nightmare.
-
-[Illustration: IN A CENTRAL-AMERICAN FOREST]
-
-In the early part of the afternoon we arrived at another one of the
-farm-houses belonging to young Dr. Pazo, and at which he and his
-brother happened to be stopping. We had ridden out of our way there
-in the hopes of obtaining a few days’ shooting, and the place seemed
-to promise much sport. The Chamelicon River, filled with fish and
-alligators, ran within fifty yards of the house; and great forests, in
-which there were bear and deer and wild-pig, stretched around it
-and beyond it on every side. The house itself was like almost every
-other native hut in Honduras. They are all built very much alike, with
-no attempt at ornamentation within, or landscape-gardening without,
-although nature has furnished the most beautiful of plants and trees
-close on every side for just such a purpose. The walls of a Honduranian
-hut are made of mud packed round a skeleton of interwoven rods; the
-floor is of the naked earth, and the roof is thatched with the branches
-of palms. After the house is finished, all of the green stuff growing
-around and about it is cleared away for fifty yards or so, leaving
-an open place of bare and barren mud. This is not decorative, but it
-helps in some measure to keep the insects which cling to every green
-thing away from the house. A kitchen of similarly interlaced rods and
-twigs, but without the clay, and covered with just such layers of palm
-leaves, stands on the bare place near the house, or leans against one
-side of it. This is where the tortillas are patted and baked, and the
-rice and beans are boiled, and the raw meat of an occasional goat or
-pig is hung to dry and smoke over the fire. The oven in the kitchen is
-made of baked clay, and you seldom see any cooking utensils or dishes
-that have not been manufactured from the trees near the house or the
-earth beneath it. The water for drinking and cooking is kept in round
-jars of red clay, which stand in rings of twisted twigs to keep them
-upright, and the drinking-vessels are the halves of gourds, and the
-ladles are whole gourds, with the branch on which they grew still
-adhering to them, to serve as a handle.
-
-The furnishing of the house shows the same dependence upon nature; the
-beds are either grass hammocks or the rawhide that I have described,
-and there are no chairs and few benches, the people preferring
-apparently to eat sitting on their haunches to taking the trouble
-necessary to make a chair. Everything they eat, of which there is very
-little variety, grows just beyond the cleared place around the hut,
-and can be had at the cost of the little energy necessary to bring it
-in-doors. When a kid or a pig or a steer is killed, the owner goes out
-to the nearest peak and blows a blast on a cow’s horn, and those within
-hearing who wish fresh meat hurry across the mountain to purchase it.
-As there is no ice from one end of Honduras to the other, meat has to
-be eaten the day it is killed.
-
-This is not the life of the Honduranians who live in the large towns or
-so-called cities, where there are varying approaches to the comfort of
-civilized countries, but of the country people with whom we had chiefly
-to do. It is as near an approach to the condition of primitive man as
-one can find on this continent.
-
-But bare and poor as are the houses, which are bare not because the
-people are poor, but because they are indolent, there is almost
-invariably some corner of the hut set aside and ornamented as an altar,
-or some part of the wall covered with pictures of a religious meaning.
-When they have no table, the people use a shelf or the stump of a
-tree upon which to place emblematic figures, which are almost always
-china dolls, with no original religious significance, but which they
-have dressed in little scraps of tinsel and silk, and which they have
-surrounded with sardine-tins and empty bottles and pictures from the
-lids of cigar-boxes. Everything that has color is cherished, and every
-traveller who passes adds unconsciously to their stock of ornaments in
-the wrappings of the boxes which he casts away behind him. Sometimes
-the pictures they use for ornamentation are not half so odd as the
-fact that they ever should have reached such a wilderness. We were
-frequently startled by the sight of colored lithographs of theatrical
-stars, advertising the fact that they were playing under the direction
-of such and such a manager, and patent-medicine advertisements and
-wood-cuts from illustrated papers, some of them twenty and thirty years
-old, which were pinned to the mud walls and reverenced as gravely as
-though they had been pictures of the Holy Family by a Raphael or a
-Murillo.
-
-In one hut we found a life-size colored lithograph of a woman whom,
-it so happened, we all knew, which was being used to advertise a
-sewing-machine. We were so pleased at meeting a familiar face so far
-from home that we bowed to it very politely, and took off our hats, at
-which the woman of the house, mistaking our deference, placed it over
-the altar, fearing that she had been entertaining an angel unawares.
-
-The house of Dr. Pazo, where we were most hospitably entertained, was
-similar to those that I have described. It was not his home, but what
-we would call a hunting-box or a ranch. While we were at luncheon he
-told a boy to see if there were any alligators in sight, in exactly
-the same tone with which he might have told a servant to find out if
-the lawn-tennis net were in place. The boy returned to say that there
-were five within a hundred yards of the house. So, after we had as
-usual patiently waited for Griscom to finish his coffee, we went out
-on the bank and fired at the unhappy alligators for the remainder of
-the afternoon. It did not seem to hurt them very much, and certainly
-did us a great deal of good. To kill an alligator it is necessary to
-hit it back of the fore-leg, or to break its spine where it joins the
-tail; and as it floats with only its eyes and a half-inch of its nose
-exposed, it is difficult to reach either of these vital spots. When the
-alligator is on a bank, and you attempt to crawl up on it along the
-opposite bank, the birds make such a noise, either on its account or on
-their own, that it takes alarm, and rolls over into the water with an
-abruptness you would hardly expect from so large a body.
-
-On our second day at Dr. Pazo’s ranch we divided into two parties, and
-scoured the wilderness for ten miles around after game. One party was
-armed with shot-guns, and brought back macaws of wonderful plumage,
-wild turkeys, and quail in abundance; the others, scorning anything
-but big game, carried rifles, and, as a result, returned as they set
-forth, only with fewer cartridges. It was most unfortunate that the
-only thing worth shooting came to me. It was a wild-cat with a long
-tail, who patiently waited for us in an open place with a calm and
-curious expression of countenance. I think I was more surprised than he
-was, and even after I had thrown up the ground under his white belly he
-stopped and turned again to look at me in a hurt and reproachful manner
-before he bounded gracefully out of sight into the underbrush. We also
-saw a small bear, but he escaped in the same manner, without waiting
-to be fired upon, and as we had no dogs to send after him, we gave up
-looking for more, and went back to pot at alligators. There were some
-excellent hunting-dogs on the ranch, but the Pazo brothers had killed a
-steer the night we arrived, and had given most of it to the dogs, so
-that in the morning they were naturally in no mood for hunting.
-
-There was an old grandfather of an alligator whom Somerset and I had
-repeatedly disturbed in his slumbers. He liked to take his siestas on
-a little island entirely surrounded by rapids, and we used to shoot at
-him from the opposite bank of the river. He was about thirteen feet
-long, and the agility with which he would flop over into the calm
-little bay, which stretched out from the point on which he slept, was
-as remarkable as it was disappointing. He was still asleep at his
-old stand when we returned from our unsuccessful shooting tour, so
-we decided to swim the rapids and crawl up on him across his little
-island and attack him from the flank and rear. It reminded me somewhat
-of the taking of Lungtenpen on a small scale. On that occasion, if I
-remember correctly, the raw recruits were uniformed only in Martinis
-and cartridge-belts; but we decided to carry our boots as well, because
-the alligator’s island was covered with sharp stones and briers, and
-the sand was very hot, and, moreover, we had but vague ideas about the
-customs of alligators, and were not sure as to whether he might not
-chase us. We thought we would look very silly running around a little
-island pursued by a long crocodile and treading on sharp hot stones in
-our bare feet.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE TRAIL TO SANTA BARBARA]
-
-So each of us took his boots in one hand and a repeating-rifle in the
-other, and with his money-belt firmly wrapped around his neck, plunged
-into the rapids and started to ford the river. They were exceedingly
-swift rapids, and made you feel as though you were swinging round a
-sharp corner on a cable-car with no strap by which to take hold. The
-only times I could stop at all was when I jammed my feet in between two
-stones at the bed of the river, and was so held in a vise, while the
-rest of my body swayed about in the current and my boots scooped up
-the water. When I wanted to go farther I would stick my toes between
-two more rocks, and so gradually worked my way across, but I could
-see nothing of Somerset, and decided that he had been drowned, and
-went off to avenge him on the alligator. It took me some time to get
-my bruised and bleeding toes into the wet boots, during which time I
-kept continually looking over my shoulder to see if the alligator were
-going to make a land attack, and surprise me instead of my surprising
-him. I knew he was very near me, for the island smelled as strongly of
-musk as a cigar-shop smells of tobacco; but when I crawled up on him
-he was still on his point of sand, and sound asleep. I had a very good
-chance at seventy yards, but I was greedy, and wanted to come closer,
-and as I was crawling along, gathering thorns and briers by the way,
-I startled about fifty birds, and the alligator flopped over again,
-and left nothing behind him but a few tracks on the land and a muddy
-streak in the water. It was a great deal of trouble for a very little
-of alligator; but I was more or less consoled on my return to find that
-Somerset was still alive, and seated on the same bank from which we had
-both started, though at a point fifty yards farther down-stream. He was
-engaged in counting out damp Bank-of-England notes on his bare knee,
-and blowing occasional blasts down the barrel of his rifle, which had
-dragged him and itself to the bottom of the river before the current
-tossed them both back on the shore.
-
-[Illustration: A HALT AT TRINIDAD]
-
-The two days of rest at the ranch of Dr. Pazo had an enervating effect
-upon our mules, and they moved along so slowly on the day following
-that we had to feel our way through the night for several hours before
-we came to the hut where we were to sleep. Griscom and I had lost
-ourselves on the mountain-side, and did not overtake the others until
-long after they had settled themselves in the compound. They had been
-too tired when they reached it to do anything more after falling off
-their mules, and we found them stretched on the ground in the light of
-a couple of fluttering pine torches, with cameras and saddle-bags and
-carbines scattered recklessly about, and the mules walking over them
-in the darkness. A fire in the oven shone through the chinks in the
-kitchen wall, and showed the woman of the house stirring something
-in a caldron with one hand and holding her sleeping child on her hip
-with the other, while the daughters moved in and out of the shadow,
-carrying jars on their heads and bundles of fodder for the animals. It
-looked like a gypsy encampment. We sent Emilio back with a bunch of
-pine torches to find the pack-mules, and we could see his lighted torch
-blazing far up the trail that we had just descended, and lighting the
-rocks and trees on either side of him.
-
-There was only room for one of us to sleep inside the hut that night,
-and as Griscom had a cold, that privilege was given to him; but it
-availed him little, for when he seated himself on the edge of the
-bull-hide cot and began to pull off his boots, five ghostly feminine
-figures sat upright in their hammocks and studied his preparations with
-the most innocent but embarrassing curiosity. So, after waiting some
-little time for them to go to sleep again, he gave up any thought of
-making himself more comfortable, and slept in his boots and spurs.
-
-We passed through the pretty village of Trinidad early the next
-morning, and arrived at nightfall at the larger town of Santa Barbara,
-where the sound of our mules’ hoofs pattering over the paved streets
-and the smell of smoking street lamps came to us with as much of a
-shock as does the sight of land after a week at sea. Santa Barbara, in
-spite of its pavements, was not a great metropolis, and, owing to its
-isolation, the advent of five strangers was so much of an event that
-the children of the town followed us, cheering and jeering as though
-we were a circus procession; they blocked the house in which we took
-refuge, on every side, so that the native policemen had to be stationed
-at our windows to wave them away. On the following morning we called
-to pay our respects on General Louis Bogran, who has been President of
-Honduras for eight years and an exile for two. He died a few months
-after our visit. He was a very handsome man, with a fine presence, and
-with great dignity of manner, and he gave us an audience exactly as
-though he were a dethroned monarch and we loyal subjects come to pay
-him homage in his loneliness. I asked him what he regarded as the best
-work of his administration, and after thinking awhile he answered,
-“Peace for eight years,” which was rather happy, when you consider
-that in the three years since he had left office there have been four
-presidents and two long and serious revolutions, and when we were in
-the capital the people seemed to think it was about time to begin on
-another.
-
-[Illustration: GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN]
-
-We left Santa Barbara early the next morning, and rode over a few more
-mountains to the town of Seguaca, where the village priest was holding
-a festival, and where the natives for many miles around had gathered in
-consequence. There did not seem to be much of interest going on when we
-arrived, for the people of the town and the visitors within her gates
-deserted the booths and followed us in a long procession down the
-single street, and invaded the house where we lunched.
-
-Our host on this occasion set a table for us in the centre of his
-largest room, and the population moved in through the doors and
-windows, and seated themselves cross-legged in rows ten and fifteen
-deep on the earth floor at our feet, and regarded us gravely and in
-absolute silence. Those who could not find standing-room inside stood
-on the window-sills and blocked the doorways, and the women were given
-places of honor on tables and beds. It was somewhat embarrassing,
-and we felt as though we ought to offer something more unusual than
-the mere exercise of eating in order to justify such interest; so
-we attempted various parlor tricks, without appearing to notice the
-presence of an audience, and pretended to swallow the eggs whole, and
-made knives and forks disappear in the air, and drew silver dollars
-from the legs of the table, continuing our luncheon in the meantime
-in a self-possessed and polite manner, as though such eccentricities
-were our hourly habit. We could see the audience, out of the corner of
-our eyes, leaning forward with their eyes and mouths wide open, and
-were so encouraged that we called up some of the boys and drew watches
-and dollars out of their heads, after which they retired into corners
-and ransacked their scantily clad persons for more. It was rather an
-expensive exhibition, for when we set forth again they all laid
-claim to the dollars of which they considered they had been robbed.
-
-[Illustration: OUR PACK-TRAIN AT SANTA BARBARA]
-
-The men of the place, according to their courteous custom, followed
-us out of the town for a few miles, and then we all shook hands and
-exchanged cigars and cigarettes, and separated with many compliments
-and expressions of high esteem.
-
-The trail from Seguaca to our next resting-place led through pine
-forests and over layers of pine-needles that had been accumulating for
-years. It was a very warm, dry afternoon, and the air was filled with
-the odor of the pines, and when we came to one of the many mountain
-streams we disobeyed Jeffs and stopped to bathe in it, and let it carry
-us down the side of the mountain with the speed of a toboggan. We had
-been told that bathing at any time was extremely dangerous in Honduras,
-and especially so in the afternoon; but we always bathed in the
-afternoon, and looked forward to the half-hour spent in one of these
-roaring rapids as the best part of the day. Of all our recollections
-of Honduras, they are certainly the pleasantest. The water was almost
-icily cold, and fell with a rush and a heavy downpour in little
-water-falls, or between great crevices in the solid rocks, leaping and
-bubbling and flashing in the sun, or else sweeping in swift eddies in
-the compass of deep, shadowy pools. We used to imprison ourselves
-between two rocks and let a fall of water strike us from the distance
-of several feet on our head and shoulders, or tear past and around us,
-so that in five minutes the soreness and stiffness of the day’s ride
-were rubbed out of us as completely as though we had been massaged at
-a Turkish bath, and the fact that we were always bruised and black and
-blue when we came out could not break us of this habit. It was probably
-because we were new to the country that we suffered no great harm;
-for Jeffs, who was an old inhabitant, and who had joined us in this
-particular stream for the first time, came out looking twenty years
-older, and in an hour his teeth were chattering with chills or clinched
-with fever, and his pulse was jumping at one hundred and three. We were
-then exactly six days’ hard riding from any civilized place, and though
-we gave him quinine and whiskey and put him into his hammock as soon
-as we reached a hut, the evening is not a cheerful one to remember. It
-would not have been a cheerful evening under any circumstances, for we
-shared the hut with the largest and most varied collection of human
-beings, animals, and insects that I have ever seen gathered into so
-small a place.
-
-I took an account of stock before I turned in, and found that there
-were three dogs, eleven cats, seven children, five men, not including
-five of us, three women, and a dozen chickens, all sleeping, or trying
-to sleep, in the same room, under the one roof. And when I gave up
-attempting to sleep and wandered out into the night, I stepped on the
-pigs, and startled three or four calves that had been sleeping under
-the porch and that lunged up out of the darkness. We were always asking
-Jeffs why we slept in such places, instead of swinging our hammocks
-under the trees and camping out decently and in order, and his answer
-was that while there were insects enough in-doors, they were virtually
-an extinct species when compared to the number one would meet in the
-open air.
-
-I have camped in our West, where all you need is a blanket to lie upon
-and another to wrap around you, and a saddle for a pillow, and where,
-with a smouldering fire at your feet, you can sleep without thought
-of insects. But there is nothing green that grows in Honduras that is
-not saturated and alive with bugs, and all manner of things that creep
-and crawl and sting and bite. It transcends mere discomfort; it is an
-absolute curse to the country, and to every one in it, and it would
-be as absurd to write of Honduras without dwelling on the insects, as
-of the west coast of Africa without speaking of the fever. You cannot
-sit on the grass or on a fallen tree, or walk under an upright one or
-through the bushes, without hundreds of some sort of animal or other
-attaching themselves to your clothing or to your person. And if you
-get down from your mule to take a shot at something in the bushes and
-walk but twenty feet into them, you have to be beaten with brushes and
-rods when you come out again as vigorously as though you were a dusty
-carpet. There will be sometimes as many as a hundred insects under one
-leaf; and after they have once laid their claws upon you, your life is
-a mockery, and you feel at night as though you were sleeping in a bed
-with red pepper. The mules have even a harder time of it; for, as if
-they did not suffer enough in the day, they are in constant danger at
-night from vampires, which fasten themselves to the neck and suck out
-the blood, leaving them so weak that often when we came to saddle them
-in the morning they would stagger and almost fall. Sometimes the side
-of their head and shoulders would be wet with their own blood. I never
-heard of a vampire attacking a man in that country, but the fact that
-they are in the air does not make one sleep any the sounder.
-
-In the morning after our night with the varied collection of men and
-animals we put back again to the direct trail to Tegucigalpa, from
-which place we were still distant a seven days’ ride.
-
-
-II
-
-We swung our hammocks on the sixth night out in the municipal building
-of Tabla Ve; but there was little sleep. Towards morning the night
-turned bitterly cold, and the dampness rose from the earthen floor of
-the hut like a breath from the open door of a refrigerator, and kept us
-shivering in spite of sweaters and rubber blankets. Above, the moon and
-stars shone brilliantly in a clear sky, but down in the valley in which
-the village lay, a mist as thick as the white smoke of a locomotive
-rose out of the ground to the level of the house-tops, and hid Tabla
-Ve as completely as though it were at the bottom of a lake. The dogs
-of the village moved through the mist, howling dismally, and meeting
-to fight with a sudden sharp tumult of yells that made us start up in
-our hammocks and stare at each other sleepily, while Jeffs rambled on,
-muttering and moaning in his fever. It was not a pleasant night, and we
-rode up the mountain-side out of the mist the next morning unrefreshed,
-but satisfied to be once more in the sunlight. They had told us at
-Tabla Ve that there was to be a bull-baiting that same afternoon at
-the village of Seguatepec, fifteen miles over the mountain, where a
-priest was holding a church festival. So we left Jeffs to push along
-with the mozos, and by riding as fast as the mules could go, we reached
-Seguatepec by four in the afternoon.
-
-[Illustration: A VILLAGE IN THE INTERIOR]
-
-It was a bright, clean town, sitting pertly on the flat top of a hill
-that fell away from it evenly on every side. It had a little church and
-a little plaza, and the church was so vastly superior to every other
-house in the place--as was the case in every village through which we
-passed--as to make one suppose that it had been built by one race of
-people and the houses by another. The plaza was shut in on two of its
-sides by a barrier seven rails high, held together by ox-hide ropes.
-This barrier, with the houses fronting the plaza on its two other
-sides, formed the arena in which the bull was to be set at liberty.
-All of the windows and a few of the doors of the houses were barred,
-and the open places between were filled up by ramparts of logs. There
-was no grand-stand, but every one contributed a bench or a table from
-his own house, and the women seated themselves on these, while the men
-and boys perched on the upper rail of the barricade. The occasion was
-a memorable one, and all the houses were hung with strips of colored
-linen, and the women wore their brilliant silk shawls, and a band of
-fifteen boys, none of whom could have been over sixteen years of age,
-played a weird overture to the desperate business of the afternoon.
-
-It was a somewhat primitive and informal bull-fight, and it began with
-their lassoing the bull by his horns and hoofs, and dragging him head
-first against the barricade. With a dozen men pulling on the lariat
-around the horns from the outside of the ring, and two more twisting
-his tail on the inside, he was at such an uncomfortable disadvantage
-that it was easy for them to harness him in a net-work of lariats,
-and for a bold rider to seat himself on his back. The bold rider wore
-spurs on his bare feet, and, with his toes stuck in the ropes around
-the bull’s body, he grasped the same ropes with one hand, and with the
-other hand behind him held on to the bull’s tail as a man holds the
-tiller of a boat. When the man felt himself firmly fixed, and the bull
-had been poked into a very bad temper with spears and sharp sticks, the
-lariat around his horns was cut, and he started up and off on a frantic
-gallop, bucking as vigorously as a Texas pony, and trying to gore the
-man clinging to his back with backward tosses of his horns.
-
-There was no regular toreador, and any one who desired to sacrifice
-himself to make a Saguatepecan holiday was at liberty to do so; and
-as a half-dozen men so sought distinction, and as the bull charged
-at anything on two legs, the excitement was intense. He moved very
-quickly for so huge an animal in spite of his heavy handicap, and, with
-the exception of one man with a red flag and a spirit of daring not
-entirely due to natural causes, no one cared to go very near him. So
-he pawed up and down the ring, tossing and bucking and making himself
-as disagreeable to the man on his back as he possibly could. It struck
-me that it would be a distinctly sporting act to photograph a bull
-while he was charging head on at the photographer, and it occurred to
-Somerset and Griscom at about the same time that it would be pleasant
-to confront a very mad bull while he was careering about with a man
-twisting his tail. So we all dropped into the arena at about the same
-moment, from different sides, and as we were gringos, our appearance
-was hailed with laughter and yells of encouragement. The gentleman on
-the bull seemed to be able to control him more or less by twisting his
-tail to one side or the other, and as soon as he heard the shouts that
-welcomed us he endeavored to direct the bull’s entire attention to my
-two young friends. Griscom and Somerset are six feet high, even without
-riding-boots and pith helmets, and with them they were so conspicuous
-that the bull was properly incensed, and made them hurl themselves over
-the barricade in such haste that they struck the ground on the other
-side at about the same instant that he butted the rails, and with about
-the same amount of force.
-
-Shrieks and yells of delight rose from the natives at this delightful
-spectacle, and it was generally understood that we had been engaged
-to perform in our odd costumes for their special amusement, and the
-village priest attained genuine popularity for this novel feature. The
-bull-baiting continued for some time, and as I kept the camera in my
-own hands, there is no documentary evidence to show that any one ran
-away but Griscom and Somerset. Friendly doors were opened to us by
-those natives whose houses formed part of the arena, and it was amusing
-to see the toreadors popping in and out of them, like the little man
-and woman on the barometer who come out when it rains and go in when
-the sun shines, and _vice versa_.
-
-On those frequent occasions when the bull charged the barricade, the
-entire line of men and boys on its topmost rail would go over backward,
-and disappear completely until the disappointed bull had charged madly
-off in another direction. Once he knocked half of a mud-house away in
-his efforts to follow a man through a doorway, and again a window-sill,
-over which a toreador had dived head first like a harlequin in a
-pantomime, caved in under the force of his attack. Fresh bulls followed
-the first, and the boy musicians maddened them still further by the
-most hideous noises, which only ceased when the bulls charged the fence
-upon which the musicians sat, and which they vacated precipitately,
-each taking up the tune where he had left off when his feet struck the
-ground. There was a grand ball that night, to which we did not go, but
-we lay awake listening to the fifteen boy musicians until two in the
-morning. It was an odd, eyrie sort of music, in which the pipings of
-the reed instruments predominated. But it was very beautiful, and very
-much like the music of the Hungarian gypsies in making little thrills
-chase up and down over one’s nervous system.
-
-The next morning Jeffs had shaken off his fever, and, once more
-reunited, we trotted on over heavily wooded hills, where we found no
-water until late in the afternoon, when we came upon a broad stream,
-and surprised a number of young girls in bathing, who retreated
-leisurely as we came clattering down to the ford. Bathing in mid-stream
-is a popular amusement in Honduras, and is conducted without any false
-sense of modesty; and judging from the number of times we came upon
-women so engaged, it seems to be the chief occupation of their day.
-
-That night we slept in Comyagua, the second largest city in the
-republic. It was originally selected as the site for a capital, and
-situated accordingly at exactly even distances from the Pacific Ocean
-and the Caribbean Sea. We found it a dull and desolate place of many
-one-story houses, with iron-barred windows, and a great, bare, dusty
-plaza, faced by a huge cathedral. Commerce seemed to have passed it
-by, and the sixty thousand inhabitants who occupied it in the days of
-the Spaniards have dwindled down to ten. The place is as completely
-cut off from civilization as an island in the Pacific Ocean. The plain
-upon which Comyagua stands stretches for many miles, and the nature of
-the stones and pebbles on its surface would seem to show that it was
-once the bottom of a great lake. Now its round pebbles and sandy soil
-make it a valley of burning heat, into which the sun beats without the
-intervening shadows of trees or mountains to save the traveller from
-the fierceness of its rays.
-
-We rode over thirty miles of it, and found that part of the plain which
-we traversed after our night’s rest at the capital the most trying ten
-miles of our trip. We rode out into it in the rear of a long funeral
-procession, in which the men and boys walked bareheaded and barefooted
-in the burning sand. They were marching to a burial-ground out in
-the plain, and they were carrying the coffin on their shoulders, and
-bearing before it a life-sized figure of the Virgin and many flaring
-candles that burned yellow in the glaring sunlight.
-
-From Comyagua the trail led for many miles through heavy sand, in which
-nothing seemed to grow but gigantic cacti of a sickly light green that
-twisted themselves in jointed angles fifteen to twenty feet in the air
-above us, and century-plants with flowers of a vivid yellow, and tall,
-leafless bushes bristling with thorns. The mountains lay on either
-side, and formed the valley through which we rode, two dark-green
-barriers against a blazing sky, but for miles before and behind us
-there was nothing to rest the eye from the glare of the sand. The
-atmosphere was without a particle of moisture, and the trail quivered
-and swam in the heat; if you placed your hand on the leather pommel
-of your saddle it burned the flesh like a plate of hot brass, and ten
-minutes after we had dipped our helmets in water they were baked as dry
-as when they had first come from the shop. The rays of the sun seemed
-to beat up at you from below as well as from above, and we gasped and
-panted as we rode, dodging and ducking our heads as though the sun was
-something alive and active that struck at us as we passed by. If you
-dared to look up at the sky its brilliancy blinded you as though some
-one had flashed a mirror in your eyes.
-
-We lunched at a village of ten huts planted defiantly in the open
-plain, and as little protected from the sun as a row of bricks in a
-brick-yard, but by lying between two of them we found a draught of
-hot air and shade, and so rested for an hour. Our trail after that
-led over a mile or two of red hematite ore, which suggested a ride
-in a rolling-mill with the roof taken away, and with the sun beating
-into the four walls, and the air filled with iron-dust. Two hours
-later we came to a cañon of white chalk, in which the government had
-cut stepping-places for the hoofs of the mules. The white glare in
-this valley was absolutely blinding, and the atmosphere was that of a
-lime-kiln. We showed several colors after this ride, with layers of
-sand and clay, and particles of red ore and powdering of white chalk
-over all; but by five o’clock we reached the mountains once more, and
-found a cool stream dashing into little water-falls and shaded by great
-trees, where the air was scented by the odor of pine-needles and the
-damp, spongy breath of moss and fern.
-
-[Illustration: BRIDGE CONNECTING TEGUCIGALPA WITH ITS SUBURB]
-
-We were now within two days of Tegucigalpa, and the sense of nearness
-to civilization and the knowledge that the greater part of our journey
-was at an end made us forget the discomforts and hardships which we had
-endured without the consolation of excitement that comes with danger,
-or the comforting thought that we were accomplishing anything in the
-meantime. We had been complaining of this during the day to Jeffs, and
-saying that had we gone to the coast of East Africa we could not have
-been more uncomfortable nor run greater risks from fever, but that
-there we would have met with big game, and we would have visited the
-most picturesque instead of the least interesting of all countries.
-
-These complaints inspired Jeffs to play a trick upon us, which was
-meant in a kindly spirit, and by which he intended to furnish us with a
-moment’s excitement, and to make us believe that we had been in touch
-with danger. There are occasional brigands in Central America, and
-their favorite hunting-ground in Honduras is within a few miles of
-Tegucigalpa, along the trail from the eastern coast over which we were
-then passing. We had been warned of these men, and it occurred to Jeffs
-that as we complained of lack of excitement in our trip, it would be
-a thoughtful kindness to turn brigand and hold us up upon our march.
-So he left us still bathing at the water-fall, and telling us that he
-would push on to engage quarters for the night, rode some distance
-ahead and secreted himself behind a huge rock on one side of a narrow
-cañon. He first placed his coat on a bush beside him, and his hat on
-another bush, so as to make it appear that there were several men with
-him. His idea was that when he challenged us we would see the dim
-figures in the moonlight and remember the brigands, and that we were
-in their stalking-ground, and get out of their clutches as quickly as
-possible, well satisfied that we had at last met with a real adventure.
-
-We reached his ambuscade about seven. Somerset was riding in advance,
-reciting “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” while we were correcting him
-when he went wrong, and gazing unconcernedly and happily at the cool
-moonlight as it came through the trees, when we were suddenly startled
-by a yell and an order to halt, in Spanish, and a rapid fusillade of
-pistol-shots. We could distinguish nothing but what was apparently
-the figures of three men crouching on the hill-side and the flashes of
-their revolvers, so we all fell off our mules and began banging away at
-them with our rifles, while the mules scampered off down the mountain.
-This was not as Jeffs had planned it, and he had to rearrange matters
-very rapidly. Bullets were cutting away twigs all over the hill-side
-and splashing on the rock behind which he was now lying, and though he
-might have known we could not hit him, he was afraid of a stray bullet.
-So he yelled at us in English, and called us by name, until we finally
-discovered we had been grossly deceived and imposed upon, and that our
-adventure was a very unsatisfactory practical joke for all concerned.
-It took us a long time to round up the mules, and we reached our
-sleeping-place in grim silence, and with our desire for danger still
-unsatisfied.
-
-[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TEGUCIGALPA]
-
-The last leagues that separated us the next morning from Tegucigalpa
-seemed, of course, the longest in the entire journey. And so great
-was our desire to reach the capital before nightfall that we left
-the broader trail and scrambled down the side of the last mountain,
-dragging our mules after us, and slipping and sliding in dust and
-rolling stones to the tops of our boots. The city did not look inviting
-as we viewed it from above. It lay in a bare, dreary plain, surrounded
-by five hills that rose straight into the air, and that seemed to
-have been placed there for the special purpose of revolutionists,
-in order that they might the more exactly drop shot into the town at
-their feet. The hills were bare of verdure, and the landscape about
-the capital made each of us think of the country about Jerusalem. As
-none of us had ever seen Jerusalem, we foregathered and argued why this
-should be so, and decided that it was on account of the round rocks
-lying apart from one another, and low, bushy trees, and the red soil,
-and the flat roofs of the houses.
-
-[Illustration: THE BANK OF HONDURAS]
-
-The telegraph wire which extends across Honduras, swinging from trees
-and piercing long stretches of palm and jungle, had warned the foreign
-residents of the coming of Jeffs, and some of them rode out to make
-us welcome. Their greeting, and the sight of paved streets, and the
-passing of a band of music and a guard of soldiers in shoes and real
-uniform, seemed to promise much entertainment and possible comfort.
-But the hotel was a rude shock. We had sent word that we were coming,
-and we had looked forward eagerly to our first night in a level bed
-under clean linen; but when we arrived we were offered the choice
-of a room just vacated by a very ill man, who had left all of his
-medicines behind him, so that the place was unpleasantly suggestive of
-a hospital, or a very small room, in which there were three cots, and
-a layer of dirt over all so thick that I wrote my name with the finger
-of my riding-glove on the centre-table. The son of the proprietor saw
-this, and, being a kindly person and well disposed, dipped his arm in
-water and proceeded to rub it over the top of the table, using his
-sleeve as a wash-rag. So after that we gave up expecting anything
-pleasant, and were in consequence delightfully surprised when we came
-upon anything that savored of civilization.
-
-Tegucigalpa has an annex which lies on the opposite side of the river,
-and which is to the capital what Brooklyn is to New York. The river is
-not very wide nor very deep, and its course is impeded by broad, flat
-rocks. The washer-women of the two towns stand beside these all day
-knee-deep in the eddies and beat the stones with their twisted clubs
-of linen, so that their echo sounds above the roar of the river like
-the banging of shutters in the wind or the reports of pistols. This
-is the only suggestion of energy that the town furnishes. The other
-inhabitants seem surfeited with leisure and irritable with boredom.
-There are long, dark, cool shops of general merchandise, and a great
-cathedral and a pretty plaza, where the band plays at night and people
-circle in two rings, one going to the right and one going to the left,
-and there is the government palace and a big penitentiary, a university
-and a cemetery. But there is no color nor ornamentation nor light
-nor life nor bustle nor laughter. You do not hear people talking and
-calling to one another across the narrow streets of the place by day or
-serenading by night. Every one seems to go to bed at nine o’clock, and
-after that hour the city is as silent as its great graveyard, except
-when the boy policemen mark the hour with their whistles or the street
-dogs meet to fight.
-
-[Illustration: STATUE OF MORAZAN]
-
-The most interesting thing about the capital is the fact to which I
-have already alluded, that everything in it and pertaining to it that
-was not dug from the ground or fashioned from trees was carried to it
-on the backs of mules. The letter-boxes on the street corners had once
-been United States letter-boxes, and had later swung across the backs
-of donkeys. The gas-lamps and the iron railings of the parks, the few
-statues and busts in the public places, reached Tegucigalpa by the same
-means, and the great equestrian statue of Morazan the Liberator, in the
-plaza, was cast in Italy, and had been brought to Tegucigalpa in pieces
-before it was put together like a puzzle and placed in its present
-position to mark a glorious and victorious immortality. These things
-were not interesting in themselves, but it was interesting that they
-were there at all.
-
-On the second day after our arrival the vice-president, Luis Bonilla,
-who bears the same last name but is no near relation to President
-Bonilla, took the oath of office, and we saw the ceremony with the
-barefooted public in the reception-room of the palace. The hall was
-hung with lace curtains and papered with imitation marble, and the
-walls were decorated with crayon portraits of Honduranian presidents.
-Bogran was not among them, nor was Morazan. The former was missing
-because it was due to him that young Bonilla had been counted out
-when he first ran for the presidency three years ago, when he was
-thirty-three years old, and the portrait of the Liberator was
-being reframed, because Bonilla’s followers six months before had
-unintentionally shot holes through it when they were besieging the
-capital. The ceremony of swearing in the vice-president did not last
-long, and what impressed us most about it was the youth of the members
-of the cabinet and of the Supreme Court who delivered the oath of
-office. They belonged distinctly to the politician class as one sees
-it at home, and were young men of eloquent speech and elegant manners,
-in frock-coats and white ties. We came to know most of the president’s
-followers later, and found them hospitable to a degree, although
-they seemed hardly old enough or serious enough to hold place in the
-government of a republic, even so small a one as Honduras. What was
-most admirable about each of them was that he had fought and bled to
-obtain the office he held. That is hardly a better reason for giving
-out clerkships and cabinet portfolios than the reasons which obtain
-with us for distributing the spoils of office, but you cannot help
-feeling more respect for the man who has marched by the side of his
-leader through swamps and through jungle, who has starved on rice, who
-has slept in the bushes, and fought with a musket in his hand in open
-places, than for the fat and sleek gentlemen who keep open bar at the
-headquarters of their party organization, who organize marching clubs,
-and who by promises or by cash secure a certain amount of influence and
-a certain number of votes.
-
-[Illustration: P. Bonilla]
-
-They risk nothing but their money, and if their man fails to get in,
-their money is all they lose; but the Central-American politician has
-to show the faith that is in him by going out on the mountain-side
-and hacking his way to office with a naked machete in his hand, and
-if _his_ leader fails, he loses his life, with his back to a church
-wall, and looking into the eyes of a firing squad, or he digs his own
-grave by the side of the road, and stands at one end of it, covered
-with clay and sweat, and with the fear of death upon him, and takes
-his last look at the hot sun and the palms and the blue mountains,
-with the buzzards wheeling about him, and then shuts his eyes, and is
-toppled over into the grave, with a half-dozen bullets in his chest and
-stomach. That is what I should like to see happen to about half of our
-professional politicians at home. Then the other half might understand
-that holding a public office is a very serious business, and is not
-merely meant to furnish them with a livelihood and with places for
-their wives’ relations.
-
-[Illustration: GENERAL LUIS BOGRAN, EX-PRESIDENT]
-
-I saw several churches and cathedrals in Honduras with a row of
-bullet-holes in the front wall, about as high from the ground as a
-man’s chest, and an open grave by the road-side, which had been dug
-by the man who was to have occupied it. The sight gave us a vivid
-impression of the uncertainties of government in Central America.
-The man who dug this particular grave had been captured, with two
-companions, while they were hastening to rejoin their friends of
-the government party. His companions in misery were faint-hearted
-creatures, and thought it mattered but little, so long as they had to
-die, in what fashion they were buried. So they scooped out a few feet
-of earth with the tools their captors gave them, and stood up in the
-hollows they had made, and were shot back into them, dead; but the
-third man declared that he was not going to let his body lie so near
-the surface of the earth that the mules could kick his bones and the
-next heavy freshet wash them away. He accordingly dug leisurely and
-carefully to the depth of six feet, smoothing the sides and sharpening
-the corners, and while he was thus engaged at the bottom of the hole he
-heard yells and shots above him, and when he poked his head up over the
-edge of the grave he saw his own troops running down the mountain-side,
-and his enemies disappearing before them. He is still alive, and
-frequently rides by the hole in the road-side on his way to the
-capital. The story illustrates the advisability of doing what every one
-has to do in this world, even up to the very last minute, in a thorough
-and painstaking manner.
-
-There do not seem to be very many men killed in these revolutions,
-but the ruin they bring to the country while they last, and which
-continues after they are over, while the “outs” are getting up another
-revolution, is so serious that any sort of continued prosperity or
-progress is impossible. Native merchants will not order goods that may
-never reach them, and neither do the gringos care to make contracts
-with men who in six months may not only be out of office, but out of
-the country as well. Sometimes a revolution takes place, and half
-of the people of the country will not know of it until it has been
-put down or has succeeded; and again the revolution may spread to
-every boundary, and all the men at work on the high-roads and in the
-mines or on the plantations must stop work and turn to soldiering,
-and pack-mules are seized, the mail-carriers stopped, plantations
-are devastated, and forced loans are imposed upon those who live in
-cities, so that every one suffers more or less through every change
-of executive. During the last revolution Tegucigalpa was besieged for
-six months, and was not captured until most of the public buildings
-had been torn open by cannon from the hills around the town, and the
-dwelling-houses still show where bullets marked the mud and plaster of
-the walls or buried themselves in the wood-work. The dining-room of our
-hotel was ventilated by such openings, and we used to amuse ourselves
-by tracing the course of the bullets from the hole they had made at
-one side of the room to their resting-place in the other. The native
-Honduranian is not energetic, and, except in the palace, there has been
-but little effort made by the victors to cover up the traces of their
-bombardment. Every one we met had a different experience to relate, and
-pointed out where he was sitting when a particular hole appeared in the
-plaster before him, or at which street corner a shell fell and burst at
-his feet.
-
-[Illustration: BARRACKS AT TEGUCIGALPA AFTER THE ATTACK OF THE
-REVOLUTIONISTS]
-
-It follows, of course, that a government which is created by force of
-arms, and which holds itself in place by the same power of authority,
-cannot be a very just or a very liberal one, even if its members are
-honest, and the choice of a majority of the people, and properly in
-office in spite of the fact that they fought to get there, and not on
-account of it. Bonilla was undoubtedly at one time elected President of
-Honduras, although he did not gain the presidential chair until after
-he had thrown his country into war and had invaded it at the head of
-troops from the rival republic of Nicaragua.
-
-The Central-American cannot understand that when a bad man is
-elected to office legally it is better in the long-run that he should
-serve out his full term than that a better man should drive him out and
-defy the constitution. If he could be brought to comprehend that when
-the constitution says the president must serve four years that means
-four years, and not merely until some one is strong enough to overthrow
-him, it might make him more careful as to whom he elected to office in
-the first place. But the value of stability in government is something
-they cannot be made to understand. It is not in their power to see it,
-and the desire for change and revolution is born in the blood. They
-speak of a man as a “good revolutionist” just as we would speak of some
-one being a good pianist, or a good shot, or a good executive officer.
-It is a recognized calling, and the children grow up into fighters;
-and even those who have lived abroad, and who should have learned
-better, begin to plot and scheme as soon as they return to their old
-environment.
-
-In each company of soldiers in Honduras there are two or three little
-boys in uniform who act as couriers and messengers, and who are able,
-on account of their slight figure, to penetrate where a man would be
-seen and shot. One of the officers in the revolution of 1894 told me he
-had sent six of these boys, one after another, with despatches across
-an open plain which was being raked by the rifles of the enemy. And as
-each boy was killed as he crawled through the sage-brush the other boys
-begged of their colonel to let them be the next to go, jumping up and
-down around him and snapping their fingers like school-boys who want to
-attract the attention of their teacher.
-
-In the same revolution a young man of great promise and many
-acquirements, who had just returned from the States with two degrees
-from Columbia College, and who should have lived to turn his education
-to account in his own country, was killed with a rifle in his hand
-the third day after his arrival from New York. In that city he would
-probably have submitted cheerfully to any imposition of the law, and
-would have taken it quite as a matter of course had he been arrested
-for playing golf on Sunday, or for riding a bicycle at night without
-a lamp; but as soon as this graduate of Columbia smelled the powder
-floating on his native air he loaded a rifle, and sat out all day on
-the porch of his house taking chance shots at the revolutionists on
-the hill-side, until a chance shot ended him and his brilliant career
-forever. The pity of it is that so much good energy should be wasted in
-obtaining such poor results, for nothing better ever seems to follow
-these revolutions. There is only a new form of dictatorship, which
-varies only in the extent of its revenge and in the punishments it
-metes out to its late opponents, but which must be, if it hopes to
-remain in power, a dictatorship and an autocracy.
-
-[Illustration: MORAZAN, THE LIBERATOR OF HONDURAS]
-
-The republics of Central America are republics in name only, and
-the movements of a stranger within the boundaries of Honduras are
-as closely watched as though he were a newspaper correspondent in
-Siberia. I often had to sign the names of our party twice in one day
-for the benefit of police and customs officers, and we never entered
-a hotel or boarded a steamer or disembarked from one that we were not
-carefully checked and receipted for exactly as though we were boxes of
-merchandise or registered letters. Even the natives cannot walk the
-street after nightfall without being challenged by sentries, and the
-collection of letters we received from alcaldes and comandantes and
-governors and presidents certifying to our being reputable citizens
-is large enough to paper the side of a wall. The only time in Central
-America when our privacy was absolutely unmolested, and when we felt as
-free to walk abroad as though we were on the streets of New York, was
-when we were under the protection of the hated monarchical institution
-of Great Britain at Belize, but never when we were in any of these
-disorganized military camps called free republics.
-
-The Central-American citizen is no more fit for a republican form of
-government than he is for an arctic expedition, and what he needs is to
-have a protectorate established over him, either by the United States
-or by another power; it does not matter which, so long as it leaves the
-Nicaragua Canal in our hands. In the capital of Costa Rica there is a
-statue of the Republic in the form of a young woman standing with her
-foot on the neck of General Walker, the American filibuster. We had
-planned to go to the capital for the express purpose of tearing that
-statue down some night, or blowing it up; so it is perhaps just as well
-for us that we could not get there; but it would have been a very good
-thing for Costa Rica if Walker, or any other man of force, had put his
-foot on the neck of every republic in Central America and turned it to
-some account.
-
-Away from the coasts, where there is fever, Central America is a
-wonderful country, rich and beautiful, and burdened with plenty, but
-its people make it a nuisance and an affront to other nations, and its
-parcel of independent little states, with the pomp of power and none of
-its dignity, are and will continue to be a constant danger to the peace
-which should exist between two great powers.
-
-There is no more interesting question of the present day than that of
-what is to be done with the world’s land which is lying unimproved;
-whether it shall go to the great power that is willing to turn it to
-account, or remain with its original owner, who fails to understand its
-value. The Central-Americans are like a gang of semi-barbarians in a
-beautifully furnished house, of which they can understand neither its
-possibilities of comfort nor its use. They are the dogs in the manger
-among nations. Nature has given to their country great pasture-lands,
-wonderful forests of rare woods and fruits, treasures of silver and
-gold and iron, and soil rich enough to supply the world with coffee,
-and it only waits for an honest effort to make it the natural highway
-of traffic from every portion of the globe. The lakes of Nicaragua are
-ready to furnish a passageway which should save two months of sailing
-around the Horn, and only forty-eight miles of swamp-land at Panama
-separate the two greatest bodies of water on the earth’s surface.
-Nature has done so much that there is little left for man to do, but it
-will have to be some other man than a native-born Central-American who
-is to do it.
-
-We had our private audience with President Bonilla in time, and found
-him a most courteous and interesting young man. He is only thirty-six
-years of age, which probably makes him the youngest president in the
-world, and he carries on his watch-chain a bullet which was cut out
-of his arm during the last revolution. He showed us over the palace,
-and pointed out where he had shot holes in it, and entertained us most
-hospitably. The other members of the cabinet were equally kind, making
-us many presents, and offering Griscom a consul-generalship abroad, and
-consulates to Somerset and myself, but we said we would be ambassadors
-or nothing; so they offered to make us generals in the next revolution,
-and we accepted that responsible position with alacrity, knowing that
-not even the regiments to which we were accredited could force us again
-into Honduras.
-
-Before we departed the president paid us a very doubtful compliment
-in asking us to ride with him. We supposed it was well meant, but we
-still have secret misgivings that it was a plot to rid himself of us
-and of the vice-president at the same time. When his secretary came
-to tell us that Dr. Bonilla would be glad to have us ride with him at
-five that afternoon, I recalled the fact that all the horses I had
-seen in Honduras were but little larger than an ordinary donkey, and
-quite as depressed and spiritless. So I accepted with alacrity. The
-other two men, being cross-country riders, and entitled to wear the
-gold buttons of various hunt clubs on their waistcoats, accepted as a
-matter of course. But when we reached the palace we saw seven or eight
-horses in the patio, none under sixteen hands high, and each engaged in
-dragging two or three grooms about the yard, and swinging them clear
-of the brick tiles as easily as a sailor swings a lead. The president
-explained to us that these were a choice lot of six stallions which he
-had just imported from Chili, and that three of them had never worn a
-saddle before that morning.
-
-He gave one of these to Griscom and another one to the vice-president,
-for reasons best known to himself, and the third to Somerset. Griscom’s
-animal had an idea that it was better to go backward like a crab than
-to advance, so he backed in circles around the courtyard, while
-Somerset’s horse seemed best to enjoy rearing himself on his hind-legs,
-with the idea of rubbing Somerset off against the wall; and the
-vice-president’s horse did everything that a horse can do, and a great
-many things that I should not have supposed a horse could do, had I not
-seen it. I put my beast’s nose into a corner of the wall where he could
-not witness the circus performance going on behind him, and I watched
-the president’s brute turning round and round and round until it made
-me dizzy. We strangers confessed later that we were all thinking of
-exactly the same thing, which was that, no matter how many of our bones
-were shattered, we must not let these natives think they could ride any
-better than any chance American or Englishman, and it was only a matter
-of national pride that kept us in our saddles. The vice-president’s
-horse finally threw him into the doorway and rolled on him, and it
-required five of his officers to pull the horse away and set him on his
-feet again. The vice-president had not left his saddle for an instant,
-and if he handles his men in the field as he handled that horse, it is
-not surprising that he wins many battles.
-
-Not wishing to have us all killed, and seeing that it was useless to
-attempt to kill the vice-president in that way, Dr. Bonilla sent word
-to the band to omit their customary salute, and so we passed out in
-grateful silence between breathless rows of soldiers and musicians
-and several hundreds of people who had never seen a life-sized horse
-before. We rode at a slow pace, on account of the vice-president’s
-bruises, while the president pointed out the different points from
-which he had attacked the capital. He was not accompanied by any
-guard on this ride, and informed us that he was the first president
-who had dared go abroad without one. He seemed to trust rather to the
-good-will of the _pueblo_, to whom he plays, and to whom he bowed
-much more frequently than to the people of the richer class. It was
-amusing to see the more prominent men of the place raise their hats
-to the president, and the young girls in the suburbs nodding casually
-and without embarrassment to the man. Before he set out on his ride he
-stuck a gold-plated revolver in his hip-pocket, which was to take the
-place of the guard of honor of former presidents, and to protect him in
-case of an attempt at assassination. It suggested that there are other
-heads besides those that wear a crown which rest uneasy.
-
-It was a nervous ride, and Griscom’s horse added to the excitement by
-trying to back him over a precipice, and he was only saved from going
-down one thousand yards to the roofs of the city below by several of
-the others dragging at the horse’s bridle. When, after an hour, we
-found ourselves once more within sight of the palace, we covertly
-smiled at one another, and are now content never to associate with
-presidents again unless we walk.
-
-We left Tegucigalpa a few days later with a generous escort, including
-all the consuls, and José Guiteris, the assistant secretary of state,
-and nearly all of the foreign residents. We made such a formidable
-showing as we raced through the streets that it suggested an uprising,
-and we cried, “Viva Guiteris!” to make the people think there was
-a new revolution in his favor. We shouted with the most loyal
-enthusiasm, but it only served to make Guiteris extremely unhappy,
-and he occupied himself in considering how he could best explain to
-Bonilla that the demonstration was merely an expression of our idea of
-humor. Twelve miles out we all stopped and backed the mules up side
-by side, and everybody shook hands with everybody else, and there
-were many promises to write, and to forward all manner of things, and
-assurances of eternal remembrance and friendship, and then the Guiteris
-revolutionists galloped back, firing parting salutes with their
-revolvers, and we fell into line again with a nod of satisfaction at
-being once more on the road.[B]
-
-We never expected any conveniences or comforts on the road, and so we
-were never disappointed, and were much happier and more contented in
-consequence than at the capital, where the name promised so much and
-the place furnished so little. We found that it was not the luxuries
-of life that we sighed after, but the mere conveniences--those things
-to which we had become so much accustomed that we never supposed there
-were places where they did not exist. A chair with a back, for example,
-was one of the things we most wanted. We had never imagined, until we
-went to Honduras, that chairs grew without backs; but after we had
-ridden ten hours, and were so tired that each man found himself easing
-his spinal column by leaning forward with his hands on the pommel of
-his saddle, we wanted something more than a three-legged stool when we
-alighted for the night.
-
-Our ride to the Pacific coast was a repetition of the ride to the
-capital, except that, as there was a full moon, we slept in the middle
-of the day and rode later in the night. During this nocturnal journey
-we met many pilgrims going to the festivals. They were all mounted on
-mules, and seemed a very merry and jovial company. Sometimes there were
-as many as fifty in one party, and we came across them picnicking in
-the shade by day, or jogging along in the moonlight in a cloud of white
-dust, or a cloud of white foam as they forded the broad river and
-their donkeys splashed and slipped in the rapids. The nights were very
-beautiful and cool, and the silence under the clear blue sky and white
-stars was like the silence of the plains. The moon turned the trail a
-pale white, and made the trees on either side of it alive with shadows
-that seemed to play hide-and-seek with us, and the stumps and rocks
-moved and gesticulated with life, until we drew up even with them, when
-they were transformed once more into wood and stone.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO CORINTO]
-
-It was on the third day out from the capital, while we were picking
-our way down the side of a mountain, that Jeffs pointed to what looked
-like a lake of silver lying between two great hills, and we knew that
-we had crossed the continent, and so raised our hats and saluted the
-Pacific Ocean. A day later, after a long, rapid ride over a level plain
-where the trail was so broad that we could ride four abreast, we came
-to San Lorenzo, a little cluster of huts at the edge of the ocean. The
-settlement was still awake, for a mule train of silver had just arrived
-from the San Rosario mines, and the ruddy glare of pine knots was
-flashing through the chinks in the bamboo walls of the huts, and making
-yellow splashes of color in the soft white light of the moon. We swung
-ourselves out of the saddles for the last time, and gave the little
-mules a farewell pat and many thanks, to which they made no response
-whatsoever.
-
-Five hours later we left the continent for the island of Amapala, the
-chief seaport of the Pacific side of Honduras, and our ride was at an
-end. We left San Lorenzo at two in the morning, but we did not reach
-Amapala, although it was but fifteen miles out to sea, until four the
-next afternoon. We were passengers in a long, open boat, and slept
-stretched on our blankets at the bottom, while four natives pulled at
-long sweeps. There were eight cross-seats, and a man sat on every other
-one. A log of wood in which steps had been cut was bound to each empty
-seat, and it was up this that the rower walked, as though he meant to
-stand up on the seat to which it was tied, but he would always change
-his mind and sink back again, bracing his left leg on the seat and his
-right leg on the log, and dragging the oar through the water with the
-weight of his body as he sank backwards. I lay on the ribs of the boat
-below them and watched them through the night, rising and falling with
-a slight toss of the head as they sank back, and with their brown naked
-bodies outlined against the sky-line. They were so silent and their
-movements so regular that they seemed like statues cut in bronze. By
-ten the next morning they became so far animated as to say that they
-were tired and hungry, and would we allow them to rest on a little
-island that lay half a mile off our bow? We were very glad to rest
-ourselves, and to get out of the sun and the glare of the sea, and to
-stretch our cramped limbs: so we beached the boat in a little bay, and
-frightened off thousands of gulls, which rose screaming in the air, and
-which were apparently the only inhabitants.
-
-The galley-slaves took sticks of driftwood and scattered over the
-rocks, turning back the seaweed with their hands, and hacking at the
-base of the rocks with their improvised hammers. We found that they
-were foraging for oysters; and as we had nothing but a tin of sardines
-and two biscuits among five of us, and had had nothing to eat for
-twenty-four hours, we followed their example, and chipped the oysters
-off with the butts of our revolvers, and found them cool and coppery,
-like English oysters, and most refreshing. It was such a lonely little
-island that we could quite imagine we were cast away upon it, and began
-to play we were Robinson Crusoe, and took off our boots and went in
-wading, paddling around in the water after mussels and crabs until we
-were chased to shore by a huge shark. Then every one went to sleep in
-the sand until late in the afternoon, when a breeze sprang up, and a
-boatman carried us out on his shoulders, and we dashed off gayly under
-full sail to the isle of Amapala, where we bade good-bye to Colonel
-Jeffs and to the Republic of Honduras.
-
-We had crossed the continent at a point where it was but little broader
-than the distance from Boston to New York, a trip of five hours by
-train, but which had taken us twenty-two days.
-
-
-
-
-AT CORINTO
-
-
-EVERY now and again each of us, either through his own choice or by
-force of circumstance, drops out of step with the rest of the world,
-and retires from it into the isolation of a sick-room, or to the
-loneliness of the deck of an ocean steamer, and for some short time the
-world somehow manages to roll on without him.
-
-He is like a man who falls out of line in a regiment to fasten his
-shoelace or to fill his canteen, and who hears over his shoulder the
-hurrying tramp of his comrades, who are leaving him farther and farther
-behind, so that he has to run briskly before he can catch up with them
-and take his proper place once more in the procession.
-
-I shall always consider the ten days we spent at Corinto, on the
-Pacific side of Nicaragua, while we waited for the steamer to take us
-south to Panama, as so many days of non-existence, as so much time
-given to the mere exercise of living, when we were no more of this
-world than are the prisoners in the salt-mines of Siberia, or the
-keepers of light-houses scattered over sunny seas, or the men who tend
-toll-gates on empty country lanes. And so when I read in the newspapers
-last fall that three British ships of war were anchored in the harbor
-of Corinto, with their guns loaded to the muzzles with ultimatums and
-no one knows what else besides, and that they meant to levy on the
-customs dues of that sunny little village, it was as much of a shock to
-me as it would be to the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow were they told
-that that particular spot was wanted as a site for a World’s Fair.
-
-For no ships of any sort, certainly no ships of war, ever came to
-Corinto while we occupied the only balcony of its only hotel. Indeed,
-that was why we were there, and had they come we would have gone with
-them, no matter to what port they were bound, even to the uttermost
-parts of the earth.
-
-We had come to Corinto from the little island of Amapala, which lies
-seventy-five miles farther up the coast, and which guards the only
-port of entry to Honduras on the Pacific seaboard. It is supposed to
-belong to the Republic of Honduras, but it is in reality the property
-of Rossner Brothers, who sell everything from German machetes to German
-music-boxes, and who could, if they wanted it, purchase the entire
-Republic of Honduras in the morning, and make a present of it to the
-Kaiser in the course of the afternoon. You have only to change the name
-of Rossner Brothers to the San Rosario Mining Company, to the Pacific
-Mail, to Errman Brothers, to the Panama Railroad Company, and you will
-identify the actual rulers of one or of several of the republics of
-Central America.
-
-[Illustration: PRINCIPAL HOTEL AND PRINCIPAL HOUSE AT CORINTO]
-
-It is very well for President Zelaya, or Barrios, or Vasquez, or
-whatever his name may happen to be this month, to write to the New
-York _Herald_ and tell the people of the United States what the
-revolution in his country means. It does no harm; no one in the United
-States reads the letter, except the foreign editor who translates it,
-and no one in his own country ever sees it, but it makes him happy in
-thinking he is persuading some one that he governs in his own way. As
-a matter of fact he does not. His country, no matter what her name may
-be, is ruled by a firm of coffee-merchants in New York city, or by a
-German railroad company, or by a line of coasting steamers, or by a
-great trading-house, with headquarters in Berlin or London or Bordeaux.
-If the president wants money he borrows it from the trading-house;
-if he wants arms, or his soldiers need blankets, the trading-house
-supplies them. No one remembers now who was President of Peru when
-Henry Meiggs was alive, and to-day William L. Grace is a better name on
-letters of introduction to Chili and Peru than that of a secretary of
-state.
-
-When we were in Nicaragua, one little English banking-house was
-fighting the minister of finance and the minister of foreign affairs
-and the president and the entire government, and while the notes issued
-by the bank were accepted at their face value, those of the government
-were taken only in the presence of a policeman or a soldier, who was
-there to see that you did take it. You find this condition of affairs
-all through Central America, and you are not long in a republic before
-you learn which merchant or which bank or which railroad company
-controls it, and you soon grow to look upon a mule loaded with boxes
-bearing the trade-mark of a certain business-house with more respect
-than upon a soldier who wears the linen ribbon of the government. For
-you know that at a word the soldier will tear the ribbon from his
-straw sombrero and replace it with another upon which is printed “Viva
-Dr. Somebody Else,” while the trade-mark of the business-house will
-continue as long as English and German merchandise is carried across
-the sea in ships. And it will also continue as long as Great Britain
-and Germany and the United States are represented by consuls and
-consular agents who are at the same time the partners of the leading
-business firms in the seaport over which their consular jurisdiction
-extends. For few Central-American republics are going to take away a
-consul’s exequatur as long as they owe him in his unofficial capacity
-for a large loan of money; and the merchant, on the other hand, knows
-that he is not going to suffer from the imposition of a forced loan,
-nor see his mules seized, as long as the tin sign with the American
-eagle screaming upon it is tacked above the brass business plate of his
-warehouse.
-
-There was a merchant in Tegucigalpa named Santos Soto--he is there
-still, I believe--and about a year ago President Vasquez told him he
-needed a loan of ten thousand dollars to assist him in his struggle
-against Bonilla; and as Soto was making sixty thousand dollars a year
-in the country, he suggested that he had better lend it promptly. Soto
-refused, and was locked in the cartel, where it was explained to him
-that for every day he delayed in giving the money the amount demanded
-of him would be increased one thousand dollars. As he still refused, he
-was chained to an iron ball and led out to sweep the streets in front
-of his shop, which extends on both sides of the principal thoroughfare
-of the capital. He is an old man, and the sight of the chief merchant
-in Tegucigalpa sweeping up the dust in front of his own block of stores
-had a most salutary effect upon the other merchants, who promptly
-loaned the sums demanded of them, taking rebates on customs dues in
-exchange--with one exception. This merchant owned a jewelry store,
-and was at the same time the English consular agent. He did not sweep
-the streets, nor did he contribute to the forced loan. He values in
-consequence his tin sign, which is not worth much as a work of art, at
-about ten thousand dollars.
-
-There is much that might be written of consular agents in Central
-America that would differ widely from the reports written by
-themselves and published by the State Department. The most interesting
-thing about them, to my mind, is the fact that none of them ever seem
-to represent a country which they have ever seen, and that they are
-always citizens of another country to which they are anxious to return.
-I find that after Americans, Germans make the best American consular
-agents, and Englishmen the best German consular agents, while French
-consular agents would be more useful to their countrymen if they could
-speak French as well as they do Spanish. Sometimes, as in the case of
-the consular agent at Corinto, you find a native of Italy representing
-both Great Britain and the United States. A whole comic opera could be
-written on the difficulties of a Nicaraguan acting as an English and
-American consul, with three British men-of-war in the harbor levying on
-the customs dues of his native land, and an American squadron hastening
-from Panama to see that their English cousins did not gather in a few
-islands by mistake.
-
-If he called on the British admiral, and received his seven-gun salute,
-would it constitute a breach of international etiquette if he were
-rowed over to the American admiral and received seven guns from him;
-and as a native of Nicaragua could he see the customs dues, which
-comprise the government’s chief source of revenue, going into the
-pockets of one country which he so proudly serves without complaining
-to the other country which he serves with equal satisfaction? Every
-now and then you come across a real American consul who was born in
-America, and who serves the United States with ability, dignity,
-and self-respect, so that you are glad you are both Americans. Of
-this class we found General Allen Thomas at La Guayra, who was later
-promoted and made United States minister at Caracas, Mr. Alger at
-Puerto Cortez, Mr. Little at Tegucigalpa, and Colonel Bird at Caracas.
-
-We found that the firm of Rossner Brothers had in their employ the
-American and English consular agents, and these gentlemen endeared
-themselves to us by assisting at our escape from their island in an
-open boat. They did not tell us, however, that Fonseca Bay was one of
-the most treacherous stretches of water on the admiralty charts; but
-that was, probably, because they were merchants and not sailors.
-
-Amapala was the hottest place I ever visited. It did not grow warm as
-the day wore on, but began briskly at sunrise by nailing the mercury at
-fever-heat, and continued boiling and broiling until ten at night. By
-one the next morning the roof over your head and the bed-linen beneath
-you had sufficiently cooled for you to sleep, and from that on until
-five there was a fair imitation of night.
-
-There was but one cool spot in Amapala; it was a point of land that
-the inhabitants had rather tactlessly selected as a dumping-ground
-for the refuse of the town, and which was only visited by pigs and
-buzzards. This point of land ran out into the bay, and there had once
-been an attempt made to turn it into a public park, of which nothing
-now remains but a statue to Morazan, the Liberator of Honduras. The
-statue stood on a pedestal of four broad steps, surrounded by an iron
-railing, the gates of which had fallen from their hinges, and lay
-scattered over the piles of dust and débris under which the park is
-buried. At each corner of the railing there were beautiful macaws which
-had once been painted in brilliant reds and greens and yellows, and
-which we tried to carry off one night, until we found that they also
-were made of iron. We would have preferred the statue of Morazan as a
-souvenir, but that we doubted its identity. Morazan was a smooth-faced
-man with a bushy head of hair, and this statue showed him with long
-side-whiskers and a bald head, and in the uniform of an English
-admiral. It was probably the rejected work of some English sculptor,
-and had been obtained, no doubt, at a moderate price, and as very few
-remember Morazan to-day it answers its purpose excellently well. We
-became very much attached to it, and used to burn incense to it in the
-form of many Honduranian cigars, which sell at two cents apiece.
-
-When night came on, and the billiard-room had grown so hot that the
-cues slipped in our hands, and the tantalizing sight of an American
-ice-cooler, which had never held ice since it left San Francisco,
-had driven us out into the night, we would group ourselves at the
-base of this statue to Morazan, and throw rocks at the buzzards and
-pigs, and let the only breeze that dares to pass over Amapala bring
-our temperature down to normal. We should have plotted a revolution
-by rights, for the scene was set for such a purpose, and no one in
-the town accounted in any other way for our climbing the broken iron
-railing nightly, and remaining on the steps of the pedestal until two
-the next morning.
-
-Amapala, I suppose, was used to heat, and could sleep with the
-thermometer at ninety, and did not mind the pigs or the buzzards, and
-if we did plot to convert Honduras into a monarchy and make Somerset
-king, no one heard us but the English edition of Morazan smiling
-blandly down upon us like a floor-walker at the Army and Navy Stores,
-with his hand on his heart and an occasional buzzard soaring like
-Poe’s raven above his marble forehead. The moonlight turned him into a
-figure of snow, and the great palms above bent and waved and shivered
-unceasingly, and the sea beat on the rocks at our feet.
-
-It was an interesting place of rendezvous, but we tired of a town that
-grew cool only after midnight, and in which the fever stalked abroad
-by day. So we chartered a small boat, and provisioned it, and enlisted
-a crew of pirates, and set sail one morning for Corinto, seventy-five
-miles farther south. There was no steamer expected at Corinto at any
-earlier date than at Amapala, but in the nature of things one had to
-touch there some time, and there was a legend to which we had listened
-with doubt and longing to the effect that at Corinto there was an
-ice-machine, and though we found later that the ice-machines always
-broke on the day we arrived in port, we preferred the chance of finding
-Fonseca Bay in a peaceful state to yellow-fever at Amapala. It was an
-exciting voyage. I would now, being more wise, choose the yellow-fever,
-but we did not know any better then. There was no deck to the boat, and
-it was not wide enough for one to lie lengthwise from side to side, and
-too crowded to permit of our stretching our bodies fore and aft. So
-we rolled about on top of one another, and were far too miserable to
-either apologize or swear when we bumped into a man’s ribs or sat on
-his head.
-
-We started with a very fine breeze dead astern, and the boat leaped
-and plunged and rolled all night, and we were hurled against the sides
-and thumped by rolling trunks, and travelling-bags, and gun-cases, and
-boxes of broken apollinaris bottles. The stone-breaker in a quarry
-would have soothed us in comparison. And when the sun rose fully
-equipped at four in the morning the wind died away absolutely, and we
-rose and sank all day on the great swell of the Pacific Ocean. The boat
-was painted a bright red inside and out, and the sun turned this open
-red bowl into an oven of heat. It made even our white flannels burn
-when they touched the skin like a shirt of horse-hair. As far as we
-could look on every side the ocean lay like a sea of quicksilver, and
-the dome of the sky glittered with heat. The red paint on the sides
-bubbled and cracked, and even the native boatmen cowered under the
-cross-seats with their elbows folded on their knees and their faces
-buried in their arms; and we had not the heart to tell them to use the
-oars, even if we had known how. At noon the chief pirate crawled over
-the other bodies and rigged up the sail so that it threw a shadow over
-mine, and I lay under this awning and read Barrie’s _Lady Nicotine_,
-while the type danced up and down in waving lines like the letters
-in a typewriter. I am sure it was only the necessity which that book
-impressed upon me of holding on to life until I could smoke the Arcadia
-mixture that kept me from dropping overboard and being cremated in the
-ocean below.
-
-We sighted the light-house of Corinto at last, and hailed the white
-custom-house and the palms and the blue cottages of the port with a
-feeble cheer.
-
-The people came down to the shore and crowded around her bow as we
-beached her in front of the custom-house, and a man asked us anxiously
-in English, “What ship has been wrecked?” And we explained that we were
-not survivors of a shipwreck, but of a possible conflagration, and
-wanted ice.
-
-And then, when we fell over the side bruised and sleepy, and burning
-with thirst, and with everything still dancing before our eyes, they
-refused to give us ice until we grew cooler, and sent out in the
-meanwhile to the _comandancia_ in search of some one who could identify
-us as escaped revolutionists. They took our guns away from us as a
-precaution, but they could have had half our kingdom for all we cared,
-for the wonderful legend proved true, and at last we got the ice in
-large, thick glasses, with ginger ale and lemon juice and apollinaris
-water trickling through it, and there was frost on the sides of the
-glasses, and a glimpse of still more ice wrapped up in smoking blankets
-in the refrigerator--ice that we had not tasted for many days of riding
-in the hot sun and through steaming swamp-lands, and which we had last
-seen treated with contempt and contumely, knocked about at the bow of
-a tug-boat in the North River, and tramped upon by many muddy feet
-on Fifth Avenue. None of us will ever touch ice hereafter without
-handling it with the same respect and consideration that we would show
-to a precious stone.
-
-The busybodies of Corinto who had decided from the manner of our
-arrival that we had been forced to leave Honduras for the country’s
-good, finally found a native who identified me as a filibuster he
-had met during the last revolution at Leon. As that was bringing it
-rather near home, Griscom went after Mr. Palaccio, the Italian who
-serves both England and the United States as consular agent. We showed
-him a rare collection of autographs of secretaries, ambassadors,
-and prime-ministers, and informed him that we intended taking four
-state-rooms on the steamer of the line he represented at that port.
-This convinced him of the necessity of keeping us out of jail until
-the boat arrived, and he satisfied the local authorities as to our
-respectability, and that we had better clothes in our trunks.
-
-Corinto is the best harbor on the Pacific side of Nicaragua, but the
-town is not as large as the importance of the port would suggest. It
-consists of three blocks of two-story houses, facing the harbor fifty
-feet back from the water’s edge, with a sandy street between each block
-of buildings. There are about a thousand inhabitants, and a foreign
-population which varies from five residents to a dozen transient
-visitors and stewards on steamer days. The natives are chiefly
-occupied in exporting coffee and receiving the imported goods for the
-interior, and the principal amusement of the foreign colony is bathing
-or playing billiards. It has a whist club of four members. The fifth
-foreign resident acts as a substitute in the event of any one of the
-four players chancing to have another engagement, but as there is no
-one with whom he could have an engagement, the substitute is seldom
-called upon. He told me he had been sitting by and smoking and watching
-the others play whist for a month now, and hoping that one of them
-would have a sunstroke.
-
-[Illustration: HARBOR OF CORINTO]
-
-We left Corinto the next morning and took the train to Lake Managua,
-where we were to connect with a steamer which crosses the lake to the
-capital. It was a beautiful ride, and for some distance ran along
-the sea-shore, where the ocean rolled up the beach in great waves,
-breaking in showers of foam upon the rocks. Then we crossed lagoons and
-swamps on trestles, and passed pretty thatched villages, and saw many
-beautiful women and girls selling candy and sugar-cane at the stations.
-They wore gowns that left the neck and shoulders bare, and wrapped
-themselves in silk shawls of solid colors, which they kept continually
-loosening and rearranging, tossing the ends coquettishly from one
-shoulder to the other, or drawing them closely about the figure, or
-like a cowl over the head. This silk shawl is the most characteristic
-part of the wardrobe of the native women of Central America. It is as
-inevitable as the mantilla of their richer sisters, and it is generally
-the only bit of splendor they possess. A group of them on a feast-day
-or Sunday, when they come marching towards you with green, purple,
-blue, or yellow shawls, makes a very striking picture.
-
-These women of the pueblo in Honduras and Nicaragua were better-looking
-than the women of the lower classes of any country I have ever visited.
-They were individually more beautiful, and the proportion of beautiful
-women was greater. A woman there is accustomed from her childhood to
-carry heavy burdens on her head, and this gives to all of them an erect
-carriage and a fearless uplifting of the head when they walk or stand.
-They have never known a tight dress or a tight shoe, and they move as
-easily and as gracefully as an antelope. Their hair is very rich and
-heavy, and they oil it and comb it and braid it from morning to night,
-wearing it parted in the middle, and drawn tightly back over the ears,
-and piled upon the head in heavy braids. Their complexion is a light
-brown, and their eyes have the sad look which one sees in the eyes of
-a deer or a dog, and which is not so much the sign of any sorrow as
-of the lack of intelligence. The women of the upper classes are like
-most Spanish-American women, badly and over dressed in a gown fashioned
-after some forgotten Parisian mode, with powder over their faces, and
-with their hair frizzled and curled in ridiculous profusion. They are a
-very sorry contrast to a woman of the people, such as you see standing
-in the doorways of the mud huts, or advancing towards you along the
-trail with an earthen jar on her shoulder, straight of limb, and with a
-firm, fine lower jaw, a low, broad forehead, and shy, sad eyes.
-
-[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE AT MANAGUA]
-
-Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, is a most dismal city, built on
-a plain of sun-dried earth, with houses of sun-dried earth, plazas
-and parks and streets of sun-dried earth, and a mantle of dust over
-all. Even the stores that have been painted in colors and hung with
-balconies have a depressed, dirty, and discouraged air. The streets are
-as full of ruts and furrows as a country road, the trees in the plaza
-are lifeless, and their leaves shed dust instead of dew, and the people
-seem to have taken on the tone of their surroundings, and very much
-more of the dust than seems absolutely necessary. We were there only
-two days, and felt when we left as though we had been camping out on a
-baseball diamond; and we were sure that had we remained any longer we
-should have turned into living statues of clay when the sun shone, and
-of mud when it rained.
-
-There was no American minister or consul at Managua at the time of our
-visit, but the English consul took very good care of us, and acted as
-our interpreter when we called upon the president. Relations between
-the consul and President Zelaya were somewhat strained at that time,
-and though we knew this we told the consul to tell the president how
-much he was admired by the American people for having taken the stand
-he did against the English on the Mosquito Coast question, and that
-we hoped he would see that the British obtained no foothold near our
-canal. At which the English consul would hesitate and grin unhappily,
-and remark, in a hurried aside, “I’ll be hanged if I’ll translate
-that.” So we continued inventing other pleasant speeches derogatory
-to Britons and British influence in Nicaragua until Somerset and his
-consul protested vigorously, and the president saw what we were doing
-and began to enjoy the consul’s embarrassment and laughed, and the
-consul laughed with him, and they made up their quarrel--for the time
-being, at least.
-
-Zelaya said, among other things, that if there were no other argument
-in favor of the Nicaragua Canal than that it would enable the United
-States to move her ships of war quickly from ocean to ocean, instead of
-being forced as she is now to make them take the long journey around
-Cape Horn, it would be of inestimable benefit. He also said that the
-only real objection that had been made in the United States to the
-canal came from those interested in the transcontinental railroads, who
-saw in its completion the destruction of their freight traffic.
-
-He seemed to be a very able man, and more a man of the world than
-Bonilla, the President of Honduras, and much older in many ways. He was
-apparently somewhat of a philosopher, and believed, or said he did,
-in the survival of the fittest as applied to the occupation of his
-country. He welcomed the gringos, he said, and if they were better able
-to rule Nicaragua than her own people, he would accept that fact as
-inevitable and make way before them.
-
-[Illustration: PRESIDENT ZELAYA OF NICARAGUA]
-
-We returned to Corinto after wallowing in the dust-bins of Managua as
-joyfully as though it were a home, and we were so anxious to reach the
-ocean again that we left Granada and Leon, which are, so we are told,
-much more attractive than the capital, out of our route.
-
-Corinto was bright and green and sunny, and the waters of the
-big harbor before it danced and flashed by day and radiated with
-phosphorescent fire by night. It was distinctly a place where it would
-occur to one to write up the back pages of his diary, but it was
-interesting at least in showing us the life of the exiles in these hot,
-far-away seaports among a strange people.
-
-There was but one hotel, which happened to be a very good one with
-a very bad proprietor, who, I trust, will come some day to an untimely
-death at the end of one of his own billiard-cues. The hotel was built
-round a patio filled with palms and ramparts of empty bottles from
-the bar, covered with dust, and bearing the name of every brewer and
-wine-grower in Europe. The sleeping-rooms were on the second floor, and
-looked on the patio on one side and upon a wide covered veranda which
-faced the harbor on the other. The five resident gringos in Corinto
-lived at the hotel, and sat all day on this veranda swinging in their
-hammocks and swapping six-months-old magazines and tattered novels.
-Reading-matter assumed an importance in Corinto it had never attained
-before, and we read all the serial stories, of which there was never
-more than the fourth or sixth instalment, and the scientific articles
-on the Fall of the Rupee in India, or the Most Recent Developments in
-Electricity, and delighted in the advertisements of seeds and bicycles
-and baking-powders.
-
-The top of our veranda was swept by a row of plane-trees that grew in
-the sandy soil of the beach below us, and under the shade of which
-were gathered all the idle ones of the port. There were among them
-thieving ships’ stewards who had been marooned from passing vessels,
-ne’er-do-wells from the interior who were “combing the beach” and
-looking for work, but not so diligently that they had seen the coffee
-plantations on their tramp down to the coast, and who begged for money
-to take them back to “God’s country,” or to the fever hospital at
-Panama. With them were natives, sailors from the rolling tug-boat they
-called a ship of war, and barefooted soldiers from the cartel, and
-longshoremen with over-developed chests and muscles, who toil mightily
-on steamer days and sleep and eat for the ten days between as a reward.
-
-All of these idlers gathered in the shade around the women who sold
-sweet drinks and sticks of pink-and-yellow candy. They were the public
-characters of the place and the centre of all the gossip of the
-town, and presided over their tables with great dignity in freshly
-ironed frocks and brilliant turbans. They were very handsome and very
-clean-looking, with bare arms and shoulders, and their hair always
-shone with cocoanut oil, and was wonderfully braided and set off with
-flowers stuck coquettishly over one ear. The men used to sit around
-them in groups on the bags of coffee waiting for export, and on the
-boxes of barbed wire, which seemed to be the only import. And sometimes
-a small boy would buy a stick of candy or command the mixture of a
-drink, and the woman would fuss over her carved gourds, and rinse and
-rub them and mix queer liquors with a whirling stick of wood that she
-spun between the palms of her hands. We would all watch the operation
-with great interest, the natives on the coffee-sacks and ourselves upon
-the balcony, and regard the small boy while he drank the concoction
-with envy.
-
-The veranda had loose planks for its floor, and gaping knot-holes
-through which the legs of our chairs would sink suddenly, and which
-we could use on those occasions when we wanted to drop penknives and
-pencils and water on the heads of those passing below. Our companions
-in idleness were the German agents of the trading-houses and young
-Englishmen down from the mines to shake off a touch of fever, and
-two Americans who were taking a phonograph through Central America.
-Their names were Edward Morse and Charles Brackett, and we will always
-remember them as the only Americans we met who were taking money out of
-Central America and not bringing it there to lose it.
-
-Every afternoon we all tramped a mile or two up the beach in the hot
-sun for the sake of a quarter of an hour of surf-bathing, which was
-delightful in itself, and which was rendered especially interesting by
-our having to share the surf with large man-eating sharks. When they
-came, which they were sure to do ten minutes after we had arrived, we
-generally gave them our share.
-
-The phonograph men and our party did not believe in sharks; so we
-would venture out some distance, leaving the Englishmen and the
-Germans standing like sandpipers where the water was hardly up to their
-ankles, and keeping an anxious lookout for us and themselves. Had the
-sharks attempted to attack us from the land, they would have afforded
-excellent protection. When they all yelled at once and ran back up
-the beach into the bushes, we knew that they thought we had been in
-long enough, and we came out, and made as much noise as we could while
-doing so. But there would be invariably one man left behind--one man
-who had walked out farther than the others, and who, owing to the roar
-of the surf, could not hear our shrieks of terror. It was exciting to
-watch him from the beach diving and splashing happily by himself, and
-shaking the water out of his ears and hair, blissfully unconscious of
-the deserted waste of waters about him and of the sharp, black fin that
-shot like a torpedo from wave to wave. We would watch him as he turned
-to speak to the man who the moment before had been splashing and diving
-on his right, and, missing him, turn to the other side, and then whirl
-about and see us all dancing frantically up and down in a row along the
-beach, beckoning and screaming and waving our arms. We could observe
-even at that distance his damp hair rising on his head and his eyes
-starting out of their sockets as he dug his toes into the sand and
-pushed back the water with his arms, and worked his head and shoulders
-and every muscle in his whole body as though he were fighting his way
-through a mob of men. The water seemed very opaque at such times, and
-the current appeared to have turned seaward, and the distance from
-shore looked as though it were increasing at every step.
-
-When night came to Corinto we would sit out on the wharf in front of
-the hotel and watch the fish darting through the phosphorescent waters
-and marking their passage with a trail of fire, or we would heave a log
-into it and see the sparks fly just as though we had thrown it upon a
-smouldering fire. One night one of the men was obliging enough to go
-into it for our benefit, and swam under water, sweeping great circles
-with his arms and legs. He was outlined as clearly in the inky depths
-below as though he wore a suit of spangles. Sometimes a shark or some
-other big fish drove a shoal of little fish towards the shore, and
-they would turn the whole surface of the water into half-circles of
-light as they took leap after leap for safety. Later in the evening we
-would go back to the veranda and listen to our friends the phonograph
-impresarios play duets on the banjo and guitar, and in return for the
-songs of the natives they had picked up in their wanderings we would
-sing to them those popular measures which had arisen into notice since
-they had left civilization.
-
-This was our life at Corinto for ten idle days, until at last the
-steamer arrived, and the passengers came on shore to stretch their
-legs and buy souvenirs, and the ship’s steward bustled about in search
-of fresh vegetables, and the lighters plied heavily between the shore
-and the ship’s side, piled high with odorous sacks of coffee. And then
-Morse and Brackett started with their phonograph through Costa Rica,
-and we continued on to Panama, leaving the five foreign residents of
-Corinto to the uninterrupted enjoyment of their whist, and richer and
-happier through our coming in an inaccurate knowledge of the first
-verse and tune of “Tommy Atkins,” which they shouted at us defiantly as
-they pulled back from the steamer’s side to their quiet haven of exile.
-
-[Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING CHANGE IN TRADE ROUTES AFTER
-THE COMPLETION OF THE NICARAGUA CANAL]
-
-
-
-
-ON THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA
-
-
-IF Ulysses in his wanderings had attempted to cross the Isthmus of
-Panama his account of the adventure would not have been filled with
-engineering reports or health statistics, nor would it have dwelt
-with horror on the irregularities of the canal company. He would have
-treated the isthmus in language full of imagination, and would have
-delivered his tale in the form of an allegory. He would have told
-how on such a voyage his ship came upon a strip of land joining two
-great continents and separating two great oceans; how he had found
-this isthmus guarded by a wicked dragon that exhaled poison with every
-breath, and that lay in wait, buried in its swamps and jungles, for
-sailors and travellers, who withered away and died as soon as they
-put foot upon the shore. But that he, warned in time by the sight of
-thousands of men’s bones whitening on the beach, hoisted all sail and
-stood out to sea.
-
-It is quite as easy to believe a story like that as to believe the
-truth: that for the last century a narrow strip of swamp-land has
-blocked the progress of the world; that it has joined the peoples of
-two continents without permitting them to use it as a thoroughfare;
-that it has stopped the meeting of two great oceans and the shipping
-of the world, and that it has killed with its fever half of those who
-came to do battle against it. There is something almost uncanny in the
-manner in which this strip of mud and water has resisted the advance of
-man, as though there really were some evil genius of the place lurking
-in the morasses and brooding over the waters, throwing out its poison
-like a serpent, noiselessly and suddenly, meeting the last arrival at
-the very moment of his setting foot upon the wharf, arrogant in health
-and hope and ambition, and leaving him with clinched teeth and raving
-with madness before the sun sets.
-
-[Illustration: DREDGES IN THE CANAL]
-
-It is like the old Minotaur and his yearly tribute of Greek maidens,
-with the difference that now it is the lives of men that are
-sacrificed, and men who are chosen from every nation of the world,
-speaking every language, believing in every religion; and to-day the
-end of each is marked by a wooden plank in the Catholic Cemetery, in
-the Hebrew Cemetery, in the French Cemetery, in the English Cemetery,
-in the American Cemetery, for there are acres and acres of
-cemeteries and thousands and thousands of wooden head-stones, to which
-the evil spirit of the isthmus points mockingly, and says, “These are
-your failures.”
-
-The fields of Waterloo and Gettysburg saw a sacrifice of life but
-little greater than these fifty miles of swamp-land between North and
-South America have seen, and certainly they saw no such inglorious
-defeats, without a banner flying or a comrade cheering, or the roar
-of musketry and cannon to inspire the soldiers who fell in the
-unequal battle. Those who died striving to save the Holy Land from
-the unspeakable Turk were comforted by the promise of a glorious
-immortality, and it must have been gratifying in itself to have been
-described as a Crusader, and to have worn the red cross upon one’s
-shoulder. And, in any event, a man who would not fight for his religion
-or his country without promises or pensions is hardly worthy of
-consideration. But these young soldiers of the transit and sailors of
-the dredging-scow had no promises or sentiment to inspire them; they
-were not fighting for the boundaries of their country, but redeeming
-a bit of No Man’s Land; not doing battle for their God, but merely
-digging a canal. And it must strike every one that those of them who
-fell doing their duty in the sickly yellow mist of Panama and along the
-gloomy stretches of the Chagres River deserve a better monument to
-their memories than the wooden slabs in the cemeteries.
-
-It is strange that not only nature, but man also, should have selected
-the same little spot on the earth’s surface in which to show to the
-world exactly how disagreeable and unpleasant they can make themselves
-when they choose. It seems almost as though the isthmus were unholy
-ground, and that there was a curse upon it. Some one should invent a
-legend to explain this, and tell how one of the priests who came over
-with Columbus put the ban of the Church upon the land for some affront
-by its people to the voyagers, and so placed it under a curse forever.
-For those whom the fever did not kill the canal company robbed, and
-the ruin that came to the peasants of France was as irredeemable as
-the ravages of the fever, and the scandal that spattered almost every
-public man in Paris exposed rottenness and corruption as far advanced
-as that in the green-coated pools along the Rio Grande.
-
-[Illustration: THE BAY OF PANAMA]
-
-Ruins are always interesting, but the ruins of Panama fill one only
-with melancholy and disgust, and the relics of this gigantic swindle
-can only inspire you with a contempt for yourself and your fellow-men,
-and you blush at the evidences of barefaced rascality about you. And
-even the honest efforts of those who are now in charge, and who are
-trying to save what remains, and once more to build up confidence in
-the canal, reminded me of the town councillors of Johnstown who met in
-a freight depot to decide what was to be done with the town and those
-of its inhabitants that had not been swept out of existence.
-
-There are forty-eight miles of railroad across the isthmus, stretching
-from the town of Panama on the Pacific side to that of Colon--or
-Aspinwall, as it was formerly called--on the Caribbean Sea. The canal
-starts a little north of the town of Panama, in the mouth of the Rio
-Grande River, and runs along on one side or the other of the railroad
-to the port of Colon. The Chagres River starts about the middle of the
-isthmus, and follows the route of the canal in an easterly direction,
-until it empties itself into the Caribbean Sea a little north of Colon.
-
-The town of Panama, as you approach it from the bay, reminds you of
-an Italian seaport, owing to the balconies which overhang the water
-and the colored house-fronts and projecting red roofs. As seen from
-the inside, the town is like any other Spanish-American city of the
-second class. There are fiacres that rattle and roll through the clean
-but narrow streets behind undersized ponies that always move at a
-gallop; there are cool, dark shops open to the streets, and hundreds
-of negroes and Chinese coolies, and a handsome plaza, and some very
-large municipal buildings of five stories, which appeared to us, after
-our experience with a dead level of one-story huts, to tower as high
-as the Auditorium. Panama, as a town, and considered by itself, and
-not in connection with the canal, reminded me of a Western county-seat
-after the boom had left it. There appeared to be nothing going forward
-and nothing to do. The men sat at the cafés during the day and talked
-of the past, and went to a club at night. We saw nothing of the women,
-but they seem to have a greater degree of freedom than their sisters in
-other parts of Spanish America, owing, no doubt, to the cosmopolitan
-nature of the inhabitants of Panama.
-
-[Illustration: PANAMA CANAL ON THE PACIFIC SIDE]
-
-But the city, and the people in it, interest you chiefly because of
-the canal; and even the ruins of the Spanish occupation, and the tales
-of buccaneers and of bloody battles and buried treasure, cannot touch
-you so nearly as do the great, pretentious building of the company and
-the stories of De Lesseps’ visit, and the ceremonies and feastings and
-celebrations which inaugurated the greatest failure of modern times.
-
-The new director of the canal company put a tug at our disposal,
-and sent us orders that permitted us to see as much of the canal as
-has been completed from the Pacific side. But before presenting our
-orders we drove out from the city one afternoon and began a personally
-conducted inspection of the machine-shops.
-
-We had read of the pathetic spectacle presented by thousands of
-dollars’ worth of locomotive engines and machinery lying rotting and
-rusting in the swamps, and as it had interested us when we had read of
-it, we were naturally even more anxious to see it with our own eyes.
-We, however, did not see any machinery rusting, nor any locomotives
-lying half buried in the mud. All the locomotives that we saw were
-raised from the ground on ties and protected with a wooden shed, and
-had been painted and oiled and cared for as they would have been in
-the Baldwin Locomotive Works. We found the same state of things in the
-great machine-works, and though none of us knew a turning-lathe from a
-sewing-machine, we could at least understand that certain wheels should
-make other wheels move if everything was in working order, and so we
-made the wheels go round, and punched holes in sheets of iron with
-steel rods, and pierced plates, and scraped iron bars, and climbed to
-shelves twenty and thirty feet from the floor, only to find that each
-bit and screw in each numbered pigeon-hole was as sharp and covered as
-thick with oil as though it had been in use that morning.
-
-This was not as interesting as it would have been had we seen what
-the other writers who have visited the isthmus saw. And it would have
-given me a better chance for descriptive writing had I found the ruins
-of gigantic dredging-machines buried in the morasses, and millions of
-dollars’ worth of delicate machinery blistering and rusting under the
-palm-trees; but, as a rule, it is better to describe things just as you
-saw them, and not as it is the fashion to see them, even though your
-way be not so picturesque.
-
-As a matter of fact, the care the company was taking of its machinery
-and its fleet of dredging-scows and locomotives struck me as being much
-more pathetic than the sight of the same instruments would have been
-had we found them abandoned to the elements and the mud. For it was
-like a general pipe-claying his cross-belt and polishing his buttons
-after his army had been routed and killed, and he had lost everything,
-including honor.
-
-[Illustration: HUTS OF WORKMEN EMPLOYED ON THE CANAL]
-
-There was a little village of whitewashed huts on the southern bank of
-the Rio Grande, where the men lived who take care of the fleet and the
-machine-shop, and it was as carefully kept and as clean as a graveyard.
-Before the crash came the quarters of the men used to ring with their
-yells at night, and the music of guitars and banjos came from the open
-doors of cafés and drinking-booths, and a pistol-shot meant no more
-than a momentary punctuation of the night’s pleasure. Those were great
-days, and there were thousands of men where there are now a score, and
-a line of light and deviltry ran from the canal’s mouth for miles back
-to the city, where it blazed into a great fire of dissolute pleasure
-and excitement. In those days men were making fortunes in a night,
-and by ways as dark as night--by furnishing machinery that could not
-even be put together, by supplying blocks of granite that cost more in
-freight than bars of silver, by kidnapping workmen for the swamps, and
-by the simple methods of false accounts and credits. And while some
-were growing rich, others were living with the fear of sudden death
-before their eyes, and drinking the native rum that they might forget
-it, and throwing their wages away on the roulette-tables, and eating
-and drinking and making merry in the fear that they might die on the
-morrow.
-
-Mr. Wells, an American engineer, was in charge of the company’s
-flotilla, and waited for us at the wharf.
-
-“I saw you investigating our engines,” he said. “That’s all right.
-Only tell the truth about what you see, and we won’t mind.”
-
-We stood on the bow of the tug and sped up the length of the canal
-between great dredging-machines that towered as high above us as the
-bridge of an ocean liner, and that weighed apparently as much as a
-battle-ship. The decks of some of them were split with the heat, and
-there were shutters missing from the cabin windows, but the monster
-machinery was intact, and the wood-work was freshly painted and
-scrubbed. They reminded me of a line of old ships of war at rest in
-some navy-yard. They represent in money value, even as they are to-day,
-five million francs. Beyond them on either side stretched low green
-bushes, through which the Rio Grande bent and twisted, and beyond the
-bushes were high hills and the Pacific Ocean, into which the sun set,
-leaving us cold and depressed.
-
-[Illustration: THE TOP OF A DREDGE]
-
-Except for the bubbling of the water under our bow there was not a
-sound to disturb the silence that hung above the narrow canal and the
-green bushes that rose from a bed of water. I thought of the entrance
-of the Suez Canal, as I had seen it at Port Said and at Ismaïlia,
-with great P. & O. steamers passing down its length, and troop-ships
-showing hundreds of white helmets above the sides, and tramp steamers
-and sailing-vessels flying every flag, and compared it and its
-scenes of life and movement with this dreary waste before us, with the
-idle dredges rearing their iron girders to the sky, the engineers’
-sign-posts half smothered in the water and the mud, and with a naked
-fisherman paddling noiselessly down the canal with his eyes fixed on
-the water, his hollowed log canoe the only floating vessel in what
-should have been the highway of the world.
-
-There were about eight hundred men in all working along the whole
-length of the canal while we were there, instead of the twelve thousand
-that once made the place hum with activity. But the work the twelve
-thousand accomplished remains, and the stranger is surprised to find
-that there is so much of it and that it is so well done. It looks to
-his ignorant eyes as though only a little more energy and a greater
-amount of honesty would be necessary to open the canal to traffic; but
-experts will tell him that one hundred million dollars will have to be
-expended and seven or eight years of honest work done before that ditch
-can be dug and France hold a Kiel celebration of her own.
-
-But before that happens every citizen of the United States should help
-to open the Nicaragua Canal to the world under the protection and the
-virtual ownership of his own country.
-
-Our stay in Panama was shortened somewhat on account of our having
-taken too great an interest in the freedom of a young lawyer and
-diplomat, who was arrested while we were there, charged with being one
-of the leaders of the revolution.
-
-[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN PANAMA]
-
-He was an acquaintance of Lloyd Griscom’s, who took an interest in
-the young rebel because they had both been in the diplomatic service
-abroad. One afternoon, while Griscom and the lawyer were sitting
-together in the office of the latter, five soldiers entered the place
-and ordered the suspected revolutionist to accompany them to the
-cartel. As he happened to know something of the law, he protested that
-they must first show him a warrant, and while two of them went out
-for the warrant and the others kept watch in the outer office Griscom
-mapped out a plan of escape. The lawyer’s office hung over the Bay of
-Panama, and Griscom’s idea was that he should, under the protection of
-the darkness, slip down a rope from the window to a small boat below
-and be rowed out to the _Barracouta_, of the Pacific Mail Company’s
-line, which was listed to sail that same evening up the coast. The
-friends of the rebel were sent for, and with their assistance Griscom
-made every preparation for the young rebel’s escape, and then came to
-the hotel and informed Somerset and myself of what he had done, and
-asked us to aid in what was to follow. We knew nothing of the rights
-or the wrongs of the revolutionists, but we considered that a man
-who was going down a rope into a small boat while three soldiers sat
-waiting for him in an outer room was performing a sporting act that
-called for our active sympathy. So we followed Griscom to his friend’s
-office, and, having passed the soldiers, were ushered into his presence
-and introduced to him and his friends.
-
-He was a little man, but was not at all alarmed, nor did he pose or
-exhibit any braggadocio, as a man of weaker calibre might have done
-under the circumstances. When we offered to hold the rope for him, or
-to block up the doors so that the soldiers might not see what was going
-forward, he thanked us with such grateful politeness that he made me
-feel rather ashamed of myself; for my interest in the matter up to that
-point had not been a very serious or a high one. Indeed, I did not even
-know the gentleman’s name. But as we did not know the names of the
-government people against whom he was plotting either, we felt that we
-could not be accused of partiality.
-
-The prisoner did not want his wife to know what had happened, and so
-sent her word that important legal business would detain him at the
-office, and that his dinner was to be brought to him there. The rope by
-which he was to escape was smuggled past the soldiers under the napkin
-which covered this dinner. It was then seven o’clock and nearly dark,
-and as our rebel friend feared our presence might excite suspicion,
-he asked us to go away, and requested us to return in half an hour. It
-would then be quite dark, and the attempt to escape could be made with
-greater safety.
-
-But the alcalde during our absence spoiled what might have been an
-excellent story by rushing in and carrying the diplomat off to jail.
-When we returned we found the office locked and guarded, and as
-we walked away, in doubt as to whether he had escaped or had been
-arrested, we found that the soldiers were following us. As this
-continued throughout the evening we went across the isthmus the next
-morning to Colon, the same soldiers accompanying us on our way.
-
-[Illustration: THE CANAL IN THE INTERIOR]
-
-The ship of war _Atlanta_ was at Colon, and as we had met her officers
-at Puerto Cortez, in Honduras, we went on board and asked them to
-see that we were not shot against church walls or hung. They were
-exceedingly amused, and promised us ample protection, and though we did
-not need it on that occasion, I was impressed with the comforting sense
-that comes to a traveller from the States when he knows that one of
-our White Squadron is rolling at anchor in the harbor. And later, when
-Griscom caught the Chagres fever, we had every reason to be grateful
-for the presence in the harbor of the _Atlanta_, as her officers, led
-by Dr. Bartolette and his assistant surgeon, Mr. Moore, helped him
-through his sickness, visiting him daily with the greatest kindness and
-good-will.
-
-Colon did not impress us very favorably. It is a large town of wooden
-houses, with a floating population of Jamaica negroes and a few
-Chinese. The houses built for the engineers of the canal stretch out
-along a point at either side of a double row of magnificent palms,
-which terminate at the residence intended for De Lesseps. It is now
-falling into decay. In front of it, facing the sea, is a statue of
-Columbus protecting the Republic of Colombia, represented by an Indian
-girl, who is crouching under his outstretched arm. This monument was
-presented to the United States of Colombia by the Empress Eugenie, and
-the statue is, in its fallen state, with its pedestal shattered by
-the many storms and time, significant of the fallen fortunes of that
-great lady herself. If Columbus could have protected Colombia from the
-French as he is in the French statue protecting her from all the world,
-she would now be the richest and most important of Central-American
-republics.
-
-Colon seems to be owned entirely by the Panama Railroad Company, a
-monopoly that conducts its affairs with even more disregard for the
-public than do other monopolies in better-known localities. The company
-makes use of the seaport as a freight-yard, and its locomotives run
-the length of the town throughout the entire day, blowing continually
-on their whistles and ringing their bells, so that there is little
-peace for the just or the unjust. We were exceedingly relieved when the
-doctors agreed that Griscom was ready to put to sea again, and we were
-able to turn from the scene of the great scandal and its fever fields
-to the mountains of Venezuela, and of Caracas in particular.
-
-
-
-
-THE PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA
-
-
-SHOVED off by itself in a corner of Central Park on the top of a wooded
-hill, where only the people who live in the high apartment-houses at
-Eighty-first Street can see it, is an equestrian statue. It is odd,
-bizarre, and inartistic, and suggests in size and pose that equestrian
-statue to General Jackson which mounts guard before the White House in
-Washington. It shows a chocolate-cream soldier mastering with one hand
-a rearing rocking-horse, and with the other pointing his sword towards
-an imaginary enemy.
-
-Sometimes a “sparrow” policeman saunters up the hill and looks at the
-statue with unenlightened eyes, and sometimes a nurse-maid seeks its
-secluded site, and sits on the pedestal below it while the children of
-this free republic play unconcernedly in its shadow. On the base of
-this big statue is carved the name of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of
-Venezuela.
-
-Down on the northeastern coast of South America, in Caracas, the
-capital of the United States of Venezuela, there is a pretty little
-plaza, called the Plaza Washington. It is not at all an important
-plaza; it is not floored for hundreds of yards with rare mosaics like
-the Plaza de Bolivar, nor lit by swinging electric lights, and the
-president’s band never plays there. But it has a fresh prettiness
-and restfulness all its own, and the narrow gravel paths are clean
-and trim, and the grass grows rich and high, and the branches of the
-trees touch and interlace and form a green roof over all, except in
-the very centre, where there stands open to the blue sky a statue of
-Washington, calm, dignified, beneficent, and paternal. It is Washington
-the statesman, not the soldier. The sun of the tropics beats down upon
-his shoulders; the palms rustle and whisper pleasantly above his head.
-From the barred windows of the yellow and blue and pink houses that
-line the little plaza dark-eyed, dark-skinned women look out sleepily,
-but understandingly, at the grave face of the North American Bolivar;
-and even the policeman, with his red blanket and Winchester carbine,
-comprehends when the gringos stop and take off their hats and make a
-low bow to the father of their country in his pleasant place of exile.
-
-[Illustration: STATUE OF SIMON BOLIVAR, CARACAS]
-
-Other governments than those of the United States of America and the
-United States of Venezuela have put up statues to their great men
-in foreign capitals, but the careers of Washington and Bolivar bear so
-striking a resemblance, and the histories of the two countries of which
-they are the respective fathers are so much alike, that they might be
-written in parallel columns. And so it seems especially appropriate
-that these monuments to these patriots should stand in each of the two
-continents on either side of the dividing states of Central America.
-
-It will offend no true Venezuelan to-day if it be said of his country
-that the most interesting man in it is a dead one, for he will allow no
-one to go further than himself in his admiration for Bolivar; and he
-has done so much to keep his memory fresh by circulating portraits of
-him on every coin and stamp of the country, by placing his statue at
-every corner, and by hanging his picture in every house, that he cannot
-blame the visitor if his strongest impression of Venezuela is of the
-young man who began at thirty-three to liberate five republics, and
-who conquered a territory more than one-third as great as the whole of
-Europe.
-
-In 1811 Venezuela declared her independence of the mother-country of
-Spain, and her great men put this declaration in writing and signed it,
-and the room in which it was signed is still kept sacred, as is the
-room where our declaration was signed in Independence Hall. But the
-two men who were to make these declarations worth something more than
-the parchment upon which they were written were not among the signers.
-Their work was still to come, and it was much the same kind of work,
-and carried on in much the same spirit of indomitable energy under
-the most cruel difficulties, and with a few undrilled troops against
-an army of veterans. It was marked by brilliant and sudden marches
-and glorious victories; and where Washington suffered in the snows
-of Valley Forge, or pushed his way through the floating ice of the
-Delaware, young Bolivar marched under fierce tropical suns, and cut his
-path through jungle and swamp-lands, and over the almost impenetrable
-fastnesses of the Andes.
-
-[Illustration: STATUE OF WASHINGTON DECORATED WITH FLORAL WREATHS BY
-THE VENEZUELANS]
-
-Their difficulties were the same and their aim was the same, but the
-character of the two men were absolutely and entirely different, for
-Bolivar was reckless, impatient of advice, and even foolhardy. What
-Washington was we know.
-
-The South-American came of a distinguished Spanish family, and had
-been educated as a courtier and as a soldier in the mother-country,
-though his heart remained always with his own people, and he was among
-the first to take up arms to set them free. Unless you have seen the
-country through which he led his men, and have measured the mountains
-he climbed with his few followers, it is quite impossible to
-understand the immensity of the task he accomplished. Even to-day a
-fast steamer cannot reach Callao from Panama under seven days, and yet
-Bolivar made the same distance and on foot, starting from the South
-Atlantic, and continuing on across the continent to the Pacific side,
-and then on down the coast into Peru, living on his way upon roots
-and berries, sleeping on the ground wrapped in a blanket, riding on
-muleback or climbing the steep trail on foot, and freeing on his way
-Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and finally Peru, the home of
-the Incas.
-
-The history of this campaign is one too glorious and rich in incident
-and color to be crowded into a few pages, and the character of its
-chief actor too varied, and his rise and fall too dramatic, to be
-dismissed, as it must be here, in a few paragraphs. But every American
-who loves a hero and who loves a lover--and Bolivar was very much of
-both, and perhaps too much of the latter--should read the life of this
-young man who freed a country rich in brave men, who made some of these
-who were much his senior in years his lieutenants, and who, after
-risking his life upon many battle-fields and escaping several attempts
-at assassination, died at last deserted except by a few friends, and
-with a heart broken by the ingratitude of the people he had led out of
-captivity.
-
-It is difficult to find out, even in his own country, why the
-Venezuelans, after heaping Bolivar with honors and elevating him to the
-place of a god, should have turned against him, and driven him into
-exile at Santa Marta. Some will tell you that he tried to make himself
-dictator over the countries which he had freed; others say that it was
-because he had refused to be a dictator that the popular feeling went
-against him, and that when the people in the madness of their new-found
-freedom cried, “Thou hast rid us of kings; be thou king,” he showed
-them their folly, and sought his old home, and died there before the
-reaction came, which was to sweep him back once more and forever into
-the place of the popular hero of South America.
-
-[Illustration: DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS,
-VENEZUELA, DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN RESIDENTS]
-
-It was sixteen years after his death that a hero-worshipping friend was
-brave enough to commission an artist to design a statue to his memory.
-On the neck of this statue the artist hung the representation of a
-miniature in the shape of a medallion, which had been given to Bolivar
-by the family of Washington. On the reverse was a lock of Washington’s
-hair and the inscription, “This portrait of the founder of liberty in
-North America is presented by his adopted son to him who has acquired
-equal glory in South America.”
-
-Some one asked why the artist had stripped from the breast of Bolivar
-all of the other medals and stars that had been given him by
-different countries in the hour of his triumph, and the artist answered
-that he had done as his patron and the friend of Bolivar thought would
-best please his hero. And ever after that it was decreed that every
-bust or statue or engraving of the Liberator should show him with this
-portrait of Washington hanging by a ribbon about his neck; and so you
-will see in the National Portrait Gallery that while the coats of his
-lieutenants glitter with orders and crosses, Bolivar’s bears this
-medal only. It was his greatest pride, and he considered it his chief
-glory. And the manner of its bestowal was curiously appropriate. In
-1824 General Lafayette returned to this country as the guest of the
-nation, and a banquet was given to him by Congress, at which the memory
-of Washington and the deeds of his French lieutenant were honored
-again and again. It was while the enthusiasm and rejoicings of this
-celebration were at their height that Henry Clay rose in his place and
-asked the six hundred Americans before him to remember that while they
-were enjoying the benefits of free institutions founded by the bravery
-and patriotism of their fore-fathers, their cousins and neighbors in
-the southern continent were struggling to obtain that same independence.
-
-[Illustration: SIMON BOLIVAR]
-
-“No nation, no generous Lafayette,” he cried, “has come to their
-aid; alone and without help they have sustained their glorious cause,
-trusting to its justice, and with the assistance only of their bravery,
-their deserts, and their Andes--and one man, Simon Bolivar, the
-Washington of South America.”
-
-[Illustration: VIEW OF LA GUAYRA]
-
-And you can imagine the six hundred Americans jumping to their feet
-and cheering the name of the young soldier, and the French marquis
-eagerly asking that he might be the one to send him some token of their
-sympathy and admiration. Lafayette forwarded the portrait of Washington
-to Bolivar, who valued it so highly that the people who loved him
-valued the man he worshipped; and to-day you will see in Caracas
-streets and squares and houses named after Washington, and portraits
-of Washington crossing the Delaware, and Washington on horseback, and
-Washington at Mount Vernon, hanging in almost every shop and café in
-the capital. And the next time you ride in Central Park you might turn
-your bicycle, or tell the man on the box to turn the horses, into that
-little curtain of trees, and around the hill where the odd-looking
-statue stands, and see if you cannot feel some sort of sympathy and pay
-some tribute to this young man who loved like a hero, and who fought
-like a hero, with the fierceness of the tropical sun above him, and
-whose inspiration was the calm, grave parent of your own country.
-
-Bolivar’s country is the republic of South America that stands nearest
-to New York, and when people come to know more concerning it, I am sure
-they will take to visiting it and its capital, the “Paris of South
-America,” in the winter months, as they now go to southern Europe or to
-the Mediterranean.
-
-There are many reasons for their doing so. In the first place, it can
-be reached in less than six days, and it is the only part of South
-America to which one can go without first crossing the Isthmus of
-Panama and then taking a long trip down the western coast, or sailing
-for nearly a month along the eastern coast; and it is a wonderfully
-beautiful country, and its cities of Caracas and Valencia are typical
-of the best South-American cities. When you have seen them you have
-an intelligent idea of what the others are like; and when you read
-about revolutions in Rio Janeiro, or Valparaiso, or Buenos Ayres, you
-will have in your mind’s eye the background for all of these dramatic
-uprisings, and you will feel superior to other people who do not know
-that the republic of Venezuela is larger than France, Spain, and
-Portugal together, and that the inhabitants of this great territory are
-less in number than those of New York city.
-
-[Illustration: THE RAILROAD UP THE MOUNTAIN]
-
-La Guayra is the chief seaport of Venezuela. It lies at the edge of a
-chain of great mountains, where they come down to wet their feet in the
-ocean, and Caracas, the capital, is stowed away three thousand feet
-higher up behind these mountains, and could only be bombarded in time
-of war by shells that would rise like rockets and drop on the other
-side of the mountains, and so cover a distance quite nine miles away
-from the vessel that fired them. Above La Guayra, on the hill, is a
-little fortress which was once the residence of the Spanish governor
-when Venezuela was a colony of Spain. It is of interest now chiefly
-because Charles Kingsley describes it in _Westward Ho!_ as the fortress
-in which the Rose of Devon was imprisoned. Past this fortress, and up
-over the mountains to the capital, are a mule-trail and an ancient
-wagon-road and a modern railway.
-
-It is a very remarkable railroad; its tracks cling to the perpendicular
-surface of the mountain like the tiny tendrils of a vine on a
-stone-wall, and the trains creep and crawl along the edge of its
-precipices, or twist themselves into the shape of a horseshoe magnet,
-so that the engineer on the locomotive can look directly across a
-bottomless chasm into the windows of the last car. The view from this
-train, while it pants and puffs on its way to the capital, is the most
-beautiful combination of sea and plain and mountain that I have ever
-seen. There are higher mountains and more beautiful, perhaps, but
-they run into a brown prairie or into a green plain; and there are as
-beautiful views of the ocean, only you have to see them from the level
-of the ocean itself, or from a chalk-cliff with the downs behind you
-and the white sand at your feet. But nowhere else in the world have I
-seen such magnificent and noble mountains running into so beautiful and
-green a plain, and beyond that the great blue stretches of the sea.
-When you look down from the car-platform you see first, stretching
-three thousand feet below you, the great green ribs of the mountain and
-its valleys and waterways leading into a plain covered with thousands
-and thousands of royal palms, set so far apart that you can distinguish
-every broad leaf and the full length of the white trunk. Among these
-are the red-roofed and yellow villages, and beyond them again the white
-line of breakers disappearing and reappearing against the blue as
-though some one were wiping out a chalk-line and drawing it in again,
-and then the great ocean weltering in the heat and stretching as far as
-the eye can see, and touching a sky so like it in color that the two
-are joined in a curtain of blue on which the ships seem to lie flat,
-like painted pictures on a wall.
-
-[Illustration: COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS]
-
-You pass through clouds on your way up that leave the trees and
-rocks along the track damp and shining as after a heavy dew, and
-at some places you can peer through them from the steps of the car
-down a straight fall of three thousand feet. When you have climbed
-to the top of the mountain, you see below you on the other side the
-beautiful valley in which lies the city of Caracas, cut up evenly by
-well-kept streets, and diversified by the towers of churches and public
-buildings and open plazas, with the white houses and gardens of the
-coffee-planters lying beyond the city at the base of the mountains.
-
-Venezuela, after our experiences of Central America, was like a
-return to civilization after months on the alkali plains of Texas. We
-found Caracas to be a Spanish-American city of the first class, with a
-suggestion of the boulevards, and Venezuela a country that possessed
-a history of her own, and an Academy of wise men and artists, and a
-Pantheon for her heroes. I suppose we should have known that this was
-so before we visited Venezuela; but as we did not, we felt as though
-we were discovering a new country for ourselves. It was interesting to
-find statues of men of whom none of us had ever heard, and who were
-distinguished for something else than military successes, men who had
-made discoveries in science and medicine, and who had written learned
-books; to find the latest devices for comfort of a civilized community,
-and with them the records of a fierce struggle for independence, a long
-period of disorganization, where the Church had the master-hand, and
-then a rapid advance in the habits and customs of enlightened nations.
-There are the most curious combinations and contrasts, showing on
-one side a pride of country and an eagerness to emulate the customs
-of stable governments, and on the other evidences of the Southern
-hot-blooded temperament and dislike of restraint.
-
-On the corner of the principal plaza stands the cathedral, with a
-tower. Ten soldiers took refuge in this tower four years ago, during
-the last revolution, and they made so determined a fight from that
-point of vantage that in order to dislodge them it was found necessary
-to build a fire in the tower and smoke them out with the fumes of
-sulphur. These ten soldiers were the last to make a stand within the
-city, and when they fell, from the top of the tower, smothered to
-death, the revolution was at an end. This incident of warfare is of
-value when you contrast the thing done with its environment, and know
-that next to the cathedral-tower are confectionery-shops such as you
-find on Regent Street or upper Broadway, that electric lights surround
-the cathedral, and that tram-cars run past it on rails sunk below the
-surface of the roadway and over a better street than any to be found in
-New York city.
-
-[Illustration: THE MARKET OF CARACAS]
-
-Even without acquaintances among the people of the capital there are
-enough public show-places in Caracas to entertain a stranger for a
-fortnight. It is pleasure enough to walk the long, narrow streets under
-brilliantly colored awnings, between high one- and two-story houses,
-painted in blues and pinks and greens, and with overhanging red-tiled
-roofs and projecting iron balconies and open iron-barred windows,
-through which you gain glimpses beyond of cool interiors and beautiful
-courts and gardens filled with odd-looking plants around a splashing
-fountain.
-
-The ladies of Caracas seem to spend much of their time sitting at
-these windows, and are always there in the late afternoons, when they
-dress themselves and arrange their hair for the evening, and put a
-little powder on their faces, and take their places in the cushioned
-window-seats as though they were in their box at the opera. And though
-they are within a few inches of the passers-by on the pavement, they
-can look through them and past them, and are as oblivious of their
-presence as though they were invisible. In the streets are strings of
-mules carrying bags of coffee or buried beneath bales of fodder, and
-jostled by open fiacres, with magnificent coachmen on the box-seat
-in top-boots and gold trimmings to their hats and coats, and many
-soldiers, on foot and mounted, hurrying along at a quick step in
-companies, or strolling leisurely alone. They wear blue uniforms with
-scarlet trousers and facings, and the president’s body-guard are in
-white duck and high black boots, and are mounted on magnificent horses.
-
-[Illustration: VIEW OF CARACAS]
-
-There are three great buildings in Caracas--the Federal Palace, the
-Opera-house, and the Pantheon, which was formerly a church, and which
-has been changed into a receiving-vault and a memorial for the great
-men of the country. Here, after three journeys, the bones of Bolivar
-now rest. The most interesting of these buildings is the Federal
-Palace. It is formed around a great square filled with flowers and
-fountains, and lit with swinging electric lights. It is the handsomest
-building in Caracas, and within its four sides are the chambers of
-the upper and lower branches of the legislature, the offices of
-the different departments of state, and the reception-hall of the
-president, in which is the National Portrait Gallery. The palace is
-light and unsubstantial-looking, like a canvas palace in a theatre,
-and suggests the casino at a French watering-place. It is painted in
-imitation of stone, and the statues are either of plaster-of-paris or
-of wood, painted white to represent marble. But the theatrical effect
-is in keeping with the colored walls and open fronts of the other
-buildings of the city, and is not out of place in this city of such
-dramatic incidents.
-
-[Illustration: PRESIDENT CRESPO, OF VENEZUELA]
-
-The portraits in the state-room of the palace immortalize the
-features of fierce-looking, dark-faced generals, with old-fashioned
-high-standing collars of gold-braid, and green uniforms. Strange and
-unfamiliar names are printed beneath these portraits, and appear
-again painted in gold letters on a roll of honor which hangs from the
-ceiling, and which faces a list of the famous battles for independence.
-High on this roll of honor are the names “General O’Leary” and “Colonel
-Fergurson,” and among the portraits are the faces of two blue-eyed,
-red-haired young men, with fair skin and broad chests and shoulders,
-one wearing the close-clipped whiskers of the last of the
-Georges, and the other the long Dundreary whiskers of the Crimean wars.
-Whether the Irish general and the English colonel gave their swords
-for the sake of the cause of independence or fought for the love of
-fighting, I do not know, but they won the love of the Spanish-Americans
-by the service they rendered, no matter what their motives may have
-been for serving. Many people tell you proudly that they are descended
-from “O’Leari,” and the names of the two foreigners are as conspicuous
-on pedestals and tablets of honor as are their smiling blue eyes
-and red cheeks among the thin-visaged, dark-skinned faces of their
-brothers-in-arms.
-
-[Illustration: LEGISLATIVE BUILDING, CARACAS]
-
-At one end of the room is an immense painting of a battle, and the
-other is blocked by as large a picture showing Bolivar dictating to
-members of Congress, who have apparently ridden out into the field to
-meet him, and are holding an impromptu session beneath the palm leaves
-of an Indian hut. The dome of the chamber, which latter is two hundred
-feet in length, is covered with an immense panorama, excellently well
-done, showing the last of the battles of the Venezuelans against
-the Spaniards, in which the figures are life-size and the action
-most spirited, and the effect of color distinctly decorative. These
-paintings in the National Gallery would lead you to suppose that there
-was nothing but battles in the history of Venezuela, and that her
-great men were all soldiers, but the talent of the artists who have
-painted these scenes and the actors in them corrects the idea. Among
-these artists are Arturo Michelena, who has exhibited at the World’s
-Fair, and frequently at the French Salon, from which institution he has
-received a prize, M. Tovar y Tovar, A. Herrea Toro, and Cristobal Rojas.
-
-[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT’S BODY-GUARD OF COWBOYS]
-
-It was that “Illustrious American, Guzman Blanco,” one of the
-numerous presidents of Venezuela, and probably the best known, who
-was responsible for most of the public buildings of the capital.
-These were originally either convents or monasteries, which he
-converted, after his war with the Church, into the Federal Palace, the
-Opera-house, and a university. Each of these structures covers so much
-valuable ground, and is situated so advantageously in the very heart
-of the city, that one gets a very good idea of how powerful the Church
-element must have been before Guzman overthrew it.
-
-He was a peculiar man, apparently, and possessed of much force and
-of a progressive spirit, combined with an overmastering vanity. The
-city was at its gayest under his régime, and he encouraged the arts
-and sciences by creating various bodies of learned men, by furnishing
-the nucleus for a national museum, by subsidizing the Opera-house,
-and by granting concessions to foreign companies which were of quite
-too generous a nature to hold good, and which now greatly encumber
-and embarrass his successors. But while he was president, and before
-he went to live in luxurious exile on the Avenue Kléber, which seems
-to be the resting-place of all South-American presidents, he did much
-to make the country prosperous and its capital attractive, and he was
-determined that the people should know that he was the individual who
-accomplished these things. With this object he had fifteen statues
-erected to himself in different parts of the city, and more tablets
-than one can count. Each statue bore an inscription telling that it
-was erected to that “Illustrious American, Guzman Blanco,” and every
-new bridge and road and public building bore a label to say that it was
-Guzman Blanco who was responsible for its existence. The idea of a man
-erecting statues to himself struck the South-American mind as extremely
-humorous, and one night all the statues were sawed off at the ankles,
-and to-day there is not one to be seen, and only raw places in the
-walls to show where the memorial tablets hung. But you cannot wipe out
-history by pulling down columns or effacing inscriptions, and Guzman
-Blanco undoubtedly did do much for his country, even though at the same
-time he was doing a great deal for Guzman Blanco.
-
-[Illustration: BAPTIZING INDIANS AT A VENEZUELAN STATION AT THE CUYUNI
-RIVER]
-
-Guzman was followed in rapid succession by three or four other
-presidents and dictators, who filled their pockets with millions
-and then fled the country, only waiting until their money was first
-safely out of it. Then General Crespo, who had started his revolution
-with seven men, finally overthrew the government’s forces, and was
-elected president, and has remained in office ever since. To set
-forth with seven followers to make yourself president of a country as
-large as France, Portugal, and Spain together requires a great deal
-of confidence and courage. General Crespo is a fighter, and possesses
-both. It was either he or one of his generals--the story is told
-of both--who, when he wanted arms for his cowboys, bade them take off
-their shirts and grease their bodies and rush through the camp of the
-enemy in search of them. He told them to hold their left hands out
-as they ran, and whenever their fingers slipped on a greased body
-they were to pass it by, but when they touched a man wearing a shirt
-they were to cut him down with their machetes. In this fashion three
-hundred of his plainsmen routed two thousand of the regular troops,
-and captured all of their rifles and ammunition. The idea that when
-you want arms the enemy is the best person from whom to take them is
-excellent logic, and that charge of the half-naked men, armed only with
-their knives, through the sleeping camp is Homeric in its magnificence.
-
-Crespo is more at home when fighting in the field than in the
-council-chamber of the Yellow House, which is the White House of the
-republic; but that may be because he prefers fighting to governing,
-and a man generally does best what he likes best to do. He is as
-simple in his habits to-day as when he was on the march with his seven
-revolutionists, and goes to bed at eight in the evening, and is deep in
-public business by four the next morning; many an unhappy minister has
-been called to an audience at sunrise. The president neither smokes nor
-drinks; he is grave and dignified, with that dignity which enormous
-size gives, and his greatest pleasure is to take a holiday and visit
-his ranch, where he watches the round-up of his cattle and gallops
-over his thousands of acres. He is the idol of the cowboys, and has a
-body-guard composed of some of the men of this class. I suppose they
-are very much like our own cowboys, but the citizens of the capital
-look upon them as the Parisians regarded Napoleon’s Mamelukes, and tell
-you in perfect sincerity that when they charge at night their eyes
-flash fire in a truly terrifying manner.
-
-[Illustration: A TYPICAL HUNTING-PARTY IN VENEZUELA]
-
-I saw the president but once, and then but for a few moments. He was
-at the Yellow House and holding a public reception, to which every one
-was admitted with a freedom that betokened absolute democracy. When my
-turn came he talked awhile through Colonel Bird, our consul, but there
-was no chance for me to gain any idea of him except that he was very
-polite, as are all Venezuelans, and very large. They tell a story of
-him which illustrates his character. He was riding past the university
-when a group of students hooted and jeered at him, not because of his
-politics, but because of his origin. A policeman standing by, aroused
-to indignation by this insult to the president, fired his revolver into
-the crowd. Crespo at once ordered the man’s arrest for shooting at a
-citizen with no sufficient provocation, and rode on his way without
-even giving a glance at his tormentors. The incident seemed to show
-that he was too big a man to allow the law to be broken even in his own
-defence, or, at least, big enough not to mind the taunts of ill-bred
-children.
-
-The boys of the university are taken very seriously by the people of
-Caracas, as are all boys in that country, where a child is listened
-to, if he be a male child, with as much grave politeness as though
-it were a veteran who was speaking. The effect is not good, and the
-boys, especially of the university, grow to believe that they are very
-important factors in the affairs of the state, when, as a matter of
-fact, they are only the cat’s-paws of clever politicians, who use them
-whenever they want a demonstration and do not wish to appear in it
-themselves. So these boys are sent forth shouting into the streets, and
-half the people cheer them on, and the children themselves think they
-are patriots or liberators, or something equally important.
-
-I obtained a rather low opinion of them because they stoned an
-unfortunate American photographer who was taking pictures in the
-quadrangles, and because I was so far interested in them as to get
-a friend of mine to translate for me the sentences and verses they
-had written over the walls of their college. The verses were of a
-political character, but so indecent that the interpreter was much
-embarrassed; the single sentences were attacks, anonymous, of course,
-on fellow-students. As the students of the University of Venezuela step
-directly from college life into public life, their training is of some
-interest and importance. And I am sure that the Venezuelan fathers
-would do much better by their sons if they would cease to speak of
-the university in awe-stricken tones as “the hot-bed of liberty,” but
-would rather take away the boys’ revolvers and teach them football,
-and thrash them soundly whenever they caught them soiling the walls of
-their alma mater with nasty verses.
-
-[Illustration: A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY]
-
-There are some beautiful drives around Caracas, out in the country
-among the coffee plantations, and one to a public garden that overlooks
-the city, upon which President Crespo has spent much thought and money.
-But the most beautiful feature of Caracas, and one that no person who
-has visited that place will ever forget, is the range of mountains
-above it, which no president can improve. They are smooth and bare
-of trees and of a light-green color, except in the waterways, where
-there are lines of darker green, and the clouds change their aspect
-continually, covering them with shadows or floating over them from
-valley to valley, and hovering above a high peak like the white smoke
-of a volcano.
-
-I do not know of a place that will so well repay a visit as Caracas,
-or a country that is so well worth exploring as Venezuela. To a
-sportsman it is a paradise. You can shoot deer within six miles of
-the Opera-house, and in six hours beyond Macuto you can kill panther,
-and as many wild boars as you wish. No country in South America is
-richer in such natural products as cocoa, coffee, and sugar-cane. And
-in the interior there is a vast undiscovered and untouched territory
-waiting for the mining engineer, the professional hunter, and the
-breeder of cattle.
-
-The government of Venezuela at the time of our visit to Caracas
-was greatly troubled on account of her boundary dispute with Great
-Britain, and her own somewhat hasty action in sending three foreign
-ministers out of the country for daring to criticise her tardiness in
-paying foreign debts and her neglect in not holding to the terms of
-concessions. These difficulties, the latter of which were entirely of
-her own making, were interesting to us as Americans, because the talk
-on all sides showed that in the event of a serious trouble with any
-foreign power Venezuela looked confidently to the United States for
-aid. Now, since President Cleveland’s so-called “war” message has been
-written, she is naturally even more liable to go much further than
-she would dare go if she did not think the United States was back of
-her. Her belief in the sympathy of our government is also based on
-many friendly acts in the past: on the facts that General Miranda, the
-soldier who preceded Bolivar, and who was a friend of Hamilton, Fox,
-and Lafayette, first learned to hope for the independence of South
-America during the battle for independence in our own country; that
-when the revolution began, in 1810, it was from the United States that
-Venezuela received her first war material; that two years later, when
-the earthquake of 1812 destroyed twenty thousand people, the United
-States Congress sent many ship-loads of flour to the survivors of the
-disaster; and that as late as 1888 our Congress again showed its good
-feeling by authorizing the secretary of the navy to return to Venezuela
-on a ship of war the body of General Paez, who died in exile in New
-York city, and by appointing a committee of congressmen and senators to
-represent the government at his public funeral.
-
-[Illustration: THE CUYUNI RIVER
-
-With View of the English Station that was sacked by Venezuelan Troops,
-and from which Inspector Barnes was taken Prisoner]
-
-All of these expressions of good-will in the past count for something
-as signs that the United States may be relied upon in the future, but
-it is a question whether she will be willing to go as far as Venezuela
-expects her to go. Venezuela’s hope of aid, and her conviction, which
-is shared by all the Central-American republics, that the United
-States is going to help her and them in the hour of need, is based
-upon what they believe to be the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine
-as we understand it is a very different thing from the Monroe Doctrine
-as they understand it; and while their reading of it is not so
-important as long as we know what it means and enforce it, there is
-danger nevertheless in their way of looking at it, for, according
-to their point of view, the Monroe Doctrine is expected to cover a
-multitude of their sins. President Monroe said that we should “consider
-any attempt on the part of foreign powers to extend their system to any
-portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety, and
-that we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing
-those governments that had declared their independence, or controlling
-in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other
-light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to the
-United States.”
-
-He did not say that if a Central-American republic banished a British
-consul, or if Venezuela told the foreign ministers to leave the country
-on the next steamer, that the United States would back them up with
-force of arms.
-
-[Illustration: VENEZUELAN STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER
-
-The Barracks and House in which the English Police were confined]
-
-Admiral Meade’s squadron touched at La Guayra while we were at the
-capital, the squadron visiting the port at that time in obedience
-to the schedule already laid out for it in Washington some months
-previous, just as a theatrical company plays a week’s stand at the
-time and at the place arranged for it in advance by its agent, but
-the Venezuelans did not consider this, and believed that the squadron
-had been sent there to intimidate the British and to frighten the
-French and German men-of-war which were then expected in port to convey
-their dismissed ministers back to their own countries. One of the
-most intelligent men that I met in Caracas, and one closely connected
-with the Foreign Office, told me he had been to La Guayra to see our
-squadron, and that the admiral had placed his ships of war in the
-harbor in such a position that at a word he could blow the French and
-German boats out of the water. I suggested to one Venezuelan that there
-were other ways of dismissing foreign ministers than that of telling
-them to pack up and get out of the country in a week, and that I did
-not think the Monroe Doctrine meant that South-American republics could
-affront foreign nations with impunity. He answered me by saying that
-the United States had aided Mexico when Maximilian tried to found an
-empire in that country, and he could not see that the cases were not
-exactly similar.
-
-[Illustration: ENGLISH STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER
-
-Inspector Barnes, Chief of the English Police who were captured by the
-Venezuelan troops, is seated on the steps]
-
-They will, however, probably understand better what the Monroe Doctrine
-really is before their boundary dispute with Great Britain is settled,
-and Great Britain will probably know more about it also, for it is
-possible that there never was a case when the United States needed
-to watch her English cousins more closely than in this international
-dispute over the boundary-line between Venezuela and British Guiana.
-If England succeeds it means a loss to Venezuela of a territory as
-large as the State of New York, and of gold deposits which are believed
-to be the richest in South America, and, what is more important, it
-means the entire control by the English of the mouth and four hundred
-miles of the Orinoco River. The question is one of historical records
-and maps, and nothing else. Great Britain fell heir to the rights
-formerly possessed by Holland. Venezuela obtained by conquest the lands
-formerly owned by Spain. The problem to be solved is to find what were
-the possessions of Holland and Spain, and so settle what is to-day
-the territory of England and Venezuela. Year after year Great Britain
-has pushed her way westward, until she has advanced her claims over a
-territory of forty thousand square miles, and has included Barima Point
-at the entrance to the Orinoco. She has refused positively, through
-Lord Salisbury, to recede or to arbitrate, and it is impossible for any
-one at this writing to foretell what the outcome will be. If the Monroe
-Doctrine does not apply in this case, it has never meant anything in
-the past, and will not mean much in the future.
-
-[Illustration: DR. PEDRO EZEQUIEL ROJAS
-
-Minister of Foreign Affairs]
-
-[Illustration: MAP EXPLAINING VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE]
-
-Personally, although the original Monroe Doctrine distinctly designates
-“this hemisphere,” and not merely this continent, I cannot think the
-principle of this doctrine should be applied in this instance. For if
-it does apply, it could be extended to other disputes much farther
-south, and we might have every republic in South America calling on
-us for aid in matters which could in no possible way affect either the
-honor or the prosperity of our country.
-
-[Illustration: THE CITY OF CARACAS]
-
-In any event the Monroe Doctrine is distinctly a selfish one, so far,
-at least, as all rules for self-preservation must be selfish, and I
-should prefer to think that we are interfering in behalf of Venezuela,
-not because we ourselves are threatened by the encroachments of Great
-Britain, but because we cannot stand by and see a weak power put upon
-by one of the greatest. It may be true, as the foreign powers have
-pointed out, that the aggressions of Great Britain are none of our
-business, but as we have made them our business, it concerns no one
-except Great Britain and ourselves, and now having failed to avoid the
-entrance to a quarrel, and being in, we must bear ourselves so that the
-enemy may beware of us, and see that we issue forth again with honor,
-and without having stooped to the sin of war.
-
-Caracas was the last city we visited on our tour, and perhaps it is
-just as well that this was so, for had we gone there in the first place
-we might have been in Caracas still. It is easy to understand why it
-is attractive. While you were slipping on icy pavements and drinking
-in pneumonia and the grippe, and while the air was filled with flying
-particles of ice and snow, and the fog-bound tugs on the East River
-were shrieking and screeching to each other all through the night,
-we were sitting out-of-doors in the Plaza de Bolivar, looking up at
-the big statue on its black marble pedestal, under the shade of green
-palms and in the moonlight, with a band of fifty pieces playing Spanish
-music, and hundreds of officers in gold uniforms, and pretty women
-with no covering to their heads but a lace mantilla, circling past in
-an endless chain of color and laughter and movement. Back of us beyond
-the trees the cafés sent out through their open fronts the noise of
-tinkling glasses and the click of the billiard-balls and a flood of
-colored light, and beyond us on the other side rose the towers and
-broad façade of the cathedral, white and ghostly in the moonlight, and
-with a single light swinging in the darkness through the open door.
-
-In the opinion of three foreigners, Caracas deserves her title of
-the Paris of South America; and there was only one other title that
-appealed to us more as we saw the shores of La Guayra sink into the
-ocean behind us and her cloud-wrapped mountains disappear, and that, it
-is not necessary to explain, was “the Paris of North America,” which
-stretches from Bowling Green to High Bridge.
-
-
-THE END
-
-
-
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-FOOTNOTES:
-
-
-[A] Since this was written, Professor S. H. Woodbridge, of the
-Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been successful in having a
-bill passed which hinders the lottery still further by closing to it
-apparently every avenue of advertisement and correspondence.
-
-The lottery people in consequence are at present negotiating with the
-government of Venezuela, and have offered it fifty thousand dollars a
-year and a share of the earnings for its protection.
-
-[B] Guiteris died a few months after our visit.
-
-
-
-
-TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
-
-
-  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
-
-  Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
-
-  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
-
-  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
-
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GRINGOS IN VENEZUELA AND
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Three gringos in Venezuela and Central America, by Richard Harding Davis</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Three gringos in Venezuela and Central America</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Richard Harding Davis</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 14, 2022 [eBook #69354]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of public domain works put online by Harvard University Library&#039;s Open Collections Program.)</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GRINGOS IN VENEZUELA AND CENTRAL AMERICA ***</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="450" alt=""></div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_0"></span>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_frontispiece.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">FORDING THE CHAMELICON RIVER</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-
-<h1>THREE GRINGOS IN VENEZUELA<br>
-
-<span class="small">AND</span><br>
-
-CENTRAL AMERICA</h1>
-
-<p>BY<br>
-
-<span class="large">RICHARD HARDING DAVIS</span></p>
-
-<p class="center">ILLUSTRATED</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_logo.jpg" alt=""></div>
-
-<p>NEW YORK<br>
-
-HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br>
-1896</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="bbox">
-
-<p class="ph1"><span class="smcap">By</span> RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><i>Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental.</i></p>
-
-<hr class="tiny">
-<div class="verse">ABOUT PARIS. $1 25.</div>
-<div class="verse">THE PRINCESS ALINE. $1 25.</div>
-<div class="verse">OUR ENGLISH COUSINS. $1 25.</div>
-<div class="verse">THE RULERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. $1 25.</div>
-<div class="verse">THE WEST FROM A CAR-WINDOW. $1 25.</div>
-<div class="verse">THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES. $1 50.</div>
-<div class="verse">VAN BIBBER, AND OTHERS. $1 00. (Paper, 60 cents.)</div>
-
-<hr class="tiny">
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by HARPER</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">BROTHERS, New York.</span></p>
-
-</div></div></div></div>
-
-<p class="center">Copyright, 1896, by <span class="smcap">Harper</span> &amp; <span class="smcap">Brothers</span>.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center">TO<br>
-
-MY FRIENDS<br>
-
-<span class="large">H. SOMERS SOMERSET</span><br>
-
-AND<br>
-
-<span class="large">LLOYD GRISCOM</span></p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table>
-
-<tr><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">On the Caribbean Sea</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">      1</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Exiled Lottery</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">      27</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">In Honduras</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">      56</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">At Corinto</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">      160</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">On the Isthmus of Panama</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_193">       193</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Paris of South America</span> &#160; &#160; &#160; &#160;</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_221">       221</a></td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span></p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div class="blockquot2">
-<table>
-<tr><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">FORDING THE CHAMELICON RIVER</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_0">      <i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">MAP OF VENEZUELA AND CENTRAL AMERICA, SHOWING
-THE ROUTE OF THE “THREE GRINGOS”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_xiii">       xiii</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">GOVERNMENT HOUSE, BELIZE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">        7</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">SIR ALFRED MOLONEY</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">        10</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">NATIVE CONSTABULARY, BELIZE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">        13</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">MAIN STREET, BELIZE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">        17</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">NATIVE WOMEN OF LIVINGSTON</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">        20</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">GUATEMALLECAN ARMY AT LIVINGSTON</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">        23</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">BARRACKS AT PORT BARRIOS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">        25</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE EXILED LOTTERY BUILDING</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">        35</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE IGUANAS OF HONDURAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">        51</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">OUR NAVAL ATTACHÉ</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_57">        57</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">OUR MILITARY ATTACHÉ</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">        60</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">A STRETCH OF CENTRAL-AMERICAN RAILWAY</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">        62</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE THREE GRINGOS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">        64</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">SETTING OUT FROM SAN PEDRO SULA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_67">        67</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE HIGHLANDS OF HONDURAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_71">        71</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">SOMERSET</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#illo_74">       74</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">A DRAWER OF WATER </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">       77</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">NATIVE METHOD OF DRYING COFFEE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">        85</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">IN A CENTRAL-AMERICAN FOREST</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">        89</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">ON THE TRAIL TO SANTA BARBARA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">        97</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">A HALT AT TRINIDAD</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">       101</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_105">      105</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">OUR PACK-TRAIN AT SANTA BARBARA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">      107</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">A VILLAGE IN THE INTERIOR</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114">      114</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">BRIDGE CONNECTING TEGUCIGALPA WITH ITS SUBURB</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_123">      123</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TEGUCIGALPA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">      127</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE BANK OF HONDURAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_129">      129</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">STATUE OF MORAZAN</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">      132</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">P. BONILLA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">      135</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN, EX-PRESIDENT</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_138">      138</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">BARRACKS OF TEGUCIGALPA AFTER THE ATTACK OF THE
-REVOLUTIONISTS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_141">      141</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">MORAZAN, THE LIBERATOR OF HONDURAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_145">      145</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">ON THE WAY TO CORINTO</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_155">      155</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">PRINCIPAL HOTEL AND PRINCIPAL HOUSE AT CORINTO</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_162">      162</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">HARBOR OF CORINTO</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_175">      175</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE AT MANAGUA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_179">      179</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">PRESIDENT ZELAYA OF NICARAGUA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_183">      183</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING CHANGES IN TRADE
-ROUTES AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE NICARAGUA
-CANAL</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_191">      191</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">DREDGES IN THE CANAL</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_195">      195</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE BAY OF PANAMA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_199">      199</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">PANAMA CANAL ON THE PACIFIC SIDE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_203">      203</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">HUTS OF WORKMEN EMPLOYED ON THE CANAL</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_206">      206</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE TOP OF A DREDGE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_209">      209</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">STREET SCENE IN PANAMA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_213">      213</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE CANAL IN THE INTERIOR</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_217">      217</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">STATUE OF SIMON BOLIVAR, CARACAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_223">      223</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">STATUE OF WASHINGTON DECORATED WITH FLORAL
-WREATHS BY THE VENEZUELANS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_227">      227</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS,
-VENEZUELA, DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN RESIDENTS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_231">      231</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">SIMON BOLIVAR</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_234">       234</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">VIEW OF LA GUAYRA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_235">       235</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE RAILROAD UP THE MOUNTAIN</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_239">       239</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_243">       243</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE MARKET OF CARACAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_247">       247</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">VIEW OF CARACAS</td><td class="tdr">      <i>Facing</i>       <a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">PRESIDENT CRESPO, OF VENEZUELA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_251">       251</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">LEGISLATIVE BUILDING, CARACAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_253">       253</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE PRESIDENT’S BODY-GUARD OF COWBOYS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">       255</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">BAPTIZING INDIANS AT A VENEZUELA STATION ON THE
-CUYUNI RIVER</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_259">      259</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">A TYPICAL HUNTING-PARTY IN VENEZUELA</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_263">       263</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_267">       267</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE CUYUNI RIVER</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_271">       271</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">VENEZUELAN STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_274">       274</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">ENGLISH STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_275">      275</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">DR. PEDRO EZEQUIEL ROJAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_277">       277</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">MAP EXPLAINING VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_278">       278</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="tdl">THE CITY OF CARACAS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_279">       279</a></td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span></p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_012.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">MAP OF VENEZUELA AND CENTRAL AMERICA, SHOWING THE ROUTE OF THE “THREE GRINGOS”</p>
-</div>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">ON THE CARIBBEAN SEA</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dc_t.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="">
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="drop-cap">T</span>HE steamer <i>Breakwater</i> lay at the
-end of a muddy fruit-wharf a mile
-down the levee.</p>
-
-<p>She was listed to sail that morning
-for Central-American ports, and we were going
-with her in search of warm weather and other
-unusual things. When we left New York the
-streets were lined with frozen barricades of snow,
-upon which the new brooms of a still newer administration
-had made so little impression that
-people were using them as an excuse for being
-late for dinners; and at Washington, while the
-snow had disappeared, it was still bitterly cold.
-And now even as far south as New Orleans we
-were shivering in our great-coats, and the newspapers
-were telling of a man who, the night before,
-had been found frozen to death in the
-streets. It seemed as though we were to keep
-on going south, forever seeking warmth, only to
-find that Nature at every point of lower latitude<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>
-had paid us the compliment of changing her
-season to spite us.</p>
-
-<p>So the first question we asked when we came
-over the side of the <i>Breakwater</i> was not when
-we should first see land, but when we should
-reach warm weather.</p>
-
-<p>There were four of us, counting Charlwood,
-young Somerset’s servant. There was Henry
-Somers Somerset, who has travelled greater distances
-for a boy still under age than any other
-one of his much-travelled countrymen that I
-have ever met. He has covered as many miles
-in the last four years as would make five trips
-around the world, and he came with me for the
-fun of it, and in what proved the vain hope of
-big game. The third was Lloyd Griscom, of
-Philadelphia, and later of London, where he has
-been attaché at our embassy during the present
-administration. He had been ordered south by
-his doctor, and only joined us the day before we
-sailed.</p>
-
-<p>We sat shivering under the awning on the
-upper deck, and watched the levees drop away
-on either side as we pushed down the last ninety
-miles of the Mississippi River. Church spires
-and the roofs of houses showed from the low-lying
-grounds behind the dikes, and gave us the
-impression that we were riding on an elevated
-road. The great river steamers, with paddle-wheels
-astern and high double smoke-stacks, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>
-were associated in our minds with pictures of the
-war and those in our school geographies, passed
-us, pouring out heavy volumes of black smoke,
-on their way to St. Louis, and on each bank we
-recognized, also from pictures, magnolia-trees
-and the ugly cotton-gins and the rows of negroes’
-quarters like the men’s barracks in a fort.</p>
-
-<p>At six o’clock, when we had reached the Gulf,
-the sun sank a blood-red disk into great desolate
-bayous of long grass and dreary stretches of vacant
-water. Dead trees with hanging gray moss
-and mistletoe on their bare branches reared themselves
-out of the swamps like gallows-trees or giant
-sign-posts pointing the road to nowhere; and
-the herons, perched by dozens on their limbs or
-moving heavily across the sky with harsh, melancholy
-cries, were the only signs of life. On each
-side of the muddy Mississippi the waste swamp-land
-stretched as far as the eye could reach, and
-every blade of the long grass and of the stunted
-willows and every post of the dikes stood out
-black against the red sky as vividly as though it
-were lit by a great conflagration, and the stagnant
-pools and stretches of water showed one
-moment like flashing lakes of fire, and the next,
-as the light left them, turned into mirrors of ink.
-It was a scene of the most awful and beautiful
-desolation, and the silence, save for the steady
-breathing of the steamer’s engine, was the silence
-of the Nile at night.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>For the next three days we dropped due south
-as the map lies from the delta of the Mississippi
-through the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean
-Sea. It was moonlight by night, and sun and
-blue water by day, and the decks kept level, and
-the vessel was clean.</p>
-
-<p>Our fellow-passengers were banana-planters
-and engineers going to Panama and Bluefields,
-and we asked them many questions concerning
-rates of exchange and the rainy season and distances
-and means of transportation, to which
-they gave answers as opposite as can only come
-from people who have lived together in the same
-place for the greater part of their lives.</p>
-
-<p>Land, when it came, appeared in the shape of
-little islands that floated in mid-air above the
-horizon like the tops of trees, without trunks
-to support them, or low-lying clouds. They
-formed the skirmish-line of Yucatan, the northern
-spur of Central America, and seemed from
-our decks as innocent as the Jersey sand-hills,
-but were, the pilot told us, inhabited by wild
-Indians who massacre people who are so unfortunate
-as to be shipwrecked there, and who
-will not pay taxes to Mexico. But the little we
-saw of their savagery was when we passed within
-a ship’s length of a ruined temple to the Sun,
-standing conspicuously on a jutting point of land,
-with pillars as regular and heavily cut as some
-of those on the Parthenon. It was interesting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>
-to find such a monument a few days out from
-New Orleans.</p>
-
-<p>Islands of palms on one side and blue mountains
-on the other, and water as green as corroded
-copper, took the place of the white sand-banks
-of Yucatan, and on the third day out we
-had passed the Mexican state and steamed in
-towards the coast of British Honduras, and its
-chief seaport and capital, Belize.</p>
-
-<p>British Honduras was formerly owned by
-Spain, as was all of Central America, and was,
-on account of its bays and islands, a picturesque
-refuge for English and other pirates. In the
-seventeenth century English logwood-cutters visited
-the place and obtained a footing, which has
-been extended since by concessions and by conquest,
-so that the place is now a British dependency.
-It forms a little slice of land between
-Yucatan and Guatemala, one hundred and seventy-four
-miles in its greatest length, and running
-sixty-eight miles inland.</p>
-
-<p>Belize is a pretty village of six thousand people,
-living in low, broad-roofed bungalows, lying
-white and cool-looking in the border of waving
-cocoanut-trees and tall, graceful palms. It was
-not necessary to tell us that Belize would be the
-last civilized city we should see until we reached
-the capital of Spanish Honduras. A British colony
-is always civilized; it is always the same, no
-matter in what latitude it may be, and it is always<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>
-distinctly British. Every one knows that
-an Englishman takes his atmosphere with him
-wherever he goes, but the truth of it never impressed
-me so much as it did at Belize. There
-were not more than two hundred English men
-and women in the place, and yet, in the two
-halves of two days that I was there I seemed to
-see everything characteristic of an Englishman
-in his native land. There were a few concessions
-made to the country and to the huge native population,
-who are British subjects themselves; but
-the colony, in spite of its surroundings, was just
-as individually English as is the shilling that the
-ship’s steward pulls out of his pocket with a
-handful of the queer coin that he has picked up
-at the ports of a half-dozen Spanish republics.
-They may be of all sizes and designs, and of
-varying degrees of a value, or the lack of it,
-which changes from day to day, but the English
-shilling, with the queen’s profile on one side and
-its simple “one shilling” on the other, is worth
-just as much at that moment and at that distance
-from home as it would be were you handing
-it to a hansom-cab driver in Piccadilly. And
-we were not at all surprised to find that the
-black native police wore the familiar blue-and-white-striped
-cuff of the London bobby, and the
-district-attorney a mortar-board cap and gown,
-and the colonial bishop gaiters and an apron.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_006.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">GOVERNMENT HOUSE, BELIZE</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>It was quite in keeping, also, that the advertisements
-on the boardings should announce and
-give equal prominence to a “Sunday-school
-treat” and a boxing-match between men of
-H.M.S. <i>Pelican</i>, and that the officers of that man-of-war
-should be playing cricket with a local
-eleven under the full tropical sun, and that the
-chairs in the Council-room and Government
-House should be of heavy leather stamped V.R.,
-with a crown above the initials. An American
-official in as hot a climate, being more adaptable,
-would have had bamboo chairs with large, open-work
-backs, or would have even supplied the
-council with rocking-chairs.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>Lightfoot agreed to take us ashore at a quarter
-of a dollar apiece. He had a large open sail-boat,
-and everybody called him Lightfoot and seemed
-to know him intimately, so we called him Lightfoot
-too. He was very black, and light-hearted
-at least, and spoke English with the soft, hesitating
-gentleness that marks the speech of all these
-natives. It was Sunday on land, and Sunday in
-an English colony is observed exactly as it should
-be, and so the natives were in heavily starched
-white clothes, and were all apparently going somewhere
-to church in rigid rows of five or six. But
-there were some black soldiers of the West India
-Regiment in smart Zouave uniforms and turbans
-that furnished us with local color, and we pursued
-one of them for some time admiringly, until he become
-nervous and beat a retreat to the barracks.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_010.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">SIR ALFRED MOLONEY<br>
-
-(Central Figure)</p>
-
-<p>Somerset had a letter from his ambassador in
-Washington to Sir Alfred Moloney, K.C.M.G.,
-the governor of British Honduras, and as we
-hoped it would get us all an invitation to dinner,
-we urged him to present it at once. Four days
-of the ship’s steward’s bountiful dinners, served
-at four o’clock in the afternoon, had made us
-anxious for a change both in the hour and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>
-diet. The governor’s house at Belize is a very
-large building, fronting the bay, with one of the
-finest views from and most refreshing breezes on
-its veranda that a man could hope to find on a
-warm day, and there is a proud and haughty
-sentry at each corner of the grounds and at the
-main entrance. A fine view of blue waters beyond
-a green turf terrace covered with cannon
-and lawn-tennis courts, and four sentries marching
-up and down in the hot sun, ought to make
-any man, so it seems to me, content to sit on his
-porch in the shade and feel glad that he is a
-governor.</p>
-
-<p>Somerset passed the first sentry with safety,
-and we sat down on the grass by the side of the
-road opposite to await developments, and were
-distressed to observe him make directly for the
-kitchen, with the ambassador’s letter held firmly
-in his hand. So we stood up and shouted to him
-to go the other way, and he became embarrassed,
-and continued to march up and down the gravel
-walk with much indecision, and as if he could
-not make up his mind where he wanted to go,
-like the grenadiers in front of St. James’s Palace.
-It happened that his excellency was out, so
-Somerset left our cards and his letter, and we
-walked off through the green, well-kept streets
-and wondered at the parrots and the chained
-monkeys and the Anglicized little negro girls in
-white cotton stockings and with Sunday-school<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>
-books under their arms. All the show-places of
-interest were closed on that day, so, after an ineffectual
-attempt to force our way into the jail,
-which we mistook for a monastery, we walked
-back through an avenue of cocoanut-palms to the
-International Hotel for dinner.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_013.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">NATIVE CONSTABULARY, BELIZE</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>We had agreed that as it was our first dinner
-on shore, it should be a long and excellent one,
-with several kinds of wine. The International
-Hotel is a large one, with four stories, and a
-balcony on each floor; and after wandering over
-the first three of these in the dark we came upon
-a lonely woman with three crying children, who
-told us with reproving firmness that in Belize the
-dinner-hour is at four in the afternoon, and that
-no one should expect a dinner at seven. We
-were naturally cast down at this rebuff, and even
-more so when her husband appeared out of the
-night and informed us that keeping a hotel did
-not pay—at least, that it did not pay him—and
-that he could not give us anything to drink because
-he had not renewed his license, and even if
-he had a license he would not sell us anything
-on Sunday. He had a touch of malaria, he said,
-and took a gloomy view of life in consequence,
-and our anxiety to dine well seemed, in contrast,
-unfeeling and impertinent. But we praised the
-beauty of the three children, and did not set him
-right when he mistook us for officers from the
-English gunboats in the harbor, and for one of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>
-these reasons he finally gave us a cold dinner by
-the light of a smoking lamp, and made us a present
-of a bottle of stout, for which he later refused
-any money. We would have enjoyed our
-dinner at Belize in spite of our disappointment
-had not an orderly arrived in hot search after
-Somerset, and borne him away to dine at Government
-House, where Griscom and I pictured
-him, as we continued eating our cold chicken
-and beans, dining at her majesty’s expense, with
-fine linen and champagne, and probably ice.
-Lightfoot took us back to the boat in mournful
-silence, and we spent the rest of the evening on
-the quarter-deck telling each other of the most
-important people with whom we had ever dined,
-and had nearly succeeded in re-establishing our
-self-esteem, when Somerset dashed up in a man-of-war’s
-launch glittering with brass and union-jacks,
-and left it with much ringing of electric
-bells and saluting and genial farewells from admirals
-and midshipmen in gold-lace, with whom
-he seemed to be on a most familiar and friendly
-footing. This was the final straw, and we held
-him struggling over the ship’s side, and threatened
-to drop him to the sharks unless he promised
-never to so desert us again. And discipline was
-only restored when he assured us that he was the
-bearer of an invitation from the governor to both
-breakfast and luncheon the following morning.
-The governor apologized the next day for the informality<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>
-of the manner in which he had sent us
-the invitation, so I thought it best not to tell
-him that it had been delivered by a young man
-while dangling by his ankles from the side of the
-ship, with one hand holding his helmet and the
-other clutching at the rail of the gangway.</p>
-
-<p>There is much to be said of Belize, for in its
-way it was one of the prettiest ports at which
-we touched, and its cleanliness and order, while
-they were not picturesque or foreign to us then,
-were in so great contrast to the ports we visited
-later as to make them most remarkable. It was
-interesting to see the responsibilities and the
-labor of government apportioned out so carefully
-and discreetly, and to find commissioners of
-roads, and then district commissioners, and under
-them inspectors, and to hear of boards of education
-and boards of justice, each doing its appointed
-work in this miniature government, and
-all responsible to the representative of the big
-government across the sea. And it was reassuring
-to read in the blue-books of the colony that
-the health of the port has improved enormously
-during the last three years.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_017.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">MAIN STREET, BELIZE</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>Monday showed an almost entirely different
-Belize from the one we had seen on the day
-before. Shops were open and busy, and the
-markets were piled high with yellow oranges and
-bananas and strange fruits, presided over by
-negresses in rich-colored robes and turbans, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>
-smoking fat cigars. There was a show of justice
-also in a parade of prisoners, who, in spite of
-their handcuffs, were very anxious to halt long
-enough to be photographed, and there was a
-great bustle along the wharves, where huge rafts
-of logwood and mahogany floated far into the
-water. The governor showed us through his
-botanical station, in which he has collected food-giving
-products from over all the world, and
-plants that absorb the malaria in the air, and he
-hinted at the social life of Belize as well, tempting
-us with a ball and dinners to the officers of
-the men-of-war; but the <i>Breakwater</i> would not
-wait for such frivolities, so we said farewell to
-Belize and her kindly governor, and thereafter
-walked under strange flags, and were met at
-every step with the despotic little rules and
-safeguards which mark unstable governments.</p>
-
-<p>Livingston was like a village on the coast of
-East Africa in comparison with Belize. It is
-the chief seaport of Guatemala on the Atlantic
-side, and Guatemala is the furthest advanced of
-all the Central-American republics; but her
-civilization lies on the Pacific side, and does not
-extend so far as her eastern boundary.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_020.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">NATIVE WOMEN AT LIVINGSTON</p>
-
-<p>There are two opposite features of landscape
-in the tropics which are always found together—the
-royal palm, which is one of the most beautiful
-of things, and the corrugated zinc-roof custom-house,
-which is one of the ugliest. Nature
-never appears so extravagant or so luxurious as
-she does in these hot latitudes; but just as soon
-as she has fashioned a harbor after her own
-liking, and set it off at her best so that it is a
-haven of delight to those who approach it from
-the sea, civilized man comes along and hammers
-square walls of zinc together and spoils the
-beauty of the place forever. The natives, who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>
-do not care for customs dues, help nature out
-with thatch-roofed huts and walls of adobe or
-yellow cane, or add curved red tiles to the more
-pretentious houses, and so fill out the picture.
-But the “gringo,” or the man from the interior,
-is in a hurry, and wants something that will withstand
-earthquakes and cyclones, and so wherever
-you go you can tell that he has been there
-before you by his architecture of zinc.</p>
-
-<p>When you turn your back on the custom-house
-at Livingston and the rows of wooden
-shops with open fronts, you mount the hill upon
-which the town stands, and there you will find
-no houses but those which have been created out
-of the mud and the trees of the place itself.
-There are no streets to the village nor doors to
-the houses; they are all exactly alike, and the
-bare mud floor of one is as unindividual, except
-for the number of naked children crawling upon
-it, as is any of the others. The sun and the rain
-are apparently free to come and go as they like,
-and every one seems to live in the back of the
-house, under the thatched roof which shades the
-clay ovens. Most of the natives were coal-black,
-and the women, in spite of the earth floors below
-and the earth walls round about them, were
-clean, and wore white gowns that trailed from
-far down their arms, leaving the chest and shoulders
-bare. They were a very simple, friendly
-lot of people, and rail from all parts of the settlement<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>
-to be photographed, and brought us flowers
-from their gardens, for which they refused money.</p>
-
-<p>We had our first view of the Central-American
-soldier at Livingston, and, in spite of all we had
-heard, he surprised us very much. The oldest
-of those whom we saw was eighteen years, and
-the youngest soldiers were about nine. They
-wore blue jean uniforms, ornamented with white
-tape, and the uniforms differed in shade according
-to the number of times they had been
-washed. These young men carried their muskets
-half-way up the barrel, or by the bayonet,
-dragging the stock on the ground.</p>
-
-<p>General Barrios, the young President of Guatemala,
-has some very smart soldiers at the capital,
-and dresses them in German uniforms, which is
-a compliment he pays to the young German
-emperor, for whom he has a great admiration;
-but his discipline does not extend so far as the
-Caribbean Sea.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_023.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE GUATEMALLECAN ARMY AT LIVINGSTON</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>The river Dulce goes in from Livingston, and
-we were told it was one of the things in Central
-America we ought to see, as its palisades were
-more beautiful than those of the Rhine. The
-man who told us this said he spoke from hearsay,
-and that he had never been on the Rhine,
-but that he knew a gentleman who had. You
-can well believe that it is very beautiful from
-what you can see of its mouth, where it flows
-into the Caribbean between great dark banks as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>
-high as the palisades opposite Dobbs Ferry, and
-covered with thick, impenetrable green.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_025.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">BARRACKS AT PORT BARRIOS</p>
-
-<p>Port Barrios, to which one comes in a few
-hours, is at one end of a railroad, and surrounded
-by all the desecration that such an improvement
-on nature implies, in the form of zinc
-depots, piles of railroad-ties, and rusty locomotives.
-The town consists of a single row of
-native huts along the coast, terminating in a hospital.
-Every house is papered throughout with
-copies of the New York <i>Police Gazette</i>, which
-must give the Guatemallecan a lurid light on
-the habits and virtues of his cousins in North<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>
-America. Most of our passengers left the ship
-here, and we met them, while she was taking on
-bananas, wandering about the place with blank
-faces, or smiling grimly at the fate which condemned
-them and their blue-prints and transits
-to a place where all nature was beautiful and
-only civilized man was discontented.</p>
-
-<p>We lay at Barrios until late at night, wandering
-round the deserted decks, or watching the
-sharks sliding through the phosphorus and the
-lights burning in the huts along the shore.
-At midnight we weighed anchor, and in the
-morning steamed into Puerto Cortez, the chief
-port of Spanish Honduras, where the first part
-of our journey ended, and where we exchanged
-the ship’s deck for the Mexican saddle, and
-hardtack for tortillas.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">THE EXILED LOTTERY</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dc_t.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="">
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="drop-cap">T</span>WO years ago, while I was passing
-through Texas, I asked a young man
-in the smoking-car if he happened to
-know where I could find the United
-States troops, who were at that time riding somewhere
-along the borders of Texas and Mexico,
-and engaged in suppressing the so-called Garza
-revolution.</p>
-
-<p>The young man did not show that he was
-either amused or surprised at the abruptness of
-the question, but answered me promptly, as a
-matter of course, and with minute detail. “You
-want to go to San Antonio,” he said, “and take
-the train to Laredo, on the Mexican boundary,
-and then change to the freight that leaves once
-a day to Corpus Christi, and get off at Pena station.
-Pena is only a water-tank, but you can
-hire a horse there and ride to the San Rosario
-Ranch. Captain Hardie is at Rosario with Troop
-G, Third Cavalry. They call him the Riding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>
-Captain, and if any one can show you all there
-is to see in this Garza outfit, he can.”</p>
-
-<p>The locomotive whistle sounded at that moment,
-the train bumped itself into a full stop at
-a station, and the young man rose. “Good-day,”
-he said, smiling pleasantly; “I get off
-here.”</p>
-
-<p>He was such an authoritative young man, and
-he had spoken in so explicit a manner, that I did
-as he had directed; and if the story that followed
-was not interesting, the fault was mine,
-and not that of my chance adviser.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb">
-
-<p>A few months ago I was dining alone in Delmonico’s,
-when the same young man passed out
-through the room, and stopped on his way beside
-my table.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you remember me?” he said. “I met
-you once in a smoking-car in Texas. Well,
-I’ve got a story now that’s better than any you’ll
-find lying around here in New York. You want
-to go to a little bay called Puerto Cortez, on the
-eastern coast of Honduras, in Central America,
-and look over the exiled Louisiana State Lottery
-there. It used to be the biggest gambling concern
-in the world, but now it’s been banished to
-a single house on a mud-bank covered with palm-trees,
-and from there it reaches out all over the
-United States, and sucks in thousands and thousands
-of victims like a great octopus. You want<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>
-to go there and write a story about it. Good-night,”
-he added; then he nodded again, with a
-smile, and walked across the room and disappeared
-into Broadway.</p>
-
-<p>When a man that you have met once in a
-smoking-car interrupts you between courses to
-suggest that you are wasting your time in New
-York, and that you ought to go to a coral reef in
-Central America and write a story of an outlawed
-lottery, it naturally interests you, even if it does
-not spoil your dinner. It interested me, at least,
-so much that I went back to my rooms at once,
-and tried to find Puerto Cortez on the map; and
-later, when the cold weather set in, and the grass-plots
-in Madison Square turned into piled-up
-islands of snow, surrounded by seas of slippery
-asphalt, I remembered the palm-trees, and went
-South to investigate the exiled lottery. That is
-how this chapter and this book came to be
-written.</p>
-
-<p>Every one who goes to any theatre in the
-United States may have read among the advertisements
-on the programme an oddly worded
-one which begins, “Conrad! Conrad! Conrad!”
-and which goes on to say that—</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-
-<p>“In accepting the Presidency of the Honduras National
-Lottery Company (Louisiana State Lottery Company)
-I shall not surrender the Presidency of the Gulf
-Coast Ice and Manufacturing Company, of Bay St. Louis,
-Miss.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>“Therefore address all proposals for supplies, machinery,
-etc., as well as all business communications, to</p>
-
-<p class="right"><span class="indentright2">“PAUL CONRAD, Puerto Cortez, Honduras,</span><br>
-
-<p class="right"><span class="indentright2">“Care Central America Express,</span><br>
-<span class="indentright">“<span class="smcap">Fort Tampa City,</span></span><br>
-“Florida, U. S. A.”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>You have probably read this advertisement
-often, and enjoyed the naïve manner in which Mr.
-Conrad asks for correspondence on different subjects,
-especially on that relating to “all business
-communications,” and how at the same time he
-has so described his whereabouts that no letters
-so addressed would ever reach his far-away home
-in Puerto Cortez, but would be promptly stopped
-at Tampa, as he means that they should.</p>
-
-<p>After my anonymous friend had told me of
-Puerto Cortez, I read of it on the programme
-with a keener interest, and Puerto Cortez became
-to me a harbor of much mysterious moment, of
-a certain dark significance, and of possible adventure.
-I remembered all that the lottery had
-been before the days of its banishment, and all
-that it had dared to be when, as a corporation
-legally chartered by the State of Louisiana, it
-had put its chain and collar upon legislatures
-and senators, judges and editors, when it had
-silenced the voice of the church and the pulpit
-by great gifts of money to charities and hospitals,
-so giving out in a lump sum with one hand
-what it had taken from the people in dollars and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>
-half-dollars, five hundred and six hundred fold,
-with the other. I remembered when its trade-mark,
-in open-faced type, “La. S. L.,” was as
-familiar in every newspaper in the United States
-as were the names of the papers themselves,
-when it had not been excommunicated by the
-postmaster-general, and it had not to hide its real
-purpose under a carefully worded paragraph in
-theatrical programmes or on “dodgers” or handbills
-that had an existence of a moment before
-they were swept out into the street, and which,
-as they were not sent through mails, were not
-worthy the notice of the federal government.</p>
-
-<p>It was not so very long ago that it requires any
-effort to remember it. It is only a few years
-since the lottery held its drawings freely and
-with much pomp and circumstance in the Charles
-Theatre, and Generals Beauregard and Early presided
-at these ceremonies, selling the names they
-had made glorious in a lost cause to help a cause
-which was, for the lottery people at least, distinctly
-a winning one. For in those days the
-state lottery cleared above all expenses seven
-million dollars a year, and Generals Beauregard
-and Early drew incomes from it much larger
-than the government paid to the judges of the
-Supreme Court and the members of the cabinet
-who finally declared against the company and
-drove it into exile.</p>
-
-<p>There had been many efforts made to kill it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>
-in the past, and the state lottery was called
-“the national disgrace” and “the modern slavery,”
-and Louisiana was spoken of as a blot on
-the map of our country, as was Utah when
-polygamy flourished within her boundaries and
-defied the laws of the federal government. The
-final rally against the lottery occurred in 1890,
-when the lease of the company expired, and
-the directors applied to the legislature for a
-renewal. At that time it was paying out but
-very little and taking in fabulous sums; how
-much it really made will probably never be told,
-but its gains were probably no more exaggerated
-by its enemies than was the amount of its expenses
-by the company itself. Its outlay for advertising,
-for instance, which must have been one
-of its chief expenses, was only forty thousand
-dollars a year, which is a little more than a firm
-of soap manufacturers pay for their advertising
-for the same length of time; and it is rather discouraging
-to remember that for a share of this
-bribe every newspaper in the city of New Orleans
-and in the State of Louisiana, with a few notable
-exceptions, became an organ of the lottery, and
-said nothing concerning it but what was good.
-To this sum may be added the salaries of its
-officers, the money paid out in prizes, the cost
-of printing and mailing the tickets, and the sum
-of forty thousand dollars paid annually to the
-State of Louisiana. This tribute was considered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>
-as quite sufficient when the lottery was first started,
-and while it struggled for ten years to make a
-living; but in 1890, when its continued existence
-was threatened, the company found it could very
-well afford to offer the state not forty thousand,
-but a million dollars a year, which gives a faint
-idea of what its net earnings must have been. As
-a matter of fact, in those palmy times when there
-were daily drawings, the lottery received on some
-days as many as eighteen to twenty thousand
-letters, with orders for tickets enclosed which
-averaged five dollars a letter.</p>
-
-<p>It was Postmaster-general Wanamaker who
-put a stop to all this by refusing to allow any
-printed matter concerning the lottery to pass
-outside of the State of Louisiana, which decision,
-when it came, proved to be the order of exile
-to the greatest gambling concern of modern
-times.</p>
-
-<p>The lottery, of course, fought this decision in
-the courts, and the case was appealed to the Supreme
-Court of the United States, and was upheld,
-and from that time no letter addressed to
-the lottery in this country, or known to contain
-matter referring to the lottery, and no newspaper
-advertising it, can pass through the mails.
-This ruling was known before the vote on the
-renewal of the lease came up in the Legislature
-of Louisiana, and the lottery people say that,
-knowing that they could not, under these new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>
-restrictions, afford to pay the sum of one million
-dollars a year, they ceased their efforts to pass
-the bill granting a renewal of their lease, and let
-it go without a fight. This may or may not be
-true, but in any event the bill did not pass, and
-the greatest lottery of all times was without a
-place in which to spin its wheel, without a charter
-or a home, and was cut off from the most obvious
-means of communication with its hundreds
-of thousands of supporters. But though it was
-excommunicated, outlawed, and exiled, it was
-not beaten; it still retained agents all over the
-country, and it still held its customers, who were
-only waiting to throw their money into its lap,
-and still hoping that the next drawing would
-bring the grand prize.</p>
-
-<p>For some long time the lottery was driven
-about from pillar to post, and knocked eagerly
-here and there for admittance, seeking a home
-and resting-place. It was not at first successful.
-The first rebuff came from Mexico, where it had
-proposed to move its plant, but the Mexican
-government was greedy, and wanted too large a
-sum for itself, or, what is more likely, did not
-want so well-organized a rival to threaten the
-earnings of her own national lottery. Then the
-republics of Colombia and Nicaragua were each
-tempted with the honor of giving a name to the
-new company, but each declined that distinction,
-and so it finally came begging to Honduras, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>
-least advanced of all of the Central-American
-republics, and the most heavily burdened with
-debt.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_035.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE EXILED LOTTERY BUILDING</p>
-
-<p>Honduras agreed to receive the exile, and to
-give it her name and protection for the sum of
-twenty thousand dollars a year and twenty per
-cent. of its gross earnings. It would seem that
-this to a country that has not paid the interest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>
-on her national debt for twelve years was a very
-advantageous bargain; but as four presidents
-and as many revolutions and governments have
-appeared and disappeared in the two years in
-which the lottery people have received their
-charter in Honduras, the benefit of the arrangement
-to them has not been an obvious one,
-and it was not until two years ago that the first
-drawing of the lottery was held at Puerto Cortez.
-The company celebrated this occasion with a
-pitiful imitation of its former pomp and ceremony,
-and there was much feasting and speech-making,
-and a special train was run from the interior
-to bring important natives to the ceremonies.
-But the train fell off the track four times,
-and was just a day late in consequence. The
-young man who had charge of the train told me
-this, and he also added that he did not believe
-in lotteries.</p>
-
-<p>During these two years, when representatives
-of the company were taking rides of nine days
-each to the capital to overcome the objections of
-the new presidents who had sprung into office
-while these same representatives had been making
-their return trip to the coast, others were
-seeking a foothold for the company in the United
-States. The need of this was obvious and imperative.
-The necessity which had been forced
-upon them of holding the drawings out of this
-country, and of giving up the old name and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
-trade-mark, was serious enough, though it had
-been partially overcome. It did not matter
-where they spun their wheel; but if the company
-expected to live, there must be some place
-where it could receive its mail and distribute its
-tickets other than the hot little Honduranian port,
-locked against all comers by quarantine for six
-months of the year, and only to be reached during
-the other six by a mail that arrives once
-every eight days.</p>
-
-<p>The lottery could not entirely overcome this
-difficulty, of course, but through the aid of the
-express companies of this country it was able to
-effect a substitute, and through this cumbersome
-and expensive method of transportation its managers
-endeavored to carry on the business which
-in the days when the post-office helped them
-had brought them in twenty thousand letters in
-twenty-four hours. They selected for their base
-of operations in the United States the port of
-Tampa, in the State of Florida—that refuge of
-prize-fighters and home of unhappy Englishmen
-who have invested in the swamp-lands there, under
-the delusion that they were buying town sites
-and orange plantations, and which masquerades
-as a winter resort with a thermometer that not
-infrequently falls below freezing. So Tampa became
-their home; and though the legislature of
-that state proved incorruptible, so the lottery
-people themselves tell me, there was at least an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>
-understanding between them and those in authority
-that the express company was not to be
-disturbed, and that no other lottery was to have
-a footing in Florida for many years to come.</p>
-
-<p>If Puerto Cortez proved interesting when it
-was only a name on a theatre programme, you
-may understand to what importance it grew
-when it could not be found on the map of any
-steamship company in New York, and when no
-paper of that city advertised dates of sailing to
-that port. For the first time Low’s Exchange
-failed me and asked for time, and the ubiquitous
-Cook &amp; Sons threw up their hands, and offered
-in desperation and as a substitute a comfortable
-trip to upper Burmah or to Mozambique, protesting
-that Central America was beyond even
-their finding out. Even the Maritime Exchange
-confessed to a much more intimate knowledge
-of the west coast of China than of the little
-group of republics which lies only a three or
-four days’ journey from the city of New Orleans.
-So I was forced to haunt the shipping-offices of
-Bowling Green for days together, and convinced
-myself while so engaged that that is the only
-way properly to pursue the study of geography,
-and I advise every one to try it, and submit the
-idea respectfully to instructors of youth. For
-you will find that by the time you have interviewed
-fifty shipping-clerks, and learned from
-them where they can set you down and pick you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>
-up and exchange you to a fruit-vessel or coasting
-steamer, you will have obtained an idea of
-foreign ports and distances which can never be
-gathered from flat maps or little revolving globes.
-I finally discovered that there was a line running
-from New York and another from New Orleans,
-the fastest steamer of which latter line, as I
-learned afterwards, was subsidized by the lottery
-people. They use it every month to take their
-representatives and clerks to Puerto Cortez, when,
-after they have held the monthly drawing, they
-steam back again to New Orleans or Tampa,
-carrying with them the list of winning numbers
-and the prizes.</p>
-
-<p>It was in the boat of this latter line that we
-finally awoke one morning to find her anchored
-in the harbor of Puerto Cortez.</p>
-
-<p>The harbor is a very large one and a very safe
-one. It is encircled by mountains on the sea-side,
-and by almost impenetrable swamps and
-jungles on the other. Close around the waters
-of the bay are bunches and rows of the cocoanut
-palm, and a village of mud huts covered with
-thatch. There is also a tin custom-house, which
-includes the railroad-office and a comandancia,
-and this and the jail or barracks of rotting whitewashed
-boards, and the half-dozen houses of one story
-belonging to consuls and shipping agents,
-are the only other frame buildings in the place
-save one. That is a large mansion with broad<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>
-verandas, painted in colors, and set in a carefully
-designed garden of rare plants and manaca palms.
-Two poles are planted in the garden, one flying
-the blue-and-white flag of Honduras, the other
-with the stripes and stars of the United States.
-This is the home of the exiled lottery. It is the
-most pretentious building and the cleanest in
-the whole republic of Honduras, from the Caribbean
-Sea to the Pacific slope.</p>
-
-<p>I confess that I was foolish enough to regard
-this house of magnificent exterior, as I viewed it
-from the wharf, as seriously as a general observes
-the ramparts and defences of the enemy before
-making his advance. I had taken a nine days’
-journey with the single purpose of seeing and
-getting at the truth concerning this particular
-building, and whether I was now to be viewed
-with suspicion and treated as an intruder, whether
-my object would be guessed at once and I should
-be forced to wait on the beach for the next
-steamer, or whether I would be received with
-kindness which came from ignorance of my
-intentions, I could not tell. And while I considered,
-a black Jamaica negro decided my movements
-for me. There was a hotel, he answered,
-doubtfully, but he thought it would be better,
-if Mr. Barross would let me in, to try for a room
-in the Lottery Building.</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. Barross sometimes takes boarders,” he
-said, “and the Lottery Building is a fine house,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>
-sir—finest house this side Mexico city.” He
-added, encouragingly, that he spoke English
-“very good,” and that he had been in London.</p>
-
-<p>Sitting on the wide porch of the Lottery Building
-was a dark-faced, distinguished-looking little
-man, a creole apparently, with white hair and
-white goatee. He rose and bowed as I came up
-through the garden and inquired of him if he
-was the manager of the lottery, Mr. Barross, and
-if he could give me food and shelter. The gentleman
-answered that he was Mr. Barross, and
-that he could and would do as I asked, and
-appealed with hospitable warmth to a tall, handsome
-woman, with beautiful white hair, to support
-him in his invitation. Mrs. Barross assented
-kindly, and directed her servants to place a
-rocking-chair in the shade, and requested me to
-be seated in it; luncheon, she assured me, would
-be ready in a half-hour, and she hoped that the
-voyage south had been a pleasant one.</p>
-
-<p>And so within five minutes after arriving in
-the mysterious harbor of Puerto Cortez I found
-myself at home under the roof of the outlawed
-lottery, and being particularly well treated by
-its representative, and feeling particularly uncomfortable
-in consequence. I was heartily
-sorry that I had not gone to the hotel. And so,
-after I had been in my room, I took pains to
-ascertain exactly what my position in the house
-might be, and whether or not, apart from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>
-courtesy of Mr. Barross and his wife, for which
-no one could make return, I was on the same
-free footing that I would have been in a hotel.
-I was assured that I was regarded as a transient
-boarder, and that I was a patron rather than a
-guest; but as I did not yet feel at ease, I took
-courage, and explained to Mr. Barross that I
-was not a coffee-planter or a capitalist looking
-for a concession from the government, but that I
-was in Honduras to write of what I found there.
-Mr. Barross answered that he knew already why
-I was there from the New Orleans papers which
-had arrived in the boat with me, and seemed
-rather pleased than otherwise to have me about
-the house. This set my mind at rest, and though
-it may not possibly be of the least interest to
-the reader, it is of great importance to me that
-the same reader should understand that all which
-I write here of the lottery was told to me by
-the lottery people themselves, with the full
-knowledge that I was going to publish it. And
-later, when I had the pleasure of meeting Mr.
-Duprez, the late editor of the <i>States</i>, in New
-Orleans, and then in Tegucigalpa, as representative
-of the lottery, I warned him in the presence
-of several of our friends to be careful, as I would
-probably make use of all he told me. To which
-he agreed, and continued answering questions
-for the rest of the evening. I may also add that
-I have taken care to verify the figures used here,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>
-for the reason that the lottery people are at such
-an obvious disadvantage in not being allowed
-by law to reply to what is said of them, nor to
-correct any mistake in any statements that may
-be made to their disadvantage.</p>
-
-<p>I had never visited a hotel or a country-house
-as curious as the one presided over by Mr. Barross.
-It was entirely original in its decoration,
-unique in its sources of entertainment, and its
-business office, unlike most business offices, possessed
-a peculiar fascination. The stationery for
-the use of the patrons, and on which I wrote to
-innocent friends in the North, bore the letter-head
-of the Honduras Lottery Company; the
-pictures on the walls were framed groups of lottery
-tickets purchased in the past by Mr. Barross,
-which had <i>not</i> drawn prizes; and the safe
-in which the guest might place his valuables contained
-a large canvas-bag sealed with red wax,
-and holding in prizes for the next drawing seventy-five
-thousand dollars.</p>
-
-<p>Wherever you turned were evidences of the
-peculiar business that was being carried on under
-the roof that sheltered you, and outside in
-the garden stood another building, containing
-the printing-presses on which the lists of winning
-numbers were struck off before they were
-distributed broadcast about the world. But of
-more interest than all else was the long, sunshiny,
-empty room running the full length of the house,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>
-in which, on a platform at one end, were two
-immense wheels, one of glass and brass, and as
-transparent as a bowl of goldfish, and the other
-closely draped in a heavy canvas hood laced and
-strapped around it, and holding sealed and locked
-within its great bowels one hundred thousand
-paper tickets in one hundred thousand rubber
-tubes. In this atmosphere and with these surroundings
-my host and hostess lived their life of
-quiet conventional comfort—a life full of the
-lesser interests of every day, and lighted for others
-by their most gracious and kindly courtesy and
-hospitable good-will. When I sat at their table
-I was always conscious of the great wheels, showing
-through the open door from the room beyond
-like skeletons in a closet; but it was not
-so with my host, whose chief concern might be
-that our glasses should be filled, nor with my
-hostess, who presided at the head of the table—which
-means more than sitting there—with that
-dignity and charm which is peculiar to a Southern
-woman, and which made dining with her an
-affair of state, and not one of appetite.</p>
-
-<p>I had come to see the working of a great gambling
-scheme, and I had anticipated that there
-might be some difficulty put in the way of my
-doing so; but if the lottery plant had been a
-cider-press in an orchard I could not have been
-more welcome to examine and to study it and
-to take it to pieces. It was not so much that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>
-they had nothing to conceal, or that now, while
-they are fighting for existence, they would rather
-risk being abused than not being mentioned at
-all. For they can fight abuse; they have had
-to do that for a long time. It is silence and oblivion
-that they fear now; the silence that means
-they are forgotten, that their arrogant glory has
-departed, that they are only a memory. They
-can fight those who fight them, but they cannot
-fight with people who, if they think of them at
-all, think of them as already dead and buried.
-It was neither of these reasons that gave me free
-admittance to the workings of the lottery; it
-was simply that to Mr. and Mrs. Barross the
-lottery was a religion; it was the greatest charitable
-organization of the age, and the purest
-philanthropist of modern times could not have
-more thoroughly believed in his good works than
-did Mrs. Barross believe that noble and generous
-benefits were being bestowed on mankind at
-every turn of the great wheel in her back parlor.</p>
-
-<p>This showed itself in the admiration which
-she shares with her husband for the gentlemen
-of the company, and their coming once a month
-is an event of great moment to Mrs. Barross,
-who must find it dull sometimes, in spite of the
-great cool house, with its many rooms and broad
-porches, and gorgeous silk hangings over the
-beds, and the clean linen, and airy, sunlit dining-room.
-She is much more interested in telling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>
-the news that the gentlemen brought down with
-them when they last came than in the result of
-the drawing, and she recalls the compliments
-they paid her garden, but she cannot remember
-the number that drew the capital prize. It was
-interesting to find this big gambling scheme in
-the hands of two such simple, kindly people, and
-to see how commonplace it was to them, how
-much a matter of routine and of habit. They
-sang its praises if you wished to talk of it, but
-they were more deeply interested in the lesser
-affairs of their own household. And at one time
-we ceased discussing it to help try on the baby’s
-new boots that had just arrived on the steamer,
-and patted them on the place where the heel
-should have been to drive them on the extremities
-of two waving fat legs. We all admired the
-tassels which hung from them, and which the
-baby tried to pull off and put in his mouth.
-They were bronze boots with black buttons, and
-the first the baby had ever worn, and the event
-filled the home of the exiled lottery with intense
-excitement.</p>
-
-<p>In the cool of the afternoon Mr. Barross sat
-on the broad porch rocking himself in a big bentwood
-chair and talked of the civil war, in which
-he had taken an active part, with that enthusiasm
-and detail with which only a Southerner speaks
-of it, not knowing that to this generation in the
-North it is history, and something of which one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>
-reads in books, and is not a topic of conversation
-of as fresh interest as the fall of Tammany or
-the Venezuela boundary dispute. And as we listened
-we watched Mrs. Barross moving about
-among her flowers with a sunshade above her
-white hair and holding her train in her hand,
-stopping to cut away a dead branch or to pluck
-a rose or to turn a bud away from the leaves so
-that it might feel the sun.</p>
-
-<p>And inside, young Barross was going over the
-letters which had arrived with the morning’s
-steamer, emptying out the money that came with
-them on the table, filing them away, and noting
-them as carefully and as methodically as a bank
-clerk, and sealing up in return the little green
-and yellow tickets that were to go out all over
-the world, and which had been paid for by clerks
-on small salaries, laboring-men of large families,
-idle good-for-nothings, visionaries, born gamblers
-and ne’er-do-wells, and that multitude of others
-of this world who want something for nothing,
-and who trust that a turn of luck will accomplish
-for them what they are too listless and faint-hearted
-and lazy ever to accomplish for themselves.
-It would be an excellent thing for each
-of these gamblers if he could look in at the great
-wheel at Puerto Cortez, and see just what one
-hundred thousand tickets look like, and what
-chance his one atom of a ticket has of forcing
-its way to the top of that great mass at the exact<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>
-moment that the capital prize rises to the
-surface in the other wheel. He could have seen
-it in the old days at the Charles Theatre, and he
-is as free as is any one to see it to-day at Puerto
-Cortez; but I should think it would be unfortunate
-for the lottery if any of its customers became
-too thorough a student of the doctrine of
-chances.</p>
-
-<p>The room in which the drawings are held is
-about forty feet long, well lighted by many long,
-wide windows, and with the stage upon which
-the wheels stand blocking one end. It is unfurnished,
-except for the chairs and benches, upon
-which the natives or any chance or intentional
-visitors are welcome to sit and to watch the
-drawing. The larger wheel, which holds, when
-all the tickets are sold, the hopes of one hundred
-thousand people, is about six feet in diameter,
-with sides of heavy glass, bound together by a
-wooden tire two feet wide. This tire or rim is
-made of staves, formed like those of a hogshead,
-and in it is a door a foot square. After the
-tickets have been placed in their little rubber
-jackets and shovelled into the wheel, this door is
-locked with a padlock, and strips of paper are
-pasted across it and sealed at each end, and so
-it remains until the next drawing. One hundred
-thousand tickets in rubber tubes an inch long
-and a quarter of an inch wide take up a great
-deal of space, and make such an appreciable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>
-difference in the weight of the wheel that it requires
-the efforts of two men pulling on the
-handles at either side to even budge it. Another
-man and myself were quite satisfied when we
-had put our shoulders to it and had succeeded
-in turning it a foot or two. But it was interesting
-to watch the little black tubes with even
-that slow start go slipping and sliding down over
-the others, leaving the greater mass undisturbed
-and packed together at the bottom as a wave
-sweeps back the upper layer of pebbles on a
-beach. This wheel was manufactured by Jackson
-&amp; Sharp, of Wilmington, Delaware. The
-other wheel is much smaller, and holds the prizes.
-It was made by John Robinson, of Baltimore.</p>
-
-<p>Whenever there is a drawing, General W. L.
-Cabell, of Texas, and Colonel C. J. Villere, of
-Louisiana, who have taken the places of the late
-General Beauregard and of the late General
-Early, take their stand at different wheels, General
-Cabell at the large and Colonel Villere at
-the one holding the prizes. They open the
-doors which they had sealed up a month previous,
-and into each wheel a little Indian girl puts
-her hand and draws out a tube. The tube holding
-the ticket is handed to General Cabell, and
-the one holding the prize won is given to Colonel
-Villere, and they read the numbers aloud and
-the amount won six times, three times in Spanish
-and three times in English, on the principle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>
-probably of the man in the play who had only
-one line, and who spoke that twice, “so that the
-audience will know I am saying it.”</p>
-
-<p>The two tickets are then handed to young
-Barross, who fastens them together with a rubber
-band and throws them into a basket for further
-reference. Three clerks with duplicate
-books keep tally of the numbers and of the prizes
-won. The drawing begins generally at six in
-the morning and lasts until ten, and then, everybody
-having been made rich, the philanthropists
-and generals and colonels and Indian girls—and,
-let us hope, the men who turned the wheel—go
-in to breakfast.</p>
-
-<p>So far as I could see, the drawings are conducted
-with fairness. But with only 3434 prizes
-and 100,000 tickets the chances are so infinitesimal
-and the advantage to the company so enormous
-that honesty in manipulating the wheel
-ceases to be a virtue, and becomes the lottery’s
-only advertisement.</p>
-
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_051.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE IGUANAS OF HONDURAS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>But what is most interesting about the lottery
-at present is not whether it is or it is not conducted
-fairly, but that it should exist at all; that
-its promoters should be willing to drag out such
-an existence at such a price and in so fallen a
-state. This becomes all the more remarkable
-because the men who control the lottery belong
-to a class which, as a rule, cares for the good
-opinion of its fellows, and is willing to sacrifice
-much to retain it. But the lottery people do
-not seem anxious for the good opinion of any
-one, and they have made such vast sums of
-money in the past, and they have made it so
-easily, that they cannot release their hold on the
-geese that are laying the golden eggs for them,
-even though they find themselves exiled and excommunicated
-by their own countrymen. If
-they were thimble-riggers or Confidence men in
-need of money their persistence would not appear
-so remarkable, but these gentlemen of the lottery
-are men of enormous wealth, their daughters are
-in what is called society in New Orleans and in
-New York, their sons are at the universities, and
-they themselves belong to those clubs most difficult<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>
-of access. One would think that they had
-reached that point when they could say “we are
-rich enough now, and we can afford to spend
-the remainder of our lives in making ourselves respectable.”
-Becky Sharp is authority for the fact
-that it is easy to be respectable on as little as five
-hundred pounds a year, but these gentlemen, having
-many hundreds of thousands of pounds, are
-not even willing to make the effort. Two years
-ago, when, according to their own account, they
-were losing forty thousand dollars a month, and
-which, after all, is only what they once cleared in a
-day, and when they were being driven out of one
-country after another, like the cholera or any
-other disease, it seems strange that it never occurred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>
-to them to stop fighting, and to get into
-a better business while there was yet time.</p>
-
-<p>Even the keeper of a roulette wheel has too
-much self-respect to continue turning when there
-is only one man playing against the table, and
-in comparison with him the scramble of the lottery
-company after the Honduranian tin dollar,
-and the scant savings of servant-girls and of
-brakesmen and negro barbers in the United
-States, is to me the most curious feature of this
-once great enterprise.</p>
-
-<p>What a contrast it makes with those other
-days, when the Charles Theatre was filled from
-boxes to gallery with the “flower of Southern
-chivalry and beauty,” when the band played,
-and the major-generals proclaimed the result of
-the drawings. It is hard to take the lottery seriously,
-for the day when it was worthy of abuse
-has passed away. And, indeed, there are few men
-or measures so important as to deserve abuse,
-while there is no measure if it be for good so insignificant
-that it is not deserving the exertion of
-a good word or a line of praise and gratitude.</p>
-
-<p>And only the emotion one can feel for the lottery
-now is the pity which you might have experienced
-for William M. Tweed when, as a fugitive
-from justice, he sat on the beach at Santiago de
-Cuba and watched a naked fisherman catch his
-breakfast for him beyond the first line of breakers,
-or that you might feel for Monte Carlo were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>
-it to be exiled to a fever-stricken island off the
-swampy coast of West Africa, or, to pay the lottery
-a very high compliment indeed, that which
-you give to that noble adventurer exiled to the
-Isle of Elba.</p>
-
-<p>There was something almost pathetic to me
-in the sight of this great, arrogant gambling
-scheme, that had in its day brought the good
-name of a state into disrepute, that had boasted
-of the prices it paid for the honor of men, and
-that had robbed a whole nation willing to be
-robbed, spinning its wheel in a back room in a
-hot, half-barbarous country, and to an audience of
-gaping Indians and unwashed Honduranian generals.
-Sooner than fall as low as that it would
-seem to be better to fall altogether; to own
-that you are beaten, that the color has gone
-against you too often, and, like that honorable
-gambler and gentleman, Mr. John Oakhurst,
-who “struck a streak of bad luck, about the
-middle of February, 1864,” to put a pistol to
-your head, and go down as arrogantly and defiantly
-as you had lived.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">IN HONDURAS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<h3>I</h3>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dc_t.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="">
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="drop-cap">T</span>EGUCIGALPA is the odd name of
-the capital of the republic of Honduras,
-the least advanced of the republics
-of Central or South America.</p>
-
-<p>Somerset had learned that there were no means
-of getting to this capital from either the Pacific
-Ocean on one side or from the Caribbean Sea on
-the other except on muleback, and we argued
-that while there were many mining-camps and
-military outposts and ranches situated a nine
-days’ ride from civilization, capitals at such a
-distance were rare, and for that reason might
-prove entertaining. Capitals at the mouths of
-great rivers and at the junction of many railway
-systems we knew, but a capital hidden away behind
-almost inaccessible mountains, like a monastery
-of the Greek Church, we had never seen.
-A door-mat in the front hall of a house is useful,
-and may even be ornamental, though it is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>
-never interesting; but if the door-mat be hidden
-away in the third-story back room it instantly
-assumes an importance and a value which it
-never could have attained in its proper sphere of
-usefulness.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_057.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">OUR NAVAL ATTACHÉ</p>
-
-<p>Our ideas as to the characteristics of Honduras
-were very vague, and it is possible that we
-might never have seen Tegucigalpa had it not
-been for Colonel Charles Jeffs, whom we found<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>
-apparently waiting for us at Puerto Cortez, and
-who, we still believe, had been stationed there by
-some guardian spirit to guide us in safety across
-the continent. Colonel Jeffs is a young American
-mining engineer from Minneapolis, and has
-lived in Honduras for the past eleven years.
-Some time ago he assisted Bogran, when that
-general was president, in one of the revolutions
-against him, and was made a colonel in consequence.
-So we called him our military attaché,
-and Griscom our naval attaché, because he was
-an officer of the Naval Brigade of Pennsylvania.
-Jeffs we found at Puerto Cortez. It was there
-that he first made himself known to us by telling
-our porters they had no right to rob us merely
-because we were gringos, and so saved us some
-dollars. He made us understand at the same
-time that it was as gringos, or foreigners, we
-were thereafter to be designated and disliked.
-We had no agreement with Jeffs, nor even what
-might be called an understanding. He had, as
-I have said, been intended by Providence to
-convey us across Honduras, and every one concerned
-in the outfit seemed to accept that act
-of kindly fate without question. We told him
-we were going to the capital, and were on pleasure
-bent, and he said he had business at the
-capital himself, and would like a few days’
-shooting on the way, so we asked him to come
-with us and act as guide, philosopher, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>
-friend, and he said, “The train starts at eight
-to-morrow morning for San Pedro Sula, where I
-will hire the mules.” And so it was settled, and
-we went off to get our things out of the custom-house
-with a sense of perfect confidence in our
-new acquaintance and of delightful freedom
-from all responsibility. And though, perhaps, it
-is not always best to put the entire charge of an
-excursion through an unknown country into the
-hands of the first kindly stranger whom you see
-sitting on a hotel porch on landing, we found
-that it worked admirably, and we depended on
-our military attaché so completely that we never
-pulled a cinch-strap or interviewed an ex-president
-without first asking his permission. I wish
-every traveller as kindly a guide and as good a
-friend.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_060.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">OUR MILITARY ATTACHÉ</p>
-
-<p>The train to San Pedro Sula was made up of
-a rusty engine and three little cars, with no
-glass in the windows, and with seats too wide
-for one person, and not at all large enough for
-two. The natives made a great expedition of
-this journey, and piled the cramped seats with
-bananas and tortillas and old bottles filled with
-drinking-water. We carried no luncheons ourselves,
-but we had the greater advantage of
-them in that we were enjoying for the first time
-the most beautiful stretch of tropical swamp-land
-and jungle that we came across during our
-entire trip through Honduras. Sometimes the
-train moved through tunnels of palms as straight
-and as regular as the elms leading to an English
-country-house, and again through jungles where
-they grew in the most wonderful riot and disorder,
-so that their branches swept in through
-the car-windows and brushed the cinders from
-the roof. The jungle spread out within a few
-feet of the track on either side, and we peered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>
-into an impenetrable net-work of vines and
-creepers and mammoth ferns and cacti and giant
-trees covered with orchids, and so tall that one
-could only see their tops by looking up at them
-from the rear platform.</p>
-
-<p>The railroad journey from Puerto Cortez to
-San Pedro Sula lasts four hours, but the distance
-is only thirty-seven miles. This was, until a
-short time ago, when the line was extended by a
-New York company, the only thirty-seven miles
-of railroad track in Honduras, and as it has
-given to the country a foreign debt of $27,992,850,
-the interest on which has not been paid
-since 1872, it would seem to be quite enough.
-About thirty years ago an interoceanic railroad
-was projected from Puerto Cortez to the Pacific
-coast, a distance of one hundred and forty-eight
-miles, but the railroad turned out to be a colossal
-swindle, and the government was left with
-this debt on its hands, an army of despoiled
-stockholders to satisfy, and only thirty-seven
-miles of bad road for itself. The road was to
-have been paid for at a certain rate per mile,
-and the men who mapped it out made it in
-consequence twice as long as it need to have
-been, and its curves and grades and turns would
-cause an honest engineer to weep with disapproval.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_062.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">A STRETCH OF CENTRAL-AMERICAN RAILWAY</p>
-
-<p>The grades are in some places very steep, and
-as the engine was not as young as it had been,
-two negro boys and a box of sand were placed
-on the cow-catcher, and whenever the necessity
-of stopping the train was immediate, or when it
-was going downhill too quickly, they would
-lean forward and pour this sand on the rails.
-As soon as Griscom and Somerset discovered
-these assistant engineers they bribed them to
-give up their places to them, and after the first<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>
-station we all sat for the remainder of the journey
-on the cow-catcher. It was a beautiful and
-exhilarating ride, and suggested tobogganing, or
-those thrilling little railroads on trestles at Coney
-Island and at the fêtes around Paris. It was
-even more interesting, because we could see each
-rusty rail rise as the wheel touched its nearer
-end as though it meant to fly up in our faces,
-and when the wheel was too quick for it and
-forced it down again, it contented itself by
-spreading out half a foot or so to one side,
-which was most alarming. And the interest rose
-even higher at times when a stray steer would
-appear on the rails at the end of the tunnel of
-palms, as at the end of a telescope, and we saw
-it growing rapidly larger and larger as the train
-swept down upon it. It always lurched off to
-one side before any one was killed, but not until
-there had been much ringing of bells and blowing
-of whistles, and, on our part, some inward
-debate as to whether we had better jump and
-abandon the train to its fate, or die at our post
-with our hands full of sand.</p>
-
-<p>We lay idly at San Pedro Sula for four days,
-while Jeffs hurried about collecting mules and
-provisions. When we arrived we insisted on
-setting forth that same evening, but the place
-put its spell upon us gently but firmly, and
-when we awoke on the third day and found we
-were no nearer to starting than at the moment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>
-of our arrival, Jeffs’s perplexities began to be
-something of a bore, and we told him to put
-things off to the morrow, as did every one else.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_064.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE THREE GRINGOS</p>
-
-<p>San Pedro Sula lay in peaceful isolation in a
-sunny valley at the base of great mountains, and
-from the upper porch of our hotel, that had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>
-built when the railroad was expected to continue
-on across the continent, we could see above the
-palms in the garden the clouds moving from one
-mountain-top to another, or lying packed like
-drifts of snow in the hollows between. We used
-to sit for hours on this porch in absolute idleness,
-watching Jeffs hurrying in and out below
-with infinite pity, while we listened to the palms
-rustling and whispering as they bent and courtesied
-before us, and saw the sunshine turn the
-mountains a light green, like dry moss, or leave
-half of them dark and sombre when a cloud
-passed in between. It was a clean, lazy little
-place of many clay huts, with gardens back of
-them filled with banana-palms and wide-reaching
-trees, which were one mass of brilliant crimson
-flowers. In the centre of the town was a
-grass-grown plaza where the barefooted and
-ragged boy-soldiers went through leisurely evolutions,
-and the mules and cows gazed at them
-from the other end.</p>
-
-<p>Our hotel was leased by an American woman,
-who was making an unappreciated fight against
-dirt and insects, and the height of whose ambition
-was to get back to Brooklyn and take in
-light sewing and educate her two very young
-daughters. Her husband had died in the interior,
-and his portrait hung in the dining-room
-of the hotel. She used to talk about him while
-she was waiting at dinner, and of what a well-read<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>
-and able man he had been. She would
-grow so interested in her stories that the dinner
-would turn cold while she stood gazing at the
-picture and shaking her head at it. We became
-very much interested in the husband, and used
-to look up over our shoulders at his portrait
-with respectful attention, as though he were
-present. His widow did not like Honduranians;
-and though she might have made enough money
-to take her home, had she consented to accept
-them as boarders, she would only receive gringos
-at her hotel, which she herself swept and scrubbed
-when she was not cooking the dinner and making
-the beds. She had saved eight dollars of the
-sum necessary to convey her and her children
-home, and to educate them when they got there;
-and as American travellers in Honduras are few,
-and as most of them ask you for money to help
-them to God’s country, I am afraid her chance
-of seeing the Brooklyn Bridge is very doubtful.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_067.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">SETTING OUT FROM SAN PEDRO SULA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>We contributed to her fund, and bought her a
-bundle of lottery tickets, which we told her
-were the means of making money easily; and I
-should like to add that she won the grand prize,
-and lived happily on Brooklyn Heights ever
-after; but when we saw the list at Panama, her
-numbers were not on it, and so, I fear, she is
-still keeping the only clean hotel in Honduras,
-which is something more difficult to accomplish
-and a much more public-spirited
-thing to do than to win a grand prize in a
-lottery.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>We left San Pedro Sula on a Sunday morning,
-with a train of eleven mules; five to carry
-our luggage and the other six for ourselves,
-Jeffs, Charlwood, Somerset’s servant, and Emilio,
-our chief moso, or muleteer. There were two
-other mosos, who walked the entire distance, and
-in bull-hide sandals at that, guarding and driving
-the pack-mules, and who were generally able to
-catch up with us an hour or so after we had
-halted for the night. I do not know which was
-the worst of the mosos, although Emilio seems
-to have been first choice with all of us. We
-agreed, after it was all over, that we did not so
-much regret not having killed them as that they
-could not know how frequently they had been
-near to sudden and awful death.</p>
-
-<p>The people of Honduras, where all the travelling
-is done on mule or horseback, have a pretty
-custom of riding out to meet a friend when he
-is known to be coming to town, and of accompanying
-him when he departs. This latter ceremony
-always made me feel as though I were an
-undesirable citizen who was being conveyed outside
-of the city limits by a Vigilance Committee;
-but it is very well meant, and a man in Honduras
-measures his popularity by the number
-of friends who come forth to greet him on his
-arrival, or who speed him on his way when he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>
-sets forth again. We were accompanied out of
-San Pedro Sula by the consular agent, the able
-American manager of the thirty-seven miles
-of railroad, and his youthful baggage-master, a
-young gentleman whom I had formerly known
-in the States.</p>
-
-<p>Our escort left us at the end of a few miles,
-at the foot of the mountains, and we began the
-ascent alone. From that time on until we
-reached the Pacific Ocean we moved at the rate
-of three miles an hour, or some nine leagues a
-day, as distances are measured in Honduras, ten
-hours being a day’s journey. Our mules were
-not at all the animals that we know as mules in
-the States, but rather overgrown donkeys or
-burros, and not much stouter than those in the
-streets of Cairo, whether it be the Street in
-Cairo of Chicago, or the one that runs in front
-of Shepheard’s Hotel. They were patient, plucky,
-and wonderfully sure-footed little creatures, and
-so careful of their own legs and necks that, after
-the first few hours, we ceased to feel any anxiety
-about our own, and left the entire charge of the
-matter to them.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_071.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE HIGHLANDS OF HONDURAS</p>
-
-<div class="figleft" id="illo_74"><img src="images/i_074.jpg" alt=""><p class="caption">SOMERSET</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>I think we were all a little startled at sight of
-the trail we were expected to follow, but if we
-were we did not say so—at least, not before Jeffs.
-It led almost directly up the face of the mountain,
-along little ledges and pathways cut in
-the solid rock, and at times was so slightly
-marked that we could not see it five yards ahead
-of us. On that first day, during which the trail
-was always leading upward, the mules did not
-once put down any one of their four little feet
-without first testing the spot upon which it was
-to rest. This made our progress slow, but it
-gave one a sense of security, which the angle
-and attitude of the body of the man in front
-did much to dissipate. I do not know the
-name of the mountains over which we passed,
-nor do I know the name of any mountain in
-Honduras, except those which we named ourselves,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
-for the reason that there is not much in
-Honduras except mountains, and it would be as
-difficult to give a name to each of her many
-peaks as to christen every town site on a Western
-prairie. When the greater part of all the earth
-of a country stands on edge in the air, it would
-be invidious to designate any one particular hill
-or chain of hills. A Honduranian deputy once
-crumpled up a page of letter-paper in his hand
-and dropped it on the desk before him. “That,”
-he said, “is an outline map of Honduras.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>We rode in single file, with Jeffs in front,
-followed by Somerset, with Griscom and myself
-next, and Charlwood, the best and most faithful
-of servants, bringing up the rear. The pack-mules,
-as I have said, were two hours farther
-back, and we could sometimes see them over
-the edge of a precipice crawling along a thousand
-feet below and behind us. It seemed an
-unsociable way for friends to travel through a
-strange country, and I supposed that in an hour
-or so we would come
-to a broader trail and
-pull up abreast and
-exchange tobacco
-pouches and grow
-better acquainted.
-But we never came
-to that broad trail
-until we had travelled
-sixteen days,
-and had left Tegucigalpa
-behind us,
-and in the foreground
-of all the
-pictures I have in
-my mind of Honduras
-there is always a
-row of men’s backs
-and shoulders and
-bobbing helmets disappearing
-down a
-slippery path of rock,
-or rising above the
-edge of a mountain
-and outlined against
-a blazing blue sky. We were generally near
-enough to one another to talk if we spoke in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>
-a loud voice or turned in the saddle, though
-sometimes we rode silently, and merely raised
-an arm to point at a beautiful valley below or
-at a strange bird on a tree, and kept it rigid
-until the man behind said, “Yes, I see,” when
-it dropped, like a semaphore signal after the
-train has passed.</p>
-
-<p>Early in the afternoon of the day of our setting
-forth we saw for the last time the thatched
-roofs of San Pedro Sula, like a bare spot in the
-great green plain hundreds of feet below us,
-and then we passed through the clouds we had
-watched from the town itself, and bade the
-eastern coast of Honduras a final farewell.</p>
-
-<p>The trail we followed was so rough and uncertain
-that at first I conceived a very poor opinion
-of the Honduranians for not having improved it,
-but as we continued scrambling upward I admired
-them for moving about at all under such
-conditions. After all, we who had chosen to
-take this road through curiosity had certainly no
-right to complain of what was to the natives
-their only means of communication with the Atlantic
-seaboard. It is interesting to think of a
-country absolutely and entirely dependent on
-such thoroughfares for every necessity of life.
-For whether it be a postal card or a piano, or a
-bale of cotton, or a box of matches, it must be
-brought to Tegucigalpa on the back of a mule
-or on the shoulders of a man, who must slip and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>
-slide and scramble either over this trail or the
-one on the western coast.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes this high-road of commerce was cut
-through the living rock in steps as even and sharp
-as those in front of a brownstone house on Fifth
-Avenue, and so narrow that we had to draw up
-our knees to keep them from being scratched
-and cut on the rough walls of the passageway,
-and again it led through jungle so dense that
-if one wandered three yards from the trail he
-could not have found his way back again; but
-this danger was not imminent, as no one could
-go that far from the trail without having first
-hacked and cut his way there.</p>
-
-<p>It was not always so difficult; at times we
-came out into bare open spaces, and rode up the
-dry bed of a mountain stream, and felt the full
-force of the sun, or again it led along a ledge of
-rock two feet wide at the edge of a precipice, and
-we were fanned with cool, damp breaths from the
-pit a thousand feet below, where the sun had
-never penetrated, and where the moss and fern
-of centuries grew in a thick, dark tangle.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_077.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">A DRAWER OF WATER</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>We stopped for our first meal at a bare place
-on the top of a mountain, where there were a
-half-dozen mud huts. Jeffs went from one to
-another of these and collected a few eggs, and
-hired a woman to cook them and to make us
-some coffee. We added tinned things and bread
-to this luncheon, which, as there were no benches,
-we ate seated on the ground, kicking at the dogs
-and pigs and chickens, that snatched in a most
-familiar manner at the food in our hands. In
-Honduras there are so few hotels that travellers
-are entirely dependent for food and for a place
-in which to sleep upon the people who live along
-the trail, who are apparently quite hardened to
-having their homes invaded by strangers, and
-their larders levied upon at any hour of the day
-or night.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>Even in the larger towns and so-called cities
-we slept in private houses, and on the solitary
-occasion when we were directed to a hotel we
-found a bare room with a pile of canvas cots
-heaped in one corner, to which we were told to
-help ourselves. There was a real hotel, and a
-very bad one, at the capital, where we fared much
-worse than we had often done in the interior;
-but with these two exceptions we were dependent
-for shelter during our entire trip across Honduras
-upon the people of the country. Sometimes
-they sent us to sleep in the town-hall, which
-was a large hut with a mud floor, and furnished
-with a blackboard and a row of-benches, and
-sometimes with stocks for prisoners; for it served
-as a school or prison or hotel, according to the
-needs of the occasion.</p>
-
-<p>We were equally dependent upon the natives
-for our food. We carried breakfast bacon and
-condensed milk and sardines and bread with us,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>
-and to these we were generally able to add, at
-least once a day, coffee and eggs and beans. The
-national bread is the tortilla. It is made of cornmeal,
-patted into the shape of a buckwheat cake
-between the palms of the hands, and then baked.
-They were generally given to us cold, in a huge
-pile, and were burned on both sides, but untouched
-by heat in the centre. The coffee was always
-excellent, as it should have been, for the Honduranian
-coffee is as fine as any grown in Central
-America, and we never had too much of it; but
-of eggs and black beans there was no end. The
-black-bean habit in Honduras is very general;
-they gave them to us three times a day, sometimes
-cold and sometimes hot, sometimes with
-bacon and sometimes alone. They were frequently
-served to us in the shape of sandwiches
-between tortillas, and again in the form of pudding
-with chopped-up goat’s meat. At first, and
-when they were served hot, I used to think them
-delicious. That seems very long ago now. When
-I was at Johnstown at the time of the flood, there
-was a soda cracker, with jam inside, which was
-served out to the correspondents in place of
-bread; and even now, if it became a question of
-my having to subsist on those crackers, and the
-black beans of Central America, or starve, I am
-sure I should starve, and by preference.</p>
-
-<p>We were naturally embarrassed at first when
-we walked into strange huts; but the owners<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>
-seemed to take such invasions with apathy and
-as a matter of course, and were neither glad to
-see us when we came, nor relieved when we departed.
-They asked various prices for what they
-gave us—about twice as much as they would
-have asked a native for the same service; at least,
-so Jeffs told us; but as our bill never amounted
-to more than fifty cents apiece for supper, lodging,
-and a breakfast the next morning, they cannot
-be said to have robbed us. While the woman
-at the first place at which we stopped boiled
-the eggs, her husband industriously whittled a
-lot of sharp little sticks, which he distributed
-among us, and the use of which we could not
-imagine, until we were told we were expected
-to spike holes in the eggs with them, and then
-suck out the meat. We did not make a success
-of this, and our prejudice against eating eggs
-after that fashion was such that we were particular
-to ask to have them fried during the rest of
-our trip. This was the only occasion when I saw
-a Honduranian husband help his wife to work.</p>
-
-<p>After our breakfast on the top of the mountain,
-we began its descent on the other side.
-This was much harder on the mules than the
-climbing had been, and they stepped even more
-slowly, and so gave us many opportunities to
-look out over the tops of trees and observe
-with some misgivings the efforts of the man in
-front to balance the mule by lying flat on its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>
-hind-quarters. The temptation at such times
-to sit upright and see into what depths you
-were going next was very great. We struck a
-level trail about six in the evening, and the mules
-were so delighted at this that they started off of
-their own accord at a gallop, and were further
-encouraged by our calling them by the names of
-different Spanish generals. This inspired them
-to such a degree that we had to change their
-names to Bob Ingersoll or Senator Hill, or others
-to the same effect, at which they grew discouraged
-and drooped perceptibly.</p>
-
-<p>We slept that night at a ranch called La Pieta,
-belonging to Dr. Miguel Pazo, where we experimented
-for the first time with our hammocks,
-and tried to grow accustomed to going to bed
-under the eyes of a large household of Indian
-maidens, mosos, and cowboys. There are men
-who will tell you that they like to sleep in a
-hammock, just as there are men who will tell
-you that they like the sea best when it is rough,
-and that they are happiest when the ship is
-throwing them against the sides and superstructure,
-and when they cannot sit still without bracing
-their legs against tables and stanchions. I
-always want to ask such men if they would prefer
-land in a state of perpetual earthquake, or in
-its normal condition of steadiness, and I have always
-been delighted to hear sea-captains declare
-themselves best pleased with a level keel, and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>
-chance it gives them to go about their work without
-having to hang on to hand-rails. And I had
-a feeling of equal satisfaction when I saw as many
-sailors as could find room sleeping on the hard
-deck of a man-of-war at Colon, in preference to
-suspending themselves in hammocks, which were
-swinging empty over their heads. The hammock
-keeps a man at an angle of forty-five degrees,
-with the weight of both his legs and his
-body on the base of the spinal column, which
-gets no rest in consequence.</p>
-
-<p>The hammock is, however, almost universally
-used in Honduras, and is a necessity there on account
-of the insects and ants and other beasts
-that climb up the legs of cots and inhabit the
-land. But the cots of bull-hide stretched on
-ropes are, in spite of the insects, greatly to be
-preferred; they are at least flat, and one can lie
-on them without having his legs three feet higher
-than his head. Their manufacture is very simple.
-When a steer is killed its hide is pegged
-out on the ground, and left where the dogs can
-eat what flesh still adheres to it; and when it
-has been cleaned after this fashion and the sun
-has dried it, ropes of rawhide are run through
-its edges, and it is bound to a wooden frame
-with the hairy side up. It makes a cool, hard
-bed. In the poorer huts the hides are given to
-the children at night, and spread directly on the
-earth floor. During the day the same hides are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>
-used to hold the coffee, which is piled high upon
-them and placed in the sun to dry.</p>
-
-<p>We left La Pieta early the next morning, in
-the bright sunlight, but instead of climbing laboriously
-into the sombre mountains of the day
-before, we trotted briskly along a level path between
-sunny fields and delicate plants, and trees
-with a pale-green foliage, and covered with the
-most beautiful white-and-purple flowers. There
-were hundreds of doves in the air, and in the
-bushes many birds of brilliant blue-and-black or
-orange-and-scarlet plumage, and one of more sober
-colors with two long white tail-feathers and a
-white crest, like a macaw that had turned Quaker.
-None of these showed the least inclination to
-disturb himself as we approached. An hour after
-our setting forth we plunged into a forest of
-manacca-palms, through which we rode the rest
-of the morning. This was the most beautiful
-and wonderful experience of our journey. The
-manacca-palm differs from the cocoanut or royal
-palm in that its branches seem to rise directly
-from the earth, and not to sprout, as do the others,
-from the top of a tall trunk. Each branch
-has a single stem, and the leaf spreads and falls
-from either side of this, cut into even blades,
-like a giant fern.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_085.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">NATIVE METHOD OF DRYING COFFEE</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>There is a plant that looks like the manacca-palm
-at home which you see in flower-pots in the
-corners of drawing-rooms at weddings, and consequently
-when we saw the real manacca-palm the
-effect was curious. It did not seem as though
-they were monster specimens of these little plants
-in the States, but as though we had grown smaller.
-We felt dwarfed, as though we had come
-across a rose-bush as large as a tree. The branches
-of these palms were sixty feet high, and occasionally
-six feet broad, and bent and swayed and
-interlaced in the most graceful and exquisite confusion.
-Every blade trembled in the air, and for
-hours we heard no other sound save their perpetual
-murmur and rustle. Not even the hoofs of
-our mules gave a sound, for they trod on the dead
-leaves of centuries. The palms made a natural
-archway for us, and the leaves hung like a portière<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>
-across the path, and you would see the man
-riding in front raise his arm and push the long
-blades to either side, and disappear as they fell
-again into place behind him. It was like a scene
-on the tropical island of a pantomime, where everything
-is exaggerated both in size and in beauty.
-It made you think of a giant aquarium or
-conservatory which had been long neglected.</p>
-
-<p>At every hundred yards or so there were
-giant trees with smooth gray trunks, as even and
-regular as marble, and with roots like flying-buttresses,
-a foot in thickness, and reaching from
-ten to fifteen feet up from the ground. If these
-flanges had been covered over, a man on muleback
-could have taken refuge between them.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>
-Some of the trunks of these trees were covered
-with intricate lace-work of a parasite which
-twisted in and out, and which looked as though
-thousands of snakes were crawling over the
-white surface of the tree; they were so much
-like snakes that one passed beneath them with
-an uneasy shrug. Hundreds of orchids clung to
-the branches of the trees, and from these stouter
-limbs to the more pliable branches of the palms
-below white-faced monkeys sprang and swung
-from tree to tree, running along the branches
-until they bent with the weight like a trout-rod,
-and sprang upright again with a sweep and rush
-as the monkeys leaped off chattering into the
-depths of the forest. We rode through this
-enchanted wilderness of wavering sunlight and
-damp, green shadows for the greater part of the
-day, and came out finally into a broad, open
-plain, cut up by little bubbling streams, flashing
-brilliantly in the sun. It was like an awakening
-from a strange and beautiful nightmare.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_089.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">IN A CENTRAL-AMERICAN FOREST</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>In the early part of the afternoon we arrived
-at another one of the farm-houses belonging to
-young Dr. Pazo, and at which he and his brother
-happened to be stopping. We had ridden out
-of our way there in the hopes of obtaining a few
-days’ shooting, and the place seemed to promise
-much sport. The Chamelicon River, filled with
-fish and alligators, ran within fifty yards of the
-house; and great forests, in which there were
-bear and deer and wild-pig, stretched around it
-and beyond it on every side. The house itself
-was like almost every other native hut in Honduras.
-They are all built very much alike, with
-no attempt at ornamentation within, or landscape-gardening
-without, although nature has
-furnished the most beautiful of plants and trees
-close on every side for just such a purpose. The
-walls of a Honduranian hut are made of mud
-packed round a skeleton of interwoven rods;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>
-the floor is of the naked earth, and the roof is
-thatched with the branches of palms. After the
-house is finished, all of the green stuff growing
-around and about it is cleared away for fifty
-yards or so, leaving an open place of bare and
-barren mud. This is not decorative, but it helps
-in some measure to keep the insects which cling
-to every green thing away from the house. A
-kitchen of similarly interlaced rods and twigs,
-but without the clay, and covered with just such
-layers of palm leaves, stands on the bare place
-near the house, or leans against one side of it.
-This is where the tortillas are patted and baked,
-and the rice and beans are boiled, and the raw
-meat of an occasional goat or pig is hung to
-dry and smoke over the fire. The oven in the
-kitchen is made of baked clay, and you seldom
-see any cooking utensils or dishes that have
-not been manufactured from the trees near the
-house or the earth beneath it. The water for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>
-drinking and cooking is kept in round jars of red
-clay, which stand in rings of twisted twigs to
-keep them upright, and the drinking-vessels are
-the halves of gourds, and the ladles are whole
-gourds, with the branch on which they grew still
-adhering to them, to serve as a handle.</p>
-
-<p>The furnishing of the house shows the same
-dependence upon nature; the beds are either grass
-hammocks or the rawhide that I have described,
-and there are no chairs and few benches, the people
-preferring apparently to eat sitting on their
-haunches to taking the trouble necessary to
-make a chair. Everything they eat, of which
-there is very little variety, grows just beyond
-the cleared place around the hut, and can be
-had at the cost of the little energy necessary to
-bring it in-doors. When a kid or a pig or a
-steer is killed, the owner goes out to the nearest
-peak and blows a blast on a cow’s horn,
-and those within hearing who wish fresh meat
-hurry across the mountain to purchase it. As
-there is no ice from one end of Honduras to the
-other, meat has to be eaten the day it is killed.</p>
-
-<p>This is not the life of the Honduranians who
-live in the large towns or so-called cities, where
-there are varying approaches to the comfort of
-civilized countries, but of the country people
-with whom we had chiefly to do. It is as near
-an approach to the condition of primitive man
-as one can find on this continent.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>But bare and poor as are the houses, which are
-bare not because the people are poor, but because
-they are indolent, there is almost invariably some
-corner of the hut set aside and ornamented as an
-altar, or some part of the wall covered with pictures
-of a religious meaning. When they have no
-table, the people use a shelf or the stump of a
-tree upon which to place emblematic figures,
-which are almost always china dolls, with no
-original religious significance, but which they
-have dressed in little scraps of tinsel and silk,
-and which they have surrounded with sardine-tins
-and empty bottles and pictures from the
-lids of cigar-boxes. Everything that has color
-is cherished, and every traveller who passes adds
-unconsciously to their stock of ornaments in the
-wrappings of the boxes which he casts away behind
-him. Sometimes the pictures they use for
-ornamentation are not half so odd as the fact
-that they ever should have reached such a wilderness.
-We were frequently startled by the
-sight of colored lithographs of theatrical stars,
-advertising the fact that they were playing under
-the direction of such and such a manager, and
-patent-medicine advertisements and wood-cuts
-from illustrated papers, some of them twenty
-and thirty years old, which were pinned to the
-mud walls and reverenced as gravely as though
-they had been pictures of the Holy Family by a
-Raphael or a Murillo.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>In one hut we found a life-size colored lithograph
-of a woman whom, it so happened, we all
-knew, which was being used to advertise a sewing-machine.
-We were so pleased at meeting a familiar
-face so far from home that we bowed to
-it very politely, and took off our hats, at which
-the woman of the house, mistaking our deference,
-placed it over the altar, fearing that she had been
-entertaining an angel unawares.</p>
-
-<p>The house of Dr. Pazo, where we were most
-hospitably entertained, was similar to those that
-I have described. It was not his home, but
-what we would call a hunting-box or a ranch.
-While we were at luncheon he told a boy to see
-if there were any alligators in sight, in exactly
-the same tone with which he might have told a
-servant to find out if the lawn-tennis net were in
-place. The boy returned to say that there were
-five within a hundred yards of the house. So,
-after we had as usual patiently waited for Griscom
-to finish his coffee, we went out on the bank and
-fired at the unhappy alligators for the remainder
-of the afternoon. It did not seem to hurt them
-very much, and certainly did us a great deal of
-good. To kill an alligator it is necessary to hit
-it back of the fore-leg, or to break its spine
-where it joins the tail; and as it floats with only
-its eyes and a half-inch of its nose exposed, it is
-difficult to reach either of these vital spots.
-When the alligator is on a bank, and you attempt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>
-to crawl up on it along the opposite bank,
-the birds make such a noise, either on its account
-or on their own, that it takes alarm, and
-rolls over into the water with an abruptness you
-would hardly expect from so large a body.</p>
-
-<p>On our second day at Dr. Pazo’s ranch we
-divided into two parties, and scoured the wilderness
-for ten miles around after game. One party
-was armed with shot-guns, and brought back
-macaws of wonderful plumage, wild turkeys, and
-quail in abundance; the others, scorning anything
-but big game, carried rifles, and, as a result,
-returned as they set forth, only with fewer
-cartridges. It was most unfortunate that the
-only thing worth shooting came to me. It was
-a wild-cat with a long tail, who patiently waited
-for us in an open place with a calm and curious
-expression of countenance. I think I was more
-surprised than he was, and even after I had
-thrown up the ground under his white belly he
-stopped and turned again to look at me in a
-hurt and reproachful manner before he bounded
-gracefully out of sight into the underbrush. We
-also saw a small bear, but he escaped in the
-same manner, without waiting to be fired upon,
-and as we had no dogs to send after him, we
-gave up looking for more, and went back to pot
-at alligators. There were some excellent hunting-dogs
-on the ranch, but the Pazo brothers
-had killed a steer the night we arrived, and had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>
-given most of it to the dogs, so that in the
-morning they were naturally in no mood for
-hunting.</p>
-
-<p>There was an old grandfather of an alligator
-whom Somerset and I had repeatedly disturbed
-in his slumbers. He liked to take his siestas on
-a little island entirely surrounded by rapids, and
-we used to shoot at him from the opposite bank
-of the river. He was about thirteen feet long,
-and the agility with which he would flop over
-into the calm little bay, which stretched out from
-the point on which he slept, was as remarkable
-as it was disappointing. He was still asleep at
-his old stand when we returned from our unsuccessful
-shooting tour, so we decided to swim the
-rapids and crawl up on him across his little island
-and attack him from the flank and rear. It reminded
-me somewhat of the taking of Lungtenpen
-on a small scale. On that occasion, if I
-remember correctly, the raw recruits were uniformed
-only in Martinis and cartridge-belts; but
-we decided to carry our boots as well, because
-the alligator’s island was covered with sharp
-stones and briers, and the sand was very hot, and,
-moreover, we had but vague ideas about the customs
-of alligators, and were not sure as to
-whether he might not chase us. We thought
-we would look very silly running around a little
-island pursued by a long crocodile and treading
-on sharp hot stones in our bare feet.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_097.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">ON THE TRAIL TO SANTA BARBARA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>So each of us took his boots in one hand and
-a repeating-rifle in the other, and with his money-belt
-firmly wrapped around his neck, plunged
-into the rapids and started to ford the river.
-They were exceedingly swift rapids, and made you
-feel as though you were swinging round a sharp
-corner on a cable-car with no strap by which to
-take hold. The only times I could stop at all
-was when I jammed my feet in between two
-stones at the bed of the river, and was so held
-in a vise, while the rest of my body swayed
-about in the current and my boots scooped up
-the water. When I wanted to go farther I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>
-would stick my toes between two more rocks,
-and so gradually worked my way across, but I
-could see nothing of Somerset, and decided that
-he had been drowned, and went off to avenge
-him on the alligator. It took me some time to
-get my bruised and bleeding toes into the wet
-boots, during which time I kept continually looking
-over my shoulder to see if the alligator were
-going to make a land attack, and surprise me
-instead of my surprising him. I knew he was
-very near me, for the island smelled as strongly of
-musk as a cigar-shop smells of tobacco; but when
-I crawled up on him he was still on his point of
-sand, and sound asleep. I had a very good
-chance at seventy yards, but I was greedy, and
-wanted to come closer, and as I was crawling
-along, gathering thorns and briers by the way, I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>
-startled about fifty birds, and the alligator flopped
-over again, and left nothing behind him but a
-few tracks on the land and a muddy streak in
-the water. It was a great deal of trouble for a
-very little of alligator; but I was more or less
-consoled on my return to find that Somerset
-was still alive, and seated on the same bank from
-which we had both started, though at a point
-fifty yards farther down-stream. He was engaged
-in counting out damp Bank-of-England
-notes on his bare knee, and blowing occasional
-blasts down the barrel of his rifle, which had
-dragged him and itself to the bottom of the
-river before the current tossed them both back
-on the shore.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_101.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">A HALT AT TRINIDAD</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>The two days of rest at the ranch of Dr. Pazo
-had an enervating effect upon our mules, and
-they moved along so slowly on the day following
-that we had to feel our way through the night
-for several hours before we came to the hut
-where we were to sleep. Griscom and I had lost
-ourselves on the mountain-side, and did not overtake
-the others until long after they had settled
-themselves in the compound. They had been
-too tired when they reached it to do anything
-more after falling off their mules, and we found
-them stretched on the ground in the light of a
-couple of fluttering pine torches, with cameras
-and saddle-bags and carbines scattered recklessly
-about, and the mules walking over them in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>
-darkness. A fire in the oven shone through the
-chinks in the kitchen wall, and showed the
-woman of the house stirring something in a caldron
-with one hand and holding her sleeping
-child on her hip with the other, while the daughters
-moved in and out of the shadow, carrying
-jars on their heads and bundles of fodder for the
-animals. It looked like a gypsy encampment.
-We sent Emilio back with a bunch of pine torches
-to find the pack-mules, and we could see his
-lighted torch blazing far up the trail that we had
-just descended, and lighting the rocks and trees
-on either side of him.</p>
-
-<p>There was only room for one of us to sleep inside
-the hut that night, and as Griscom had a
-cold, that privilege was given to him; but it
-availed him little, for when he seated himself on
-the edge of the bull-hide cot and began to pull
-off his boots, five ghostly feminine figures sat upright
-in their hammocks and studied his preparations
-with the most innocent but embarrassing
-curiosity. So, after waiting some little time
-for them to go to sleep again, he gave up any
-thought of making himself more comfortable,
-and slept in his boots and spurs.</p>
-
-<p>We passed through the pretty village of Trinidad
-early the next morning, and arrived at nightfall
-at the larger town of Santa Barbara, where
-the sound of our mules’ hoofs pattering over the
-paved streets and the smell of smoking street<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>
-lamps came to us with as much of a shock as
-does the sight of land after a week at sea. Santa
-Barbara, in spite of its pavements, was not a
-great metropolis, and, owing to its isolation, the
-advent of five strangers was so much of an event
-that the children of the town followed us, cheering
-and jeering as though we were a circus procession;
-they blocked the house in which we
-took refuge, on every side, so that the native
-policemen had to be stationed at our windows
-to wave them away. On the following morning
-we called to pay our respects on General Louis
-Bogran, who has been President of Honduras
-for eight years and an exile for two. He died
-a few months after our visit. He was a very
-handsome man, with a fine presence, and with
-great dignity of manner, and he gave us an
-audience exactly as though he were a dethroned
-monarch and we loyal subjects come
-to pay him homage in his loneliness. I asked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>
-him what he regarded as the best work of his
-administration, and after thinking awhile he
-answered, “Peace for eight years,” which was
-rather happy, when you consider that in the
-three years since he had left office there have
-been four presidents and two long and serious
-revolutions, and when we were in the capital the
-people seemed to think it was about time to
-begin on another.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_105.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN</p>
-
-<p>We left Santa Barbara early the next morning,
-and rode over a few more mountains to the
-town of Seguaca, where the village priest was
-holding a festival, and where the natives for
-many miles around had gathered in consequence.
-There did not seem to be much of interest
-going on when we arrived, for the people of the
-town and the visitors within her gates deserted
-the booths and followed us in a long procession<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>
-down the single street, and invaded the house
-where we lunched.</p>
-
-<p>Our host on this occasion set a table for us in
-the centre of his largest room, and the population
-moved in through the doors and windows,
-and seated themselves cross-legged in rows ten
-and fifteen deep on the earth floor at our feet,
-and regarded us gravely and in absolute silence.
-Those who could not find standing-room inside
-stood on the window-sills and blocked the doorways,
-and the women were given places of
-honor on tables and beds. It was somewhat
-embarrassing, and we felt as though we ought to
-offer something more unusual than the mere
-exercise of eating in order to justify such interest;
-so we attempted various parlor tricks,
-without appearing to notice the presence of an
-audience, and pretended to swallow the eggs
-whole, and made knives and forks disappear in
-the air, and drew silver dollars from the legs of
-the table, continuing our luncheon in the meantime
-in a self-possessed and polite manner, as
-though such eccentricities were our hourly habit.
-We could see the audience, out of the corner of
-our eyes, leaning forward with their eyes and
-mouths wide open, and were so encouraged that
-we called up some of the boys and drew watches
-and dollars out of their heads, after which they
-retired into corners and ransacked their scantily
-clad persons for more. It was rather an expensive
-exhibition, for when we set forth again
-they all laid claim to the dollars of which they
-considered they had been robbed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_107.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">OUR PACK-TRAIN AT SANTA BARBARA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>The men of the place, according to their
-courteous custom, followed us out of the town
-for a few miles, and then we all shook hands and
-exchanged cigars and cigarettes, and separated
-with many compliments and expressions of high
-esteem.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>The trail from Seguaca to our next resting-place
-led through pine forests and over layers of pine-needles
-that had been accumulating for years.
-It was a very warm, dry afternoon, and the air
-was filled with the odor of the pines, and when
-we came to one of the many mountain streams
-we disobeyed Jeffs and stopped to bathe in it,
-and let it carry us down the side of the mountain
-with the speed of a toboggan. We had
-been told that bathing at any time was extremely
-dangerous in Honduras, and especially so
-in the afternoon; but we always bathed in the
-afternoon, and looked forward to the half-hour
-spent in one of these roaring rapids as the best
-part of the day. Of all our recollections of
-Honduras, they are certainly the pleasantest.
-The water was almost icily cold, and fell with
-a rush and a heavy downpour in little water-falls,
-or between great crevices in the solid
-rocks, leaping and bubbling and flashing in the
-sun, or else sweeping in swift eddies in the compass<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>
-of deep, shadowy pools. We used to imprison
-ourselves between two rocks and let a fall
-of water strike us from the distance of several
-feet on our head and shoulders, or tear past and
-around us, so that in five minutes the soreness
-and stiffness of the day’s ride were rubbed out
-of us as completely as though we had been
-massaged at a Turkish bath, and the fact that
-we were always bruised and black and blue when
-we came out could not break us of this habit.
-It was probably because we were new to the
-country that we suffered no great harm; for
-Jeffs, who was an old inhabitant, and who had
-joined us in this particular stream for the first
-time, came out looking twenty years older, and
-in an hour his teeth were chattering with chills
-or clinched with fever, and his pulse was jumping
-at one hundred and three. We were then
-exactly six days’ hard riding from any civilized
-place, and though we gave him quinine and
-whiskey and put him into his hammock as soon
-as we reached a hut, the evening is not a cheerful
-one to remember. It would not have been
-a cheerful evening under any circumstances, for
-we shared the hut with the largest and most
-varied collection of human beings, animals, and
-insects that I have ever seen gathered into so
-small a place.</p>
-
-<p>I took an account of stock before I turned in,
-and found that there were three dogs, eleven<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>
-cats, seven children, five men, not including five
-of us, three women, and a dozen chickens, all
-sleeping, or trying to sleep, in the same room,
-under the one roof. And when I gave up attempting
-to sleep and wandered out into the
-night, I stepped on the pigs, and startled three
-or four calves that had been sleeping under the
-porch and that lunged up out of the darkness.
-We were always asking Jeffs why we slept in
-such places, instead of swinging our hammocks
-under the trees and camping out decently and
-in order, and his answer was that while there
-were insects enough in-doors, they were virtually
-an extinct species when compared to the number
-one would meet in the open air.</p>
-
-<p>I have camped in our West, where all you
-need is a blanket to lie upon and another to
-wrap around you, and a saddle for a pillow, and
-where, with a smouldering fire at your feet, you
-can sleep without thought of insects. But there
-is nothing green that grows in Honduras that is
-not saturated and alive with bugs, and all manner
-of things that creep and crawl and sting and
-bite. It transcends mere discomfort; it is an
-absolute curse to the country, and to every one
-in it, and it would be as absurd to write of Honduras
-without dwelling on the insects, as of the
-west coast of Africa without speaking of the
-fever. You cannot sit on the grass or on a fallen
-tree, or walk under an upright one or through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>
-the bushes, without hundreds of some sort of
-animal or other attaching themselves to your
-clothing or to your person. And if you get
-down from your mule to take a shot at something
-in the bushes and walk but twenty feet
-into them, you have to be beaten with brushes
-and rods when you come out again as vigorously
-as though you were a dusty carpet. There will
-be sometimes as many as a hundred insects
-under one leaf; and after they have once laid
-their claws upon you, your life is a mockery,
-and you feel at night as though you were sleeping
-in a bed with red pepper. The mules have
-even a harder time of it; for, as if they did not
-suffer enough in the day, they are in constant
-danger at night from vampires, which fasten
-themselves to the neck and suck out the blood,
-leaving them so weak that often when we came
-to saddle them in the morning they would stagger
-and almost fall. Sometimes the side of
-their head and shoulders would be wet with
-their own blood. I never heard of a vampire
-attacking a man in that country, but the fact
-that they are in the air does not make one sleep
-any the sounder.</p>
-
-<p>In the morning after our night with the varied
-collection of men and animals we put back again
-to the direct trail to Tegucigalpa, from which
-place we were still distant a seven days’ ride.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span></p>
-
-<h3>II</h3>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">We</span> swung our hammocks on the sixth night
-out in the municipal building of Tabla Ve; but
-there was little sleep. Towards morning the
-night turned bitterly cold, and the dampness rose
-from the earthen floor of the hut like a breath
-from the open door of a refrigerator, and kept us
-shivering in spite of sweaters and rubber blankets.
-Above, the moon and stars shone brilliantly in a
-clear sky, but down in the valley in which the
-village lay, a mist as thick as the white smoke
-of a locomotive rose out of the ground to the
-level of the house-tops, and hid Tabla Ve as
-completely as though it were at the bottom of
-a lake. The dogs of the village moved through
-the mist, howling dismally, and meeting to fight
-with a sudden sharp tumult of yells that made
-us start up in our hammocks and stare at each
-other sleepily, while Jeffs rambled on, muttering
-and moaning in his fever. It was not a pleasant
-night, and we rode up the mountain-side out of
-the mist the next morning unrefreshed, but satisfied
-to be once more in the sunlight. They had
-told us at Tabla Ve that there was to be a bull-baiting
-that same afternoon at the village of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>
-Seguatepec, fifteen miles over the mountain,
-where a priest was holding a church festival.
-So we left Jeffs to push along with the mozos,
-and by riding as fast as the mules could go, we
-reached Seguatepec by four in the afternoon.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_114.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">A VILLAGE IN THE INTERIOR</p>
-
-<p>It was a bright, clean town, sitting pertly on
-the flat top of a hill that fell away from it evenly
-on every side. It had a little church and a little
-plaza, and the church was so vastly superior to
-every other house in the place—as was the case<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>
-in every village through which we passed—as to
-make one suppose that it had been built by one
-race of people and the houses by another. The
-plaza was shut in on two of its sides by a barrier
-seven rails high, held together by ox-hide ropes.
-This barrier, with the houses fronting the plaza
-on its two other sides, formed the arena in which
-the bull was to be set at liberty. All of the
-windows and a few of the doors of the houses
-were barred, and the open places between were
-filled up by ramparts of logs. There was no
-grand-stand, but every one contributed a bench
-or a table from his own house, and the women
-seated themselves on these, while the men and
-boys perched on the upper rail of the barricade.
-The occasion was a memorable one, and all the
-houses were hung with strips of colored linen,
-and the women wore their brilliant silk shawls,
-and a band of fifteen boys, none of whom could
-have been over sixteen years of age, played a
-weird overture to the desperate business of the
-afternoon.</p>
-
-<p>It was a somewhat primitive and informal bull-fight,
-and it began with their lassoing the bull
-by his horns and hoofs, and dragging him head
-first against the barricade. With a dozen men
-pulling on the lariat around the horns from the
-outside of the ring, and two more twisting his
-tail on the inside, he was at such an uncomfortable
-disadvantage that it was easy for them to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>
-harness him in a net-work of lariats, and for a
-bold rider to seat himself on his back. The bold
-rider wore spurs on his bare feet, and, with his
-toes stuck in the ropes around the bull’s body,
-he grasped the same ropes with one hand, and
-with the other hand behind him held on to the
-bull’s tail as a man holds the tiller of a boat.
-When the man felt himself firmly fixed, and the
-bull had been poked into a very bad temper
-with spears and sharp sticks, the lariat around
-his horns was cut, and he started up and off on
-a frantic gallop, bucking as vigorously as a Texas
-pony, and trying to gore the man clinging to his
-back with backward tosses of his horns.</p>
-
-<p>There was no regular toreador, and any one
-who desired to sacrifice himself to make a Saguatepecan
-holiday was at liberty to do so; and as a
-half-dozen men so sought distinction, and as the
-bull charged at anything on two legs, the excitement
-was intense. He moved very quickly for
-so huge an animal in spite of his heavy handicap,
-and, with the exception of one man with a red
-flag and a spirit of daring not entirely due to
-natural causes, no one cared to go very near him.
-So he pawed up and down the ring, tossing and
-bucking and making himself as disagreeable to
-the man on his back as he possibly could. It
-struck me that it would be a distinctly sporting
-act to photograph a bull while he was charging
-head on at the photographer, and it occurred to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>
-Somerset and Griscom at about the same time
-that it would be pleasant to confront a very mad
-bull while he was careering about with a man
-twisting his tail. So we all dropped into the
-arena at about the same moment, from different
-sides, and as we were gringos, our appearance
-was hailed with laughter and yells of encouragement.
-The gentleman on the bull seemed to be
-able to control him more or less by twisting his
-tail to one side or the other, and as soon as he
-heard the shouts that welcomed us he endeavored
-to direct the bull’s entire attention to my two
-young friends. Griscom and Somerset are six
-feet high, even without riding-boots and pith
-helmets, and with them they were so conspicuous
-that the bull was properly incensed, and
-made them hurl themselves over the barricade
-in such haste that they struck the ground on the
-other side at about the same instant that he
-butted the rails, and with about the same amount
-of force.</p>
-
-<p>Shrieks and yells of delight rose from the
-natives at this delightful spectacle, and it was
-generally understood that we had been engaged
-to perform in our odd costumes for their special
-amusement, and the village priest attained genuine
-popularity for this novel feature. The bull-baiting
-continued for some time, and as I kept
-the camera in my own hands, there is no documentary
-evidence to show that any one ran away<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>
-but Griscom and Somerset. Friendly doors were
-opened to us by those natives whose houses
-formed part of the arena, and it was amusing to
-see the toreadors popping in and out of them,
-like the little man and woman on the barometer
-who come out when it rains and go in when the
-sun shines, and <i>vice versa</i>.</p>
-
-<p>On those frequent occasions when the bull
-charged the barricade, the entire line of men and
-boys on its topmost rail would go over backward,
-and disappear completely until the disappointed
-bull had charged madly off in another direction.
-Once he knocked half of a mud-house away in
-his efforts to follow a man through a doorway,
-and again a window-sill, over which a toreador
-had dived head first like a harlequin in a pantomime,
-caved in under the force of his attack.
-Fresh bulls followed the first, and the boy musicians
-maddened them still further by the most
-hideous noises, which only ceased when the bulls
-charged the fence upon which the musicians sat,
-and which they vacated precipitately, each taking
-up the tune where he had left off when his
-feet struck the ground. There was a grand ball
-that night, to which we did not go, but we lay
-awake listening to the fifteen boy musicians
-until two in the morning. It was an odd, eyrie
-sort of music, in which the pipings of the reed
-instruments predominated. But it was very
-beautiful, and very much like the music of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>
-Hungarian gypsies in making little thrills chase
-up and down over one’s nervous system.</p>
-
-<p>The next morning Jeffs had shaken off his
-fever, and, once more reunited, we trotted on
-over heavily wooded hills, where we found no
-water until late in the afternoon, when we came
-upon a broad stream, and surprised a number of
-young girls in bathing, who retreated leisurely as
-we came clattering down to the ford. Bathing
-in mid-stream is a popular amusement in Honduras,
-and is conducted without any false sense
-of modesty; and judging from the number of
-times we came upon women so engaged, it seems
-to be the chief occupation of their day.</p>
-
-<p>That night we slept in Comyagua, the second
-largest city in the republic. It was originally
-selected as the site for a capital, and situated
-accordingly at exactly even distances from the
-Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. We found
-it a dull and desolate place of many one-story
-houses, with iron-barred windows, and a great,
-bare, dusty plaza, faced by a huge cathedral.
-Commerce seemed to have passed it by, and
-the sixty thousand inhabitants who occupied it
-in the days of the Spaniards have dwindled down
-to ten. The place is as completely cut off from
-civilization as an island in the Pacific Ocean.
-The plain upon which Comyagua stands stretches
-for many miles, and the nature of the stones and
-pebbles on its surface would seem to show that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>
-it was once the bottom of a great lake. Now its
-round pebbles and sandy soil make it a valley
-of burning heat, into which the sun beats without
-the intervening shadows of trees or mountains
-to save the traveller from the fierceness of
-its rays.</p>
-
-<p>We rode over thirty miles of it, and found that
-part of the plain which we traversed after our
-night’s rest at the capital the most trying ten
-miles of our trip. We rode out into it in the
-rear of a long funeral procession, in which the
-men and boys walked bareheaded and barefooted
-in the burning sand. They were marching to a
-burial-ground out in the plain, and they were
-carrying the coffin on their shoulders, and bearing
-before it a life-sized figure of the Virgin and
-many flaring candles that burned yellow in the
-glaring sunlight.</p>
-
-<p>From Comyagua the trail led for many miles
-through heavy sand, in which nothing seemed to
-grow but gigantic cacti of a sickly light green
-that twisted themselves in jointed angles fifteen
-to twenty feet in the air above us, and century-plants
-with flowers of a vivid yellow, and tall,
-leafless bushes bristling with thorns. The mountains
-lay on either side, and formed the valley
-through which we rode, two dark-green barriers
-against a blazing sky, but for miles before and
-behind us there was nothing to rest the eye from
-the glare of the sand. The atmosphere was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>
-without a particle of moisture, and the trail
-quivered and swam in the heat; if you placed
-your hand on the leather pommel of your saddle
-it burned the flesh like a plate of hot brass, and
-ten minutes after we had dipped our helmets in
-water they were baked as dry as when they had
-first come from the shop. The rays of the sun
-seemed to beat up at you from below as well
-as from above, and we gasped and panted as we
-rode, dodging and ducking our heads as though
-the sun was something alive and active that
-struck at us as we passed by. If you dared to
-look up at the sky its brilliancy blinded you as
-though some one had flashed a mirror in your
-eyes.</p>
-
-<p>We lunched at a village of ten huts planted
-defiantly in the open plain, and as little protected
-from the sun as a row of bricks in a brick-yard,
-but by lying between two of them we found
-a draught of hot air and shade, and so rested for
-an hour. Our trail after that led over a mile or
-two of red hematite ore, which suggested a ride
-in a rolling-mill with the roof taken away, and
-with the sun beating into the four walls, and the
-air filled with iron-dust. Two hours later we
-came to a cañon of white chalk, in which the
-government had cut stepping-places for the hoofs
-of the mules. The white glare in this valley was
-absolutely blinding, and the atmosphere was that
-of a lime-kiln. We showed several colors after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>
-this ride, with layers of sand and clay, and particles
-of red ore and powdering of white chalk over
-all; but by five o’clock we reached the mountains
-once more, and found a cool stream dashing
-into little water-falls and shaded by great
-trees, where the air was scented by the odor of
-pine-needles and the damp, spongy breath of
-moss and fern.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_123.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">BRIDGE CONNECTING TEGUCIGALPA WITH ITS SUBURB</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>We were now within two days of Tegucigalpa,
-and the sense of nearness to civilization and
-the knowledge that the greater part of our journey
-was at an end made us forget the discomforts
-and hardships which we had endured without
-the consolation of excitement that comes
-with danger, or the comforting thought that we
-were accomplishing anything in the meantime.
-We had been complaining of this during the
-day to Jeffs, and saying that had we gone to the
-coast of East Africa we could not have been
-more uncomfortable nor run greater risks from
-fever, but that there we would have met with
-big game, and we would have visited the most
-picturesque instead of the least interesting of all
-countries.</p>
-
-<p>These complaints inspired Jeffs to play a trick
-upon us, which was meant in a kindly spirit, and
-by which he intended to furnish us with a moment’s
-excitement, and to make us believe that
-we had been in touch with danger. There are
-occasional brigands in Central America, and their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>
-favorite hunting-ground in Honduras is within a
-few miles of Tegucigalpa, along the trail from
-the eastern coast over which we were then passing.
-We had been warned of these men, and it
-occurred to Jeffs that as we complained of lack of
-excitement in our trip, it would be a thoughtful
-kindness to turn brigand and hold us up upon
-our march. So he left us still bathing at the
-water-fall, and telling us that he would push on
-to engage quarters for the night, rode some distance
-ahead and secreted himself behind a huge
-rock on one side of a narrow cañon. He first
-placed his coat on a bush beside him, and his
-hat on another bush, so as to make it appear
-that there were several men with him. His idea
-was that when he challenged us we would see
-the dim figures in the moonlight and remember
-the brigands, and that we were in their stalking-ground,
-and get out of their clutches as quickly
-as possible, well satisfied that we had at last met
-with a real adventure.</p>
-
-<p>We reached his ambuscade about seven. Somerset
-was riding in advance, reciting “The Walrus
-and the Carpenter,” while we were correcting
-him when he went wrong, and gazing unconcernedly
-and happily at the cool moonlight as it
-came through the trees, when we were suddenly
-startled by a yell and an order to halt, in Spanish,
-and a rapid fusillade of pistol-shots. We
-could distinguish nothing but what was apparently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>
-the figures of three men crouching on the
-hill-side and the flashes of their revolvers, so we
-all fell off our mules and began banging away at
-them with our rifles, while the mules scampered
-off down the mountain. This was not as Jeffs
-had planned it, and he had to rearrange matters
-very rapidly. Bullets were cutting away twigs
-all over the hill-side and splashing on the rock
-behind which he was now lying, and though he
-might have known we could not hit him, he was
-afraid of a stray bullet. So he yelled at us in
-English, and called us by name, until we finally
-discovered we had been grossly deceived and imposed
-upon, and that our adventure was a very
-unsatisfactory practical joke for all concerned. It
-took us a long time to round up the mules, and
-we reached our sleeping-place in grim silence,
-and with our desire for danger still unsatisfied.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_127.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TEGUCIGALPA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>The last leagues that separated us the next
-morning from Tegucigalpa seemed, of course,
-the longest in the entire journey. And so great
-was our desire to reach the capital before nightfall
-that we left the broader trail and scrambled
-down the side of the last mountain, dragging our
-mules after us, and slipping and sliding in dust and
-rolling stones to the tops of our boots. The city
-did not look inviting as we viewed it from above.
-It lay in a bare, dreary plain, surrounded by five
-hills that rose straight into the air, and that
-seemed to have been placed there for the special<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>
-purpose of revolutionists, in order that they
-might the more exactly drop shot into the town
-at their feet. The hills were bare of verdure,
-and the landscape about the capital made each
-of us think of the country about Jerusalem. As
-none of us had ever seen Jerusalem, we foregathered
-and argued why this should be so, and decided
-that it was on account of the round rocks
-lying apart from one another, and low, bushy
-trees, and the red soil, and the flat roofs of the
-houses.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_129.jpg" alt=""></div>
-
-<p class="caption">THE BANK OF HONDURAS</p>
-
-<p>The telegraph wire which extends across Honduras,
-swinging from trees and piercing long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>
-stretches of palm and jungle, had warned the
-foreign residents of the coming of Jeffs, and
-some of them rode out to make us welcome.
-Their greeting, and the sight of paved streets,
-and the passing of a band of music and a guard
-of soldiers in shoes and real uniform, seemed to
-promise much entertainment and possible comfort.
-But the hotel was a rude shock. We had
-sent word that we were coming, and we had
-looked forward eagerly to our first night in a
-level bed under clean linen; but when we arrived
-we were offered the choice of a room just vacated
-by a very ill man, who had left all of his medicines
-behind him, so that the place was unpleasantly
-suggestive of a hospital, or a very small
-room, in which there were three cots, and a layer
-of dirt over all so thick that I wrote my name
-with the finger of my riding-glove on the centre-table.
-The son of the proprietor saw this, and,
-being a kindly person and well disposed, dipped
-his arm in water and proceeded to rub it over
-the top of the table, using his sleeve as a wash-rag.
-So after that we gave up expecting anything
-pleasant, and were in consequence delightfully
-surprised when we came upon anything
-that savored of civilization.</p>
-
-<p>Tegucigalpa has an annex which lies on the
-opposite side of the river, and which is to the
-capital what Brooklyn is to New York. The
-river is not very wide nor very deep, and its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
-course is impeded by broad, flat rocks. The
-washer-women of the two towns stand beside
-these all day knee-deep in the eddies and beat
-the stones with their twisted clubs of linen, so
-that their echo sounds above the roar of the
-river like the banging of shutters in the wind or
-the reports of pistols. This is the only suggestion
-of energy that the town furnishes. The other
-inhabitants seem surfeited with leisure and irritable
-with boredom. There are long, dark, cool
-shops of general merchandise, and a great cathedral
-and a pretty plaza, where the band plays at
-night and people circle in two rings, one going
-to the right and one going to the left, and there
-is the government palace and a big penitentiary,
-a university and a cemetery. But there is no
-color nor ornamentation nor light nor life nor
-bustle nor laughter. You do not hear people
-talking and calling to one another across the
-narrow streets of the place by day or serenading
-by night. Every one seems to go to bed at nine
-o’clock, and after that hour the city is as silent
-as its great graveyard, except when the boy policemen
-mark the hour with their whistles or the
-street dogs meet to fight.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_132.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">STATUE OF MORAZAN</p>
-
-<p>The most interesting thing about the capital
-is the fact to which I have already alluded, that
-everything in it and pertaining to it that was
-not dug from the ground or fashioned from
-trees was carried to it on the backs of mules.
-The letter-boxes on the street corners had once
-been United States letter-boxes, and had later
-swung across the backs of donkeys. The gas-lamps
-and the iron railings of the parks, the few
-statues and busts in the public places, reached
-Tegucigalpa by the same means, and the great
-equestrian statue of Morazan the Liberator, in
-the plaza, was cast in Italy, and had been
-brought to Tegucigalpa in pieces before it was
-put together like a puzzle and placed in its present
-position to mark a glorious and victorious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>
-immortality. These things were not interesting
-in themselves, but it was interesting that they
-were there at all.</p>
-
-<p>On the second day after our arrival the vice-president,
-Luis Bonilla, who bears the same last
-name but is no near relation to President Bonilla,
-took the oath of office, and we saw the ceremony
-with the barefooted public in the reception-room
-of the palace. The hall was hung
-with lace curtains and papered with imitation
-marble, and the walls were decorated with crayon
-portraits of Honduranian presidents. Bogran
-was not among them, nor was Morazan. The
-former was missing because it was due to him
-that young Bonilla had been counted out when
-he first ran for the presidency three years ago,
-when he was thirty-three years old, and the portrait
-of the Liberator was being reframed, because
-Bonilla’s followers six months before had
-unintentionally shot holes through it when they
-were besieging the capital. The ceremony of
-swearing in the vice-president did not last long,
-and what impressed us most about it was the
-youth of the members of the cabinet and of the
-Supreme Court who delivered the oath of office.
-They belonged distinctly to the politician class
-as one sees it at home, and were young men of
-eloquent speech and elegant manners, in frock-coats
-and white ties. We came to know most of
-the president’s followers later, and found them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>
-hospitable to a degree, although they seemed
-hardly old enough or serious enough to hold
-place in the government of a republic, even so
-small a one as Honduras. What was most admirable
-about each of them was that he had
-fought and bled to obtain the office he held.
-That is hardly a better reason for giving out
-clerkships and cabinet portfolios than the reasons
-which obtain with us for distributing the
-spoils of office, but you cannot help feeling more
-respect for the man who has marched by the side
-of his leader through swamps and through jungle,
-who has starved on rice, who has slept in the
-bushes, and fought with a musket in his hand in
-open places, than for the fat and sleek gentlemen
-who keep open bar at the headquarters of their
-party organization, who organize marching clubs,
-and who by promises or by cash secure a certain
-amount of influence and a certain number of votes.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_135.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">P. Bonilla</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>They risk nothing but their money, and if their
-man fails to get in, their money is all they lose;
-but the Central-American politician has to show
-the faith that is in him by going out on the
-mountain-side and hacking his way to office with
-a naked machete in his hand, and if <i>his</i> leader
-fails, he loses his life, with his back to a church
-wall, and looking into the eyes of a firing squad,
-or he digs his own grave by the side of the road,
-and stands at one end of it, covered with clay
-and sweat, and with the fear of death upon him,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>
-and takes his last look at the hot sun and the
-palms and the blue mountains, with the buzzards
-wheeling about him, and then shuts his eyes, and
-is toppled over into the grave, with a half-dozen
-bullets in his chest and stomach. That is what
-I should like to see happen to about half of our
-professional politicians at home. Then the other
-half might understand that holding a public office
-is a very serious business, and is not merely
-meant to furnish them with a livelihood and with
-places for their wives’ relations.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_138.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">GENERAL LUIS BOGRAN, EX-PRESIDENT</p>
-
-<p>I saw several churches and cathedrals in Honduras
-with a row of bullet-holes in the front wall,
-about as high from the ground as a man’s chest,
-and an open grave by the road-side, which had
-been dug by the man who was to have occupied it.
-The sight gave us a vivid impression of the uncertainties
-of government in Central America.
-The man who dug this particular grave had been
-captured, with two companions, while they were
-hastening to rejoin their friends of the government
-party. His companions in misery were
-faint-hearted creatures, and thought it mattered
-but little, so long as they had to die, in what
-fashion they were buried. So they scooped out
-a few feet of earth with the tools their captors
-gave them, and stood up in the hollows they had
-made, and were shot back into them, dead; but
-the third man declared that he was not going to
-let his body lie so near the surface of the earth
-that the mules could kick his bones and the
-next heavy freshet wash them away. He accordingly
-dug leisurely and carefully to the depth
-of six feet, smoothing the sides and sharpening
-the corners, and while he was thus engaged at
-the bottom of the hole he heard yells and shots
-above him, and when he poked his head up over
-the edge of the grave he saw his own troops running
-down the mountain-side, and his enemies
-disappearing before them. He is still alive, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>
-frequently rides by the hole in the road-side on
-his way to the capital. The story illustrates the
-advisability of doing what every one has to do
-in this world, even up to the very last minute,
-in a thorough and painstaking manner.</p>
-
-<p>There do not seem to be very many men killed
-in these revolutions, but the ruin they bring to
-the country while they last, and which continues
-after they are over, while the “outs” are getting
-up another revolution, is so serious that any sort
-of continued prosperity or progress is impossible.
-Native merchants will not order goods that may
-never reach them, and neither do the gringos
-care to make contracts with men who in six
-months may not only be out of office, but out of
-the country as well. Sometimes a revolution
-takes place, and half of the people of the country
-will not know of it until it has been put
-down or has succeeded; and again the revolution
-may spread to every boundary, and all the
-men at work on the high-roads and in the mines
-or on the plantations must stop work and turn
-to soldiering, and pack-mules are seized, the mail-carriers
-stopped, plantations are devastated, and
-forced loans are imposed upon those who live in
-cities, so that every one suffers more or less
-through every change of executive. During the
-last revolution Tegucigalpa was besieged for six
-months, and was not captured until most of the
-public buildings had been torn open by cannon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>
-from the hills around the town, and the dwelling-houses
-still show where bullets marked the
-mud and plaster of the walls or buried themselves
-in the wood-work. The dining-room of
-our hotel was ventilated by such openings, and
-we used to amuse ourselves by tracing the course
-of the bullets from the hole they had made at
-one side of the room to their resting-place in the
-other. The native Honduranian is not energetic,
-and, except in the palace, there has been but
-little effort made by the victors to cover up the
-traces of their bombardment. Every one we met
-had a different experience to relate, and pointed
-out where he was sitting when a particular hole
-appeared in the plaster before him, or at which
-street corner a shell fell and burst at his feet.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_141.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">BARRACKS AT TEGUCIGALPA AFTER THE ATTACK OF THE REVOLUTIONISTS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>It follows, of course, that a government which
-is created by force of arms, and which holds itself
-in place by the same power of authority, cannot
-be a very just or a very liberal one, even if
-its members are honest, and the choice of a majority
-of the people, and properly in office in
-spite of the fact that they fought to get there,
-and not on account of it. Bonilla was undoubtedly
-at one time elected President of Honduras,
-although he did not gain the presidential chair
-until after he had thrown his country into war
-and had invaded it at the head of troops from
-the rival republic of Nicaragua.</p>
-
-<p>The Central-American cannot understand that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>
-when a bad man is elected to office legally it is
-better in the long-run that he should serve out
-his full term than that a better man should drive
-him out and defy the constitution. If he could
-be brought to comprehend that when the constitution
-says the president must serve four years
-that means four years, and not merely until some
-one is strong enough to overthrow him, it might
-make him more careful as to whom he elected
-to office in the first place. But the value of
-stability in government is something they cannot
-be made to understand. It is not in their
-power to see it, and the desire for change and
-revolution is born in the blood. They speak of
-a man as a “good revolutionist” just as we
-would speak of some one being a good pianist,
-or a good shot, or a good executive officer. It
-is a recognized calling, and the children grow up
-into fighters; and even those who have lived
-abroad, and who should have learned better,
-begin to plot and scheme as soon as they return
-to their old environment.</p>
-
-<p>In each company of soldiers in Honduras
-there are two or three little boys in uniform
-who act as couriers and messengers, and who
-are able, on account of their slight figure, to
-penetrate where a man would be seen and shot.
-One of the officers in the revolution of 1894
-told me he had sent six of these boys, one after
-another, with despatches across an open plain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>
-which was being raked by the rifles of the enemy.
-And as each boy was killed as he crawled
-through the sage-brush the other boys begged of
-their colonel to let them be the next to go,
-jumping up and down around him and snapping
-their fingers like school-boys who want to attract
-the attention of their teacher.</p>
-
-<p>In the same revolution a young man of great
-promise and many acquirements, who had just
-returned from the States with two degrees from
-Columbia College, and who should have lived to
-turn his education to account in his own country,
-was killed with a rifle in his hand the third
-day after his arrival from New York. In that
-city he would probably have submitted cheerfully
-to any imposition of the law, and would have
-taken it quite as a matter of course had he been
-arrested for playing golf on Sunday, or for riding
-a bicycle at night without a lamp; but as soon
-as this graduate of Columbia smelled the powder
-floating on his native air he loaded a rifle,
-and sat out all day on the porch of his house
-taking chance shots at the revolutionists on the
-hill-side, until a chance shot ended him and his
-brilliant career forever. The pity of it is that so
-much good energy should be wasted in obtaining
-such poor results, for nothing better ever
-seems to follow these revolutions. There is
-only a new form of dictatorship, which varies
-only in the extent of its revenge and in the punishments<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>
-it metes out to its late opponents, but
-which must be, if it hopes to remain in power, a
-dictatorship and an autocracy.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_145.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">MORAZAN, THE LIBERATOR OF HONDURAS</p>
-
-<p>The republics of Central America are republics
-in name only, and the movements of a
-stranger within the boundaries of Honduras are
-as closely watched as though he were a newspaper
-correspondent in Siberia. I often had to
-sign the names of our party twice in one day for
-the benefit of police and customs officers, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>
-we never entered a hotel or boarded a steamer
-or disembarked from one that we were not carefully
-checked and receipted for exactly as though
-we were boxes of merchandise or registered letters.
-Even the natives cannot walk the street
-after nightfall without being challenged by sentries,
-and the collection of letters we received
-from alcaldes and comandantes and governors
-and presidents certifying to our being reputable
-citizens is large enough to paper the side of a
-wall. The only time in Central America when
-our privacy was absolutely unmolested, and
-when we felt as free to walk abroad as though
-we were on the streets of New York, was when
-we were under the protection of the hated monarchical
-institution of Great Britain at Belize,
-but never when we were in any of these disorganized
-military camps called free republics.</p>
-
-<p>The Central-American citizen is no more fit
-for a republican form of government than he is
-for an arctic expedition, and what he needs is to
-have a protectorate established over him, either
-by the United States or by another power; it
-does not matter which, so long as it leaves the
-Nicaragua Canal in our hands. In the capital
-of Costa Rica there is a statue of the Republic
-in the form of a young woman standing with her
-foot on the neck of General Walker, the American
-filibuster. We had planned to go to the
-capital for the express purpose of tearing that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>
-statue down some night, or blowing it up; so it
-is perhaps just as well for us that we could not
-get there; but it would have been a very good
-thing for Costa Rica if Walker, or any other
-man of force, had put his foot on the neck of
-every republic in Central America and turned it
-to some account.</p>
-
-<p>Away from the coasts, where there is fever,
-Central America is a wonderful country, rich
-and beautiful, and burdened with plenty, but its
-people make it a nuisance and an affront to
-other nations, and its parcel of independent little
-states, with the pomp of power and none of
-its dignity, are and will continue to be a constant
-danger to the peace which should exist between
-two great powers.</p>
-
-<p>There is no more interesting question of the
-present day than that of what is to be done with
-the world’s land which is lying unimproved;
-whether it shall go to the great power that is
-willing to turn it to account, or remain with its
-original owner, who fails to understand its value.
-The Central-Americans are like a gang of semi-barbarians
-in a beautifully furnished house, of
-which they can understand neither its possibilities
-of comfort nor its use. They are the dogs
-in the manger among nations. Nature has given
-to their country great pasture-lands, wonderful
-forests of rare woods and fruits, treasures of silver
-and gold and iron, and soil rich enough to supply<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>
-the world with coffee, and it only waits for
-an honest effort to make it the natural highway
-of traffic from every portion of the globe. The
-lakes of Nicaragua are ready to furnish a passageway
-which should save two months of sailing
-around the Horn, and only forty-eight miles of
-swamp-land at Panama separate the two greatest
-bodies of water on the earth’s surface. Nature
-has done so much that there is little left for man
-to do, but it will have to be some other man than
-a native-born Central-American who is to do it.</p>
-
-<p>We had our private audience with President
-Bonilla in time, and found him a most courteous
-and interesting young man. He is only thirty-six
-years of age, which probably makes him the
-youngest president in the world, and he carries
-on his watch-chain a bullet which was cut out of
-his arm during the last revolution. He showed
-us over the palace, and pointed out where he
-had shot holes in it, and entertained us most
-hospitably. The other members of the cabinet
-were equally kind, making us many presents, and
-offering Griscom a consul-generalship abroad,
-and consulates to Somerset and myself, but we
-said we would be ambassadors or nothing; so
-they offered to make us generals in the next
-revolution, and we accepted that responsible
-position with alacrity, knowing that not even the
-regiments to which we were accredited could
-force us again into Honduras.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>Before we departed the president paid us a
-very doubtful compliment in asking us to ride
-with him. We supposed it was well meant, but
-we still have secret misgivings that it was a plot
-to rid himself of us and of the vice-president at
-the same time. When his secretary came to
-tell us that Dr. Bonilla would be glad to have us
-ride with him at five that afternoon, I recalled
-the fact that all the horses I had seen in Honduras
-were but little larger than an ordinary
-donkey, and quite as depressed and spiritless.
-So I accepted with alacrity. The other two
-men, being cross-country riders, and entitled to
-wear the gold buttons of various hunt clubs on
-their waistcoats, accepted as a matter of course.
-But when we reached the palace we saw seven
-or eight horses in the patio, none under sixteen
-hands high, and each engaged in dragging two
-or three grooms about the yard, and swinging
-them clear of the brick tiles as easily as a sailor
-swings a lead. The president explained to us
-that these were a choice lot of six stallions which
-he had just imported from Chili, and that three
-of them had never worn a saddle before that
-morning.</p>
-
-<p>He gave one of these to Griscom and another
-one to the vice-president, for reasons best known
-to himself, and the third to Somerset. Griscom’s
-animal had an idea that it was better to
-go backward like a crab than to advance, so he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>
-backed in circles around the courtyard, while
-Somerset’s horse seemed best to enjoy rearing
-himself on his hind-legs, with the idea of rubbing
-Somerset off against the wall; and the vice-president’s
-horse did everything that a horse can
-do, and a great many things that I should not
-have supposed a horse could do, had I not seen
-it. I put my beast’s nose into a corner of the
-wall where he could not witness the circus performance
-going on behind him, and I watched
-the president’s brute turning round and round
-and round until it made me dizzy. We strangers
-confessed later that we were all thinking of
-exactly the same thing, which was that, no matter
-how many of our bones were shattered, we
-must not let these natives think they could ride
-any better than any chance American or Englishman,
-and it was only a matter of national
-pride that kept us in our saddles. The vice-president’s
-horse finally threw him into the doorway
-and rolled on him, and it required five of
-his officers to pull the horse away and set him
-on his feet again. The vice-president had not
-left his saddle for an instant, and if he handles
-his men in the field as he handled that
-horse, it is not surprising that he wins many
-battles.</p>
-
-<p>Not wishing to have us all killed, and seeing
-that it was useless to attempt to kill the vice-president
-in that way, Dr. Bonilla sent word to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>
-the band to omit their customary salute, and so
-we passed out in grateful silence between breathless
-rows of soldiers and musicians and several
-hundreds of people who had never seen a life-sized
-horse before. We rode at a slow pace, on
-account of the vice-president’s bruises, while the
-president pointed out the different points from
-which he had attacked the capital. He was not
-accompanied by any guard on this ride, and informed
-us that he was the first president who
-had dared go abroad without one. He seemed
-to trust rather to the good-will of the <i>pueblo</i>, to
-whom he plays, and to whom he bowed much
-more frequently than to the people of the richer
-class. It was amusing to see the more prominent
-men of the place raise their hats to the president,
-and the young girls in the suburbs nodding casually
-and without embarrassment to the man. Before
-he set out on his ride he stuck a gold-plated
-revolver in his hip-pocket, which was to take the
-place of the guard of honor of former presidents,
-and to protect him in case of an attempt at assassination.
-It suggested that there are other
-heads besides those that wear a crown which rest
-uneasy.</p>
-
-<p>It was a nervous ride, and Griscom’s horse
-added to the excitement by trying to back him
-over a precipice, and he was only saved from
-going down one thousand yards to the roofs of
-the city below by several of the others dragging<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>
-at the horse’s bridle. When, after an hour, we
-found ourselves once more within sight of the
-palace, we covertly smiled at one another, and
-are now content never to associate with presidents
-again unless we walk.</p>
-
-<p>We left Tegucigalpa a few days later with a
-generous escort, including all the consuls, and
-José Guiteris, the assistant secretary of state, and
-nearly all of the foreign residents. We made
-such a formidable showing as we raced through
-the streets that it suggested an uprising, and we
-cried, “Viva Guiteris!” to make the people think
-there was a new revolution in his favor. We
-shouted with the most loyal enthusiasm, but it
-only served to make Guiteris extremely unhappy,
-and he occupied himself in considering how he
-could best explain to Bonilla that the demonstration
-was merely an expression of our idea of
-humor. Twelve miles out we all stopped and
-backed the mules up side by side, and everybody
-shook hands with everybody else, and there
-were many promises to write, and to forward all
-manner of things, and assurances of eternal remembrance
-and friendship, and then the Guiteris
-revolutionists galloped back, firing parting
-salutes with their revolvers, and we fell into line
-again with a nod of satisfaction at being once
-more on the road.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>We never expected any conveniences or comforts
-on the road, and so we were never disappointed,
-and were much happier and more contented
-in consequence than at the capital, where the
-name promised so much and the place furnished
-so little. We found that it was not the luxuries
-of life that we sighed after, but the mere conveniences—those
-things to which we had become
-so much accustomed that we never supposed there
-were places where they did not exist. A chair
-with a back, for example, was one of the things
-we most wanted. We had never imagined, until
-we went to Honduras, that chairs grew without
-backs; but after we had ridden ten hours, and
-were so tired that each man found himself easing
-his spinal column by leaning forward with his
-hands on the pommel of his saddle, we wanted
-something more than a three-legged stool when
-we alighted for the night.</p>
-
-<p>Our ride to the Pacific coast was a repetition of
-the ride to the capital, except that, as there was
-a full moon, we slept in the middle of the day
-and rode later in the night. During this nocturnal
-journey we met many pilgrims going to the
-festivals. They were all mounted on mules, and
-seemed a very merry and jovial company. Sometimes
-there were as many as fifty in one party,
-and we came across them picnicking in the shade
-by day, or jogging along in the moonlight in a
-cloud of white dust, or a cloud of white foam as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>
-they forded the broad river and their donkeys
-splashed and slipped in the rapids. The nights
-were very beautiful and cool, and the silence under
-the clear blue sky and white stars was like
-the silence of the plains. The moon turned
-the trail a pale white, and made the trees on
-either side of it alive with shadows that seemed
-to play hide-and-seek with us, and the stumps
-and rocks moved and gesticulated with life,
-until we drew up even with them, when they
-were transformed once more into wood and
-stone.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_155.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">ON THE WAY TO CORINTO</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>It was on the third day out from the capital,
-while we were picking our way down the side of
-a mountain, that Jeffs pointed to what looked
-like a lake of silver lying between two great hills,
-and we knew that we had crossed the continent,
-and so raised our hats and saluted the Pacific
-Ocean. A day later, after a long, rapid ride over
-a level plain where the trail was so broad that we
-could ride four abreast, we came to San Lorenzo,
-a little cluster of huts at the edge of the ocean.
-The settlement was still awake, for a mule train
-of silver had just arrived from the San Rosario
-mines, and the ruddy glare of pine knots was
-flashing through the chinks in the bamboo walls
-of the huts, and making yellow splashes of color
-in the soft white light of the moon. We swung
-ourselves out of the saddles for the last time, and
-gave the little mules a farewell pat and many<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>
-thanks, to which they made no response whatsoever.</p>
-
-<p>Five hours later we left the continent for the
-island of Amapala, the chief seaport of the Pacific
-side of Honduras, and our ride was at an end.
-We left San Lorenzo at two in the morning, but
-we did not reach Amapala, although it was but
-fifteen miles out to sea, until four the next afternoon.
-We were passengers in a long, open boat,
-and slept stretched on our blankets at the bottom,
-while four natives pulled at long sweeps.
-There were eight cross-seats, and a man sat on
-every other one. A log of wood in which steps
-had been cut was bound to each empty seat, and
-it was up this that the rower walked, as though
-he meant to stand up on the seat to which it was
-tied, but he would always change his mind and
-sink back again, bracing his left leg on the seat
-and his right leg on the log, and dragging the
-oar through the water with the weight of his body
-as he sank backwards. I lay on the ribs of the
-boat below them and watched them through the
-night, rising and falling with a slight toss of the
-head as they sank back, and with their brown
-naked bodies outlined against the sky-line. They
-were so silent and their movements so regular
-that they seemed like statues cut in bronze. By
-ten the next morning they became so far animated
-as to say that they were tired and hungry,
-and would we allow them to rest on a little island<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>
-that lay half a mile off our bow? We were
-very glad to rest ourselves, and to get out of the
-sun and the glare of the sea, and to stretch our
-cramped limbs: so we beached the boat in a little
-bay, and frightened off thousands of gulls, which
-rose screaming in the air, and which were apparently
-the only inhabitants.</p>
-
-<p>The galley-slaves took sticks of driftwood and
-scattered over the rocks, turning back the seaweed
-with their hands, and hacking at the base
-of the rocks with their improvised hammers. We
-found that they were foraging for oysters; and as
-we had nothing but a tin of sardines and two biscuits
-among five of us, and had had nothing to eat
-for twenty-four hours, we followed their example,
-and chipped the oysters off with the butts of our
-revolvers, and found them cool and coppery, like
-English oysters, and most refreshing. It was
-such a lonely little island that we could quite imagine
-we were cast away upon it, and began to
-play we were Robinson Crusoe, and took off our
-boots and went in wading, paddling around in the
-water after mussels and crabs until we were chased
-to shore by a huge shark. Then every one went
-to sleep in the sand until late in the afternoon,
-when a breeze sprang up, and a boatman carried
-us out on his shoulders, and we dashed off gayly
-under full sail to the isle of Amapala, where we
-bade good-bye to Colonel Jeffs and to the Republic
-of Honduras.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>We had crossed the continent at a point
-where it was but little broader than the distance
-from Boston to New York, a trip of five hours
-by train, but which had taken us twenty-two
-days.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">AT CORINTO</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dc_e.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="">
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="drop-cap">E</span>VERY now and again each of us,
-either through his own choice or by
-force of circumstance, drops out of
-step with the rest of the world, and
-retires from it into the isolation of a sick-room,
-or to the loneliness of the deck of an ocean
-steamer, and for some short time the world somehow
-manages to roll on without him.</p>
-
-<p>He is like a man who falls out of line in a regiment
-to fasten his shoelace or to fill his canteen,
-and who hears over his shoulder the hurrying
-tramp of his comrades, who are leaving him
-farther and farther behind, so that he has to run
-briskly before he can catch up with them and
-take his proper place once more in the procession.</p>
-
-<p>I shall always consider the ten days we spent
-at Corinto, on the Pacific side of Nicaragua,
-while we waited for the steamer to take us south
-to Panama, as so many days of non-existence,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>
-as so much time given to the mere exercise of
-living, when we were no more of this world than
-are the prisoners in the salt-mines of Siberia, or
-the keepers of light-houses scattered over sunny
-seas, or the men who tend toll-gates on empty
-country lanes. And so when I read in the newspapers
-last fall that three British ships of war
-were anchored in the harbor of Corinto, with
-their guns loaded to the muzzles with ultimatums
-and no one knows what else besides, and
-that they meant to levy on the customs dues of
-that sunny little village, it was as much of a shock
-to me as it would be to the inhabitants of Sleepy
-Hollow were they told that that particular spot
-was wanted as a site for a World’s Fair.</p>
-
-<p>For no ships of any sort, certainly no ships of
-war, ever came to Corinto while we occupied the
-only balcony of its only hotel. Indeed, that was
-why we were there, and had they come we would
-have gone with them, no matter to what port
-they were bound, even to the uttermost parts of
-the earth.</p>
-
-<p>We had come to Corinto from the little island
-of Amapala, which lies seventy-five miles farther
-up the coast, and which guards the only port
-of entry to Honduras on the Pacific seaboard.
-It is supposed to belong to the Republic of Honduras,
-but it is in reality the property of Rossner
-Brothers, who sell everything from German machetes
-to German music-boxes, and who could,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>
-if they wanted it, purchase the entire Republic
-of Honduras in the morning, and make a present
-of it to the Kaiser in the course of the afternoon.
-You have only to change the name of
-Rossner Brothers to the San Rosario Mining
-Company, to the Pacific Mail, to Errman Brothers,
-to the Panama Railroad Company, and you
-will identify the actual rulers of one or of several
-of the republics of Central America.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_162.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">PRINCIPAL HOTEL AND PRINCIPAL HOUSE AT CORINTO</p>
-
-<p>It is very well for President Zelaya, or Barrios,
-or Vasquez, or whatever his name may happen
-to be this month, to write to the New York<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>
-<i>Herald</i> and tell the people of the United States
-what the revolution in his country means. It
-does no harm; no one in the United States
-reads the letter, except the foreign editor who
-translates it, and no one in his own country ever
-sees it, but it makes him happy in thinking he is
-persuading some one that he governs in his own
-way. As a matter of fact he does not. His
-country, no matter what her name may be, is
-ruled by a firm of coffee-merchants in New York
-city, or by a German railroad company, or by a
-line of coasting steamers, or by a great trading-house,
-with headquarters in Berlin or London or
-Bordeaux. If the president wants money he borrows
-it from the trading-house; if he wants arms,
-or his soldiers need blankets, the trading-house
-supplies them. No one remembers now who was
-President of Peru when Henry Meiggs was alive,
-and to-day William L. Grace is a better name on
-letters of introduction to Chili and Peru than that
-of a secretary of state.</p>
-
-<p>When we were in Nicaragua, one little English
-banking-house was fighting the minister of
-finance and the minister of foreign affairs and
-the president and the entire government, and
-while the notes issued by the bank were accepted
-at their face value, those of the government were
-taken only in the presence of a policeman or a
-soldier, who was there to see that you did take
-it. You find this condition of affairs all through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>
-Central America, and you are not long in a republic
-before you learn which merchant or which
-bank or which railroad company controls it, and
-you soon grow to look upon a mule loaded with
-boxes bearing the trade-mark of a certain business-house
-with more respect than upon a soldier
-who wears the linen ribbon of the government.
-For you know that at a word the soldier
-will tear the ribbon from his straw sombrero and
-replace it with another upon which is printed
-“Viva Dr. Somebody Else,” while the trade-mark
-of the business-house will continue as
-long as English and German merchandise is carried
-across the sea in ships. And it will also
-continue as long as Great Britain and Germany
-and the United States are represented by consuls
-and consular agents who are at the same
-time the partners of the leading business firms
-in the seaport over which their consular jurisdiction
-extends. For few Central-American republics
-are going to take away a consul’s exequatur
-as long as they owe him in his unofficial
-capacity for a large loan of money; and the
-merchant, on the other hand, knows that he is
-not going to suffer from the imposition of a
-forced loan, nor see his mules seized, as long as
-the tin sign with the American eagle screaming
-upon it is tacked above the brass business plate
-of his warehouse.</p>
-
-<p>There was a merchant in Tegucigalpa named<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>
-Santos Soto—he is there still, I believe—and
-about a year ago President Vasquez told him he
-needed a loan of ten thousand dollars to assist
-him in his struggle against Bonilla; and as Soto
-was making sixty thousand dollars a year in the
-country, he suggested that he had better lend it
-promptly. Soto refused, and was locked in the
-cartel, where it was explained to him that for
-every day he delayed in giving the money the
-amount demanded of him would be increased
-one thousand dollars. As he still refused, he
-was chained to an iron ball and led out to sweep
-the streets in front of his shop, which extends
-on both sides of the principal thoroughfare of
-the capital. He is an old man, and the sight of
-the chief merchant in Tegucigalpa sweeping up
-the dust in front of his own block of stores had
-a most salutary effect upon the other merchants,
-who promptly loaned the sums demanded of
-them, taking rebates on customs dues in exchange—with
-one exception. This merchant
-owned a jewelry store, and was at the same
-time the English consular agent. He did not
-sweep the streets, nor did he contribute to the
-forced loan. He values in consequence his tin
-sign, which is not worth much as a work of art,
-at about ten thousand dollars.</p>
-
-<p>There is much that might be written of consular
-agents in Central America that would differ
-widely from the reports written by themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>
-and published by the State Department.
-The most interesting thing about them, to my
-mind, is the fact that none of them ever seem to
-represent a country which they have ever seen,
-and that they are always citizens of another
-country to which they are anxious to return. I
-find that after Americans, Germans make the best
-American consular agents, and Englishmen the
-best German consular agents, while French consular
-agents would be more useful to their countrymen
-if they could speak French as well as
-they do Spanish. Sometimes, as in the case of
-the consular agent at Corinto, you find a native
-of Italy representing both Great Britain and the
-United States. A whole comic opera could be
-written on the difficulties of a Nicaraguan acting
-as an English and American consul, with
-three British men-of-war in the harbor levying
-on the customs dues of his native land, and an
-American squadron hastening from Panama to
-see that their English cousins did not gather in
-a few islands by mistake.</p>
-
-<p>If he called on the British admiral, and received
-his seven-gun salute, would it constitute
-a breach of international etiquette if he were
-rowed over to the American admiral and received
-seven guns from him; and as a native of Nicaragua
-could he see the customs dues, which comprise
-the government’s chief source of revenue,
-going into the pockets of one country which he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>
-so proudly serves without complaining to the
-other country which he serves with equal satisfaction?
-Every now and then you come across
-a real American consul who was born in America,
-and who serves the United States with ability,
-dignity, and self-respect, so that you are glad
-you are both Americans. Of this class we found
-General Allen Thomas at La Guayra, who was
-later promoted and made United States minister
-at Caracas, Mr. Alger at Puerto Cortez, Mr. Little
-at Tegucigalpa, and Colonel Bird at Caracas.</p>
-
-<p>We found that the firm of Rossner Brothers
-had in their employ the American and English
-consular agents, and these gentlemen endeared
-themselves to us by assisting at our escape from
-their island in an open boat. They did not tell
-us, however, that Fonseca Bay was one of the
-most treacherous stretches of water on the admiralty
-charts; but that was, probably, because
-they were merchants and not sailors.</p>
-
-<p>Amapala was the hottest place I ever visited.
-It did not grow warm as the day wore on,
-but began briskly at sunrise by nailing the mercury
-at fever-heat, and continued boiling and
-broiling until ten at night. By one the next
-morning the roof over your head and the bed-linen
-beneath you had sufficiently cooled for you
-to sleep, and from that on until five there was a
-fair imitation of night.</p>
-
-<p>There was but one cool spot in Amapala; it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>
-was a point of land that the inhabitants had
-rather tactlessly selected as a dumping-ground
-for the refuse of the town, and which was only
-visited by pigs and buzzards. This point of land
-ran out into the bay, and there had once been
-an attempt made to turn it into a public park, of
-which nothing now remains but a statue to Morazan,
-the Liberator of Honduras. The statue
-stood on a pedestal of four broad steps, surrounded
-by an iron railing, the gates of which
-had fallen from their hinges, and lay scattered
-over the piles of dust and débris under which
-the park is buried. At each corner of the railing
-there were beautiful macaws which had once
-been painted in brilliant reds and greens and
-yellows, and which we tried to carry off one
-night, until we found that they also were made
-of iron. We would have preferred the statue of
-Morazan as a souvenir, but that we doubted its
-identity. Morazan was a smooth-faced man with
-a bushy head of hair, and this statue showed him
-with long side-whiskers and a bald head, and in
-the uniform of an English admiral. It was probably
-the rejected work of some English sculptor,
-and had been obtained, no doubt, at a moderate
-price, and as very few remember Morazan to-day
-it answers its purpose excellently well. We became
-very much attached to it, and used to burn
-incense to it in the form of many Honduranian
-cigars, which sell at two cents apiece.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>When night came on, and the billiard-room
-had grown so hot that the cues slipped in our
-hands, and the tantalizing sight of an American
-ice-cooler, which had never held ice since it left
-San Francisco, had driven us out into the night,
-we would group ourselves at the base of this
-statue to Morazan, and throw rocks at the buzzards
-and pigs, and let the only breeze that dares
-to pass over Amapala bring our temperature
-down to normal. We should have plotted a revolution
-by rights, for the scene was set for such a
-purpose, and no one in the town accounted in any
-other way for our climbing the broken iron railing
-nightly, and remaining on the steps of the
-pedestal until two the next morning.</p>
-
-<p>Amapala, I suppose, was used to heat, and
-could sleep with the thermometer at ninety, and
-did not mind the pigs or the buzzards, and if we
-did plot to convert Honduras into a monarchy
-and make Somerset king, no one heard us but
-the English edition of Morazan smiling blandly
-down upon us like a floor-walker at the Army
-and Navy Stores, with his hand on his heart
-and an occasional buzzard soaring like Poe’s raven
-above his marble forehead. The moonlight
-turned him into a figure of snow, and the great
-palms above bent and waved and shivered unceasingly,
-and the sea beat on the rocks at our
-feet.</p>
-
-<p>It was an interesting place of rendezvous, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>
-we tired of a town that grew cool only after midnight,
-and in which the fever stalked abroad by
-day. So we chartered a small boat, and provisioned
-it, and enlisted a crew of pirates, and set
-sail one morning for Corinto, seventy-five miles
-farther south. There was no steamer expected
-at Corinto at any earlier date than at Amapala,
-but in the nature of things one had to touch
-there some time, and there was a legend to which
-we had listened with doubt and longing to the
-effect that at Corinto there was an ice-machine,
-and though we found later that the ice-machines
-always broke on the day we arrived in port,
-we preferred the chance of finding Fonseca Bay
-in a peaceful state to yellow-fever at Amapala.
-It was an exciting voyage. I would now, being
-more wise, choose the yellow-fever, but we did
-not know any better then. There was no deck
-to the boat, and it was not wide enough for one
-to lie lengthwise from side to side, and too
-crowded to permit of our stretching our bodies
-fore and aft. So we rolled about on top of one
-another, and were far too miserable to either
-apologize or swear when we bumped into a man’s
-ribs or sat on his head.</p>
-
-<p>We started with a very fine breeze dead astern,
-and the boat leaped and plunged and rolled all
-night, and we were hurled against the sides and
-thumped by rolling trunks, and travelling-bags,
-and gun-cases, and boxes of broken apollinaris<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>
-bottles. The stone-breaker in a quarry would
-have soothed us in comparison. And when the
-sun rose fully equipped at four in the morning
-the wind died away absolutely, and we rose and
-sank all day on the great swell of the Pacific
-Ocean. The boat was painted a bright red inside
-and out, and the sun turned this open red
-bowl into an oven of heat. It made even our
-white flannels burn when they touched the skin
-like a shirt of horse-hair. As far as we could
-look on every side the ocean lay like a sea of
-quicksilver, and the dome of the sky glittered
-with heat. The red paint on the sides bubbled
-and cracked, and even the native boatmen cowered
-under the cross-seats with their elbows folded
-on their knees and their faces buried in their
-arms; and we had not the heart to tell them to
-use the oars, even if we had known how. At
-noon the chief pirate crawled over the other
-bodies and rigged up the sail so that it threw a
-shadow over mine, and I lay under this awning
-and read Barrie’s <i>Lady Nicotine</i>, while the type
-danced up and down in waving lines like the letters
-in a typewriter. I am sure it was only the
-necessity which that book impressed upon me of
-holding on to life until I could smoke the Arcadia
-mixture that kept me from dropping overboard
-and being cremated in the ocean below.</p>
-
-<p>We sighted the light-house of Corinto at last,
-and hailed the white custom-house and the palms<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>
-and the blue cottages of the port with a feeble
-cheer.</p>
-
-<p>The people came down to the shore and
-crowded around her bow as we beached her in
-front of the custom-house, and a man asked
-us anxiously in English, “What ship has been
-wrecked?” And we explained that we were not
-survivors of a shipwreck, but of a possible conflagration,
-and wanted ice.</p>
-
-<p>And then, when we fell over the side bruised
-and sleepy, and burning with thirst, and with
-everything still dancing before our eyes, they refused
-to give us ice until we grew cooler, and
-sent out in the meanwhile to the <i>comandancia</i> in
-search of some one who could identify us as
-escaped revolutionists. They took our guns
-away from us as a precaution, but they could
-have had half our kingdom for all we cared, for
-the wonderful legend proved true, and at last we
-got the ice in large, thick glasses, with ginger
-ale and lemon juice and apollinaris water trickling
-through it, and there was frost on the sides
-of the glasses, and a glimpse of still more ice
-wrapped up in smoking blankets in the refrigerator—ice
-that we had not tasted for many days
-of riding in the hot sun and through steaming
-swamp-lands, and which we had last seen treated
-with contempt and contumely, knocked about at
-the bow of a tug-boat in the North River, and
-tramped upon by many muddy feet on Fifth Avenue.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>
-None of us will ever touch ice hereafter
-without handling it with the same respect and
-consideration that we would show to a precious
-stone.</p>
-
-<p>The busybodies of Corinto who had decided
-from the manner of our arrival that we had been
-forced to leave Honduras for the country’s good,
-finally found a native who identified me as a
-filibuster he had met during the last revolution
-at Leon. As that was bringing it rather near
-home, Griscom went after Mr. Palaccio, the Italian
-who serves both England and the United
-States as consular agent. We showed him a rare
-collection of autographs of secretaries, ambassadors,
-and prime-ministers, and informed him that
-we intended taking four state-rooms on the
-steamer of the line he represented at that port.
-This convinced him of the necessity of keeping
-us out of jail until the boat arrived, and he satisfied
-the local authorities as to our respectability,
-and that we had better clothes in our trunks.</p>
-
-<p>Corinto is the best harbor on the Pacific side
-of Nicaragua, but the town is not as large as the
-importance of the port would suggest. It consists
-of three blocks of two-story houses, facing
-the harbor fifty feet back from the water’s edge,
-with a sandy street between each block of buildings.
-There are about a thousand inhabitants,
-and a foreign population which varies from five
-residents to a dozen transient visitors and stewards<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>
-on steamer days. The natives are chiefly
-occupied in exporting coffee and receiving the
-imported goods for the interior, and the principal
-amusement of the foreign colony is bathing
-or playing billiards. It has a whist club of four
-members. The fifth foreign resident acts as a
-substitute in the event of any one of the four
-players chancing to have another engagement,
-but as there is no one with whom he could have
-an engagement, the substitute is seldom called
-upon. He told me he had been sitting by and
-smoking and watching the others play whist for
-a month now, and hoping that one of them
-would have a sunstroke.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_175.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">HARBOR OF CORINTO</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>We left Corinto the next morning and took
-the train to Lake Managua, where we were
-to connect with a steamer which crosses the
-lake to the capital. It was a beautiful ride,
-and for some distance ran along the sea-shore,
-where the ocean rolled up the beach in great
-waves, breaking in showers of foam upon the
-rocks. Then we crossed lagoons and swamps on
-trestles, and passed pretty thatched villages, and
-saw many beautiful women and girls selling
-candy and sugar-cane at the stations. They
-wore gowns that left the neck and shoulders
-bare, and wrapped themselves in silk shawls of
-solid colors, which they kept continually loosening
-and rearranging, tossing the ends coquettishly
-from one shoulder to the other, or drawing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>
-them closely about the figure, or like a cowl
-over the head. This silk shawl is the most
-characteristic part of the wardrobe of the native
-women of Central America. It is as inevitable
-as the mantilla of their richer sisters, and it is
-generally the only bit of splendor they possess.
-A group of them on a feast-day or Sunday, when
-they come marching towards you with green,
-purple, blue, or yellow shawls, makes a very striking
-picture.</p>
-
-<p>These women of the pueblo in Honduras and
-Nicaragua were better-looking than the women
-of the lower classes of any country I have ever
-visited. They were individually more beautiful,
-and the proportion of beautiful women was greater.
-A woman there is accustomed from her
-childhood to carry heavy burdens on her head,
-and this gives to all of them an erect carriage
-and a fearless uplifting of the head when they
-walk or stand. They have never known a tight
-dress or a tight shoe, and they move as easily
-and as gracefully as an antelope. Their hair is
-very rich and heavy, and they oil it and comb it
-and braid it from morning to night, wearing
-it parted in the middle, and drawn tightly back
-over the ears, and piled upon the head in heavy
-braids. Their complexion is a light brown, and
-their eyes have the sad look which one sees in
-the eyes of a deer or a dog, and which is not so
-much the sign of any sorrow as of the lack of intelligence.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>
-The women of the upper classes are
-like most Spanish-American women, badly and
-over dressed in a gown fashioned after some forgotten
-Parisian mode, with powder over their
-faces, and with their hair frizzled and curled in
-ridiculous profusion. They are a very sorry contrast
-to a woman of the people, such as you see
-standing in the doorways of the mud huts, or
-advancing towards you along the trail with an
-earthen jar on her shoulder, straight of limb, and
-with a firm, fine lower jaw, a low, broad forehead,
-and shy, sad eyes.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_179.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE AT MANAGUA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, is a most
-dismal city, built on a plain of sun-dried earth,
-with houses of sun-dried earth, plazas and parks
-and streets of sun-dried earth, and a mantle of
-dust over all. Even the stores that have been
-painted in colors and hung with balconies have a
-depressed, dirty, and discouraged air. The streets
-are as full of ruts and furrows as a country road,
-the trees in the plaza are lifeless, and their leaves
-shed dust instead of dew, and the people seem to
-have taken on the tone of their surroundings,
-and very much more of the dust than seems absolutely
-necessary. We were there only two
-days, and felt when we left as though we had
-been camping out on a baseball diamond; and
-we were sure that had we remained any longer
-we should have turned into living statues of clay
-when the sun shone, and of mud when it rained.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>There was no American minister or consul at
-Managua at the time of our visit, but the English
-consul took very good care of us, and acted as
-our interpreter when we called upon the president.
-Relations between the consul and President
-Zelaya were somewhat strained at that time,
-and though we knew this we told the consul to tell
-the president how much he was admired by the
-American people for having taken the stand he
-did against the English on the Mosquito Coast
-question, and that we hoped he would see that
-the British obtained no foothold near our canal.
-At which the English consul would hesitate and
-grin unhappily, and remark, in a hurried aside,
-“I’ll be hanged if I’ll translate that.” So we continued
-inventing other pleasant speeches derogatory
-to Britons and British influence in Nicaragua
-until Somerset and his consul protested vigorously,
-and the president saw what we were doing
-and began to enjoy the consul’s embarrassment
-and laughed, and the consul laughed with him,
-and they made up their quarrel—for the time
-being, at least.</p>
-
-<p>Zelaya said, among other things, that if there
-were no other argument in favor of the Nicaragua
-Canal than that it would enable the United States
-to move her ships of war quickly from ocean to
-ocean, instead of being forced as she is now to
-make them take the long journey around Cape
-Horn, it would be of inestimable benefit. He also<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>
-said that the only real objection that had been
-made in the United States to the canal came from
-those interested in the transcontinental railroads,
-who saw in its completion the destruction of their
-freight traffic.</p>
-
-<p>He seemed to be a very able man, and more a
-man of the world than Bonilla, the President of
-Honduras, and much older in many ways. He
-was apparently somewhat of a philosopher, and
-believed, or said he did, in the survival of the fittest
-as applied to the occupation of his country.
-He welcomed the gringos, he said, and if they
-were better able to rule Nicaragua than her own
-people, he would accept that fact as inevitable
-and make way before them.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_183.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">PRESIDENT ZELAYA OF NICARAGUA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>We returned to Corinto after wallowing in the
-dust-bins of Managua as joyfully as though it
-were a home, and we were so anxious to reach
-the ocean again that we left Granada and Leon,
-which are, so we are told, much more attractive
-than the capital, out of our route.</p>
-
-<p>Corinto was bright and green and sunny, and
-the waters of the big harbor before it danced
-and flashed by day and radiated with phosphorescent
-fire by night. It was distinctly a place
-where it would occur to one to write up the back
-pages of his diary, but it was interesting at least
-in showing us the life of the exiles in these hot,
-far-away seaports among a strange people.</p>
-
-<p>There was but one hotel, which happened to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>
-a very good one with a very bad proprietor, who,
-I trust, will come some day to an untimely death
-at the end of one of his own billiard-cues. The
-hotel was built round a patio filled with palms
-and ramparts of empty bottles from the bar, covered
-with dust, and bearing the name of every
-brewer and wine-grower in Europe. The sleeping-rooms
-were on the second floor, and looked
-on the patio on one side and upon a wide covered
-veranda which faced the harbor on the
-other. The five resident gringos in Corinto lived
-at the hotel, and sat all day on this veranda
-swinging in their hammocks and swapping six-months-old
-magazines and tattered novels. Reading-matter
-assumed an importance in Corinto it
-had never attained before, and we read all the
-serial stories, of which there was never more than
-the fourth or sixth instalment, and the scientific
-articles on the Fall of the Rupee in India, or the
-Most Recent Developments in Electricity, and
-delighted in the advertisements of seeds and
-bicycles and baking-powders.</p>
-
-<p>The top of our veranda was swept by a row
-of plane-trees that grew in the sandy soil of the
-beach below us, and under the shade of which
-were gathered all the idle ones of the port.
-There were among them thieving ships’ stewards
-who had been marooned from passing vessels,
-ne’er-do-wells from the interior who were “combing
-the beach” and looking for work, but not so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>
-diligently that they had seen the coffee plantations
-on their tramp down to the coast, and who
-begged for money to take them back to “God’s
-country,” or to the fever hospital at Panama.
-With them were natives, sailors from the rolling
-tug-boat they called a ship of war, and barefooted
-soldiers from the cartel, and longshoremen
-with over-developed chests and muscles, who
-toil mightily on steamer days and sleep and eat
-for the ten days between as a reward.</p>
-
-<p>All of these idlers gathered in the shade around
-the women who sold sweet drinks and sticks of
-pink-and-yellow candy. They were the public
-characters of the place and the centre of all the
-gossip of the town, and presided over their tables
-with great dignity in freshly ironed frocks and
-brilliant turbans. They were very handsome and
-very clean-looking, with bare arms and shoulders,
-and their hair always shone with cocoanut oil,
-and was wonderfully braided and set off with
-flowers stuck coquettishly over one ear. The
-men used to sit around them in groups on the
-bags of coffee waiting for export, and on the
-boxes of barbed wire, which seemed to be the
-only import. And sometimes a small boy would
-buy a stick of candy or command the mixture
-of a drink, and the woman would fuss over her
-carved gourds, and rinse and rub them and mix
-queer liquors with a whirling stick of wood that
-she spun between the palms of her hands. We<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>
-would all watch the operation with great interest,
-the natives on the coffee-sacks and ourselves upon
-the balcony, and regard the small boy while he
-drank the concoction with envy.</p>
-
-<p>The veranda had loose planks for its floor, and
-gaping knot-holes through which the legs of our
-chairs would sink suddenly, and which we could
-use on those occasions when we wanted to drop
-penknives and pencils and water on the heads of
-those passing below. Our companions in idleness
-were the German agents of the trading-houses
-and young Englishmen down from the
-mines to shake off a touch of fever, and two
-Americans who were taking a phonograph
-through Central America. Their names were
-Edward Morse and Charles Brackett, and we will
-always remember them as the only Americans
-we met who were taking money out of Central
-America and not bringing it there to lose it.</p>
-
-<p>Every afternoon we all tramped a mile or two
-up the beach in the hot sun for the sake of a
-quarter of an hour of surf-bathing, which was delightful
-in itself, and which was rendered especially
-interesting by our having to share the
-surf with large man-eating sharks. When they
-came, which they were sure to do ten minutes
-after we had arrived, we generally gave them our
-share.</p>
-
-<p>The phonograph men and our party did not
-believe in sharks; so we would venture out some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>
-distance, leaving the Englishmen and the Germans
-standing like sandpipers where the water
-was hardly up to their ankles, and keeping an
-anxious lookout for us and themselves. Had
-the sharks attempted to attack us from the land,
-they would have afforded excellent protection.
-When they all yelled at once and ran back up
-the beach into the bushes, we knew that they
-thought we had been in long enough, and we
-came out, and made as much noise as we could
-while doing so. But there would be invariably
-one man left behind—one man who had walked
-out farther than the others, and who, owing to
-the roar of the surf, could not hear our shrieks
-of terror. It was exciting to watch him from
-the beach diving and splashing happily by himself,
-and shaking the water out of his ears and
-hair, blissfully unconscious of the deserted waste
-of waters about him and of the sharp, black fin
-that shot like a torpedo from wave to wave.
-We would watch him as he turned to speak to
-the man who the moment before had been
-splashing and diving on his right, and, missing
-him, turn to the other side, and then whirl about
-and see us all dancing frantically up and down
-in a row along the beach, beckoning and screaming
-and waving our arms. We could observe
-even at that distance his damp hair rising on his
-head and his eyes starting out of their sockets
-as he dug his toes into the sand and pushed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>
-back the water with his arms, and worked his
-head and shoulders and every muscle in his
-whole body as though he were fighting his way
-through a mob of men. The water seemed very
-opaque at such times, and the current appeared
-to have turned seaward, and the distance from
-shore looked as though it were increasing at
-every step.</p>
-
-<p>When night came to Corinto we would sit out
-on the wharf in front of the hotel and watch the
-fish darting through the phosphorescent waters
-and marking their passage with a trail of fire, or
-we would heave a log into it and see the sparks
-fly just as though we had thrown it upon a
-smouldering fire. One night one of the men
-was obliging enough to go into it for our benefit,
-and swam under water, sweeping great circles
-with his arms and legs. He was outlined as
-clearly in the inky depths below as though he
-wore a suit of spangles. Sometimes a shark or
-some other big fish drove a shoal of little fish
-towards the shore, and they would turn the whole
-surface of the water into half-circles of light as
-they took leap after leap for safety. Later in
-the evening we would go back to the veranda
-and listen to our friends the phonograph impresarios
-play duets on the banjo and guitar,
-and in return for the songs of the natives they
-had picked up in their wanderings we would
-sing to them those popular measures which had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>
-arisen into notice since they had left civilization.</p>
-
-<p>This was our life at Corinto for ten idle days,
-until at last the steamer arrived, and the passengers
-came on shore to stretch their legs and buy
-souvenirs, and the ship’s steward bustled about
-in search of fresh vegetables, and the lighters
-plied heavily between the shore and the ship’s
-side, piled high with odorous sacks of coffee.
-And then Morse and Brackett started with their
-phonograph through Costa Rica, and we continued
-on to Panama, leaving the five foreign
-residents of Corinto to the uninterrupted enjoyment
-of their whist, and richer and happier
-through our coming in an inaccurate knowledge
-of the first verse and tune of “Tommy Atkins,”
-which they shouted at us defiantly as they pulled
-back from the steamer’s side to their quiet haven
-of exile.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_191.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">MAP OF THE WORLD SHOWING CHANGE IN TRADE ROUTES AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE NICARAGUA
-CANAL</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span></p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">ON THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dc_i.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="">
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="drop-cap">I</span>F Ulysses in his wanderings had attempted
-to cross the Isthmus of Panama
-his account of the adventure
-would not have been filled with engineering
-reports or health statistics, nor would
-it have dwelt with horror on the irregularities
-of the canal company. He would have treated
-the isthmus in language full of imagination, and
-would have delivered his tale in the form of an
-allegory. He would have told how on such a
-voyage his ship came upon a strip of land joining
-two great continents and separating two
-great oceans; how he had found this isthmus
-guarded by a wicked dragon that exhaled poison
-with every breath, and that lay in wait, buried
-in its swamps and jungles, for sailors and travellers,
-who withered away and died as soon as
-they put foot upon the shore. But that he,
-warned in time by the sight of thousands of
-men’s bones whitening on the beach, hoisted all
-sail and stood out to sea.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>It is quite as easy to believe a story like that
-as to believe the truth: that for the last century
-a narrow strip of swamp-land has blocked the
-progress of the world; that it has joined the
-peoples of two continents without permitting
-them to use it as a thoroughfare; that it has
-stopped the meeting of two great oceans and
-the shipping of the world, and that it has killed
-with its fever half of those who came to do battle
-against it. There is something almost uncanny
-in the manner in which this strip of mud and
-water has resisted the advance of man, as though
-there really were some evil genius of the place
-lurking in the morasses and brooding over the
-waters, throwing out its poison like a serpent,
-noiselessly and suddenly, meeting the last arrival
-at the very moment of his setting foot
-upon the wharf, arrogant in health and hope and
-ambition, and leaving him with clinched teeth
-and raving with madness before the sun sets.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_195.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">DREDGES IN THE CANAL</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>It is like the old Minotaur and his yearly tribute
-of Greek maidens, with the difference that now
-it is the lives of men that are sacrificed, and
-men who are chosen from every nation of the
-world, speaking every language, believing in
-every religion; and to-day the end of each is
-marked by a wooden plank in the Catholic
-Cemetery, in the Hebrew Cemetery, in the
-French Cemetery, in the English Cemetery, in
-the American Cemetery, for there are acres and
-acres of cemeteries and thousands and thousands
-of wooden head-stones, to which the evil
-spirit of the isthmus points mockingly, and says,
-“These are your failures.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>The fields of Waterloo and Gettysburg saw a
-sacrifice of life but little greater than these fifty
-miles of swamp-land between North and South
-America have seen, and certainly they saw no
-such inglorious defeats, without a banner flying
-or a comrade cheering, or the roar of musketry
-and cannon to inspire the soldiers who fell in
-the unequal battle. Those who died striving to
-save the Holy Land from the unspeakable Turk
-were comforted by the promise of a glorious
-immortality, and it must have been gratifying
-in itself to have been described as a Crusader,
-and to have worn the red cross upon one’s
-shoulder. And, in any event, a man who would
-not fight for his religion or his country without
-promises or pensions is hardly worthy of consideration.
-But these young soldiers of the
-transit and sailors of the dredging-scow had no
-promises or sentiment to inspire them; they
-were not fighting for the boundaries of their
-country, but redeeming a bit of No Man’s Land;
-not doing battle for their God, but merely
-digging a canal. And it must strike every one
-that those of them who fell doing their duty in
-the sickly yellow mist of Panama and along the
-gloomy stretches of the Chagres River deserve a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>
-better monument to their memories than the
-wooden slabs in the cemeteries.</p>
-
-<p>It is strange that not only nature, but man
-also, should have selected the same little spot on
-the earth’s surface in which to show to the
-world exactly how disagreeable and unpleasant
-they can make themselves when they choose.
-It seems almost as though the isthmus were unholy
-ground, and that there was a curse upon it.
-Some one should invent a legend to explain this,
-and tell how one of the priests who came over
-with Columbus put the ban of the Church upon
-the land for some affront by its people to the
-voyagers, and so placed it under a curse forever.
-For those whom the fever did not kill the
-canal company robbed, and the ruin that came
-to the peasants of France was as irredeemable
-as the ravages of the fever, and the scandal that
-spattered almost every public man in Paris exposed
-rottenness and corruption as far advanced
-as that in the green-coated pools along the Rio
-Grande.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_199.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE BAY OF PANAMA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>Ruins are always interesting, but the ruins of
-Panama fill one only with melancholy and disgust,
-and the relics of this gigantic swindle can
-only inspire you with a contempt for yourself
-and your fellow-men, and you blush at the
-evidences of barefaced rascality about you.
-And even the honest efforts of those who are
-now in charge, and who are trying to save what
-remains, and once more to build up confidence
-in the canal, reminded me of the town councillors
-of Johnstown who met in a freight depot to
-decide what was to be done with the town and
-those of its inhabitants that had not been swept
-out of existence.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>There are forty-eight miles of railroad across
-the isthmus, stretching from the town of Panama
-on the Pacific side to that of Colon—or
-Aspinwall, as it was formerly called—on the
-Caribbean Sea. The canal starts a little north
-of the town of Panama, in the mouth of the
-Rio Grande River, and runs along on one side
-or the other of the railroad to the port of Colon.
-The Chagres River starts about the middle of
-the isthmus, and follows the route of the canal
-in an easterly direction, until it empties itself
-into the Caribbean Sea a little north of Colon.</p>
-
-<p>The town of Panama, as you approach it from
-the bay, reminds you of an Italian seaport, owing
-to the balconies which overhang the water
-and the colored house-fronts and projecting red
-roofs. As seen from the inside, the town is like
-any other Spanish-American city of the second
-class. There are fiacres that rattle and roll
-through the clean but narrow streets behind undersized
-ponies that always move at a gallop;
-there are cool, dark shops open to the streets, and
-hundreds of negroes and Chinese coolies, and a
-handsome plaza, and some very large municipal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>
-buildings of five stories, which appeared to us,
-after our experience with a dead level of one-story
-huts, to tower as high as the Auditorium.
-Panama, as a town, and considered by itself, and
-not in connection with the canal, reminded me of
-a Western county-seat after the boom had left it.
-There appeared to be nothing going forward and
-nothing to do. The men sat at the cafés during
-the day and talked of the past, and went to a
-club at night. We saw nothing of the women,
-but they seem to have a greater degree of freedom
-than their sisters in other parts of Spanish
-America, owing, no doubt, to the cosmopolitan
-nature of the inhabitants of Panama.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_203.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">PANAMA CANAL ON THE PACIFIC SIDE</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>But the city, and the people in it, interest you
-chiefly because of the canal; and even the ruins
-of the Spanish occupation, and the tales of buccaneers
-and of bloody battles and buried treasure,
-cannot touch you so nearly as do the great,
-pretentious building of the company and the
-stories of De Lesseps’ visit, and the ceremonies
-and feastings and celebrations which inaugurated
-the greatest failure of modern times.</p>
-
-<p>The new director of the canal company put a
-tug at our disposal, and sent us orders that permitted
-us to see as much of the canal as has been
-completed from the Pacific side. But before presenting
-our orders we drove out from the city
-one afternoon and began a personally conducted
-inspection of the machine-shops.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>We had read of the pathetic spectacle presented
-by thousands of dollars’ worth of locomotive
-engines and machinery lying rotting and rusting
-in the swamps, and as it had interested us when
-we had read of it, we were naturally even more anxious
-to see it with our own eyes. We, however,
-did not see any machinery rusting, nor any locomotives
-lying half buried in the mud. All the
-locomotives that we saw were raised from the
-ground on ties and protected with a wooden shed,
-and had been painted and oiled and cared for as
-they would have been in the Baldwin Locomotive
-Works. We found the same state of things
-in the great machine-works, and though none of
-us knew a turning-lathe from a sewing-machine,
-we could at least understand that certain wheels
-should make other wheels move if everything
-was in working order, and so we made the wheels
-go round, and punched holes in sheets of iron
-with steel rods, and pierced plates, and scraped
-iron bars, and climbed to shelves twenty and
-thirty feet from the floor, only to find that each
-bit and screw in each numbered pigeon-hole was
-as sharp and covered as thick with oil as though
-it had been in use that morning.</p>
-
-<p>This was not as interesting as it would have
-been had we seen what the other writers who
-have visited the isthmus saw. And it would have
-given me a better chance for descriptive writing
-had I found the ruins of gigantic dredging-machines<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>
-buried in the morasses, and millions of
-dollars’ worth of delicate machinery blistering
-and rusting under the palm-trees; but, as a rule,
-it is better to describe things just as you saw
-them, and not as it is the fashion to see them,
-even though your way be not so picturesque.</p>
-
-<p>As a matter of fact, the care the company was
-taking of its machinery and its fleet of dredging-scows
-and locomotives struck me as being much
-more pathetic than the sight of the same instruments
-would have been had we found them abandoned
-to the elements and the mud. For it was
-like a general pipe-claying his cross-belt and polishing
-his buttons after his army had been routed
-and killed, and he had lost everything, including
-honor.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_206.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">HUTS OF WORKMEN EMPLOYED ON THE CANAL</p>
-
-<p>There was a little village of whitewashed huts
-on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>
-the men lived who take care of the fleet and the
-machine-shop, and it was as carefully kept and as
-clean as a graveyard. Before the crash came the
-quarters of the men used to ring with their yells
-at night, and the music of guitars and banjos
-came from the open doors of cafés and drinking-booths,
-and a pistol-shot meant no more than a
-momentary punctuation of the night’s pleasure.
-Those were great days, and there were thousands
-of men where there are now a score, and a line of
-light and deviltry ran from the canal’s mouth for
-miles back to the city, where it blazed into a
-great fire of dissolute pleasure and excitement.
-In those days men were making fortunes in a
-night, and by ways as dark as night—by furnishing
-machinery that could not even be put together,
-by supplying blocks of granite that cost more
-in freight than bars of silver, by kidnapping workmen
-for the swamps, and by the simple methods
-of false accounts and credits. And while some
-were growing rich, others were living with the
-fear of sudden death before their eyes, and drinking
-the native rum that they might forget it, and
-throwing their wages away on the roulette-tables,
-and eating and drinking and making merry in the
-fear that they might die on the morrow.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Wells, an American engineer, was in
-charge of the company’s flotilla, and waited for
-us at the wharf.</p>
-
-<p>“I saw you investigating our engines,” he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>
-said. “That’s all right. Only tell the truth
-about what you see, and we won’t mind.”</p>
-
-<p>We stood on the bow of the tug and sped up
-the length of the canal between great dredging-machines
-that towered as high above us as the
-bridge of an ocean liner, and that weighed apparently
-as much as a battle-ship. The decks
-of some of them were split with the heat, and
-there were shutters missing from the cabin windows,
-but the monster machinery was intact,
-and the wood-work was freshly painted and
-scrubbed. They reminded me of a line of old
-ships of war at rest in some navy-yard. They
-represent in money value, even as they are to-day,
-five million francs. Beyond them on either
-side stretched low green bushes, through which
-the Rio Grande bent and twisted, and beyond
-the bushes were high hills and the Pacific Ocean,
-into which the sun set, leaving us cold and depressed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_209.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE TOP OF A DREDGE</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>Except for the bubbling of the water under
-our bow there was not a sound to disturb the
-silence that hung above the narrow canal and
-the green bushes that rose from a bed of water.
-I thought of the entrance of the Suez Canal, as
-I had seen it at Port Said and at Ismaïlia,
-with great P. &amp; O. steamers passing down
-its length, and troop-ships showing hundreds of
-white helmets above the sides, and tramp steamers
-and sailing-vessels flying every flag, and compared
-it and its scenes of life and movement
-with this dreary waste before us, with the idle
-dredges rearing their iron girders to the sky,
-the engineers’ sign-posts half smothered in the
-water and the mud, and with a naked fisherman
-paddling noiselessly down the canal with his
-eyes fixed on the water, his hollowed log canoe
-the only floating vessel in what should have
-been the highway of the world.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>There were about eight hundred men in all
-working along the whole length of the canal
-while we were there, instead of the twelve thousand
-that once made the place hum with activity.
-But the work the twelve thousand accomplished
-remains, and the stranger is surprised
-to find that there is so much of it and that it is
-so well done. It looks to his ignorant eyes as
-though only a little more energy and a greater
-amount of honesty would be necessary to open
-the canal to traffic; but experts will tell him
-that one hundred million dollars will have to be
-expended and seven or eight years of honest
-work done before that ditch can be dug and
-France hold a Kiel celebration of her own.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>But before that happens every citizen of the
-United States should help to open the Nicaragua
-Canal to the world under the protection and
-the virtual ownership of his own country.</p>
-
-<p>Our stay in Panama was shortened somewhat
-on account of our having taken too great an interest
-in the freedom of a young lawyer and
-diplomat, who was arrested while we were there,
-charged with being one of the leaders of the
-revolution.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_213.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">STREET SCENE IN PANAMA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>He was an acquaintance of Lloyd Griscom’s,
-who took an interest in the young rebel because
-they had both been in the diplomatic service
-abroad. One afternoon, while Griscom and the
-lawyer were sitting together in the office of the
-latter, five soldiers entered the place and ordered
-the suspected revolutionist to accompany them
-to the cartel. As he happened to know something
-of the law, he protested that they must
-first show him a warrant, and while two of them
-went out for the warrant and the others kept
-watch in the outer office Griscom mapped out a
-plan of escape. The lawyer’s office hung over
-the Bay of Panama, and Griscom’s idea was that
-he should, under the protection of the darkness,
-slip down a rope from the window to a small
-boat below and be rowed out to the <i>Barracouta</i>,
-of the Pacific Mail Company’s line, which was
-listed to sail that same evening up the coast.
-The friends of the rebel were sent for, and with
-their assistance Griscom made every preparation
-for the young rebel’s escape, and then came to
-the hotel and informed Somerset and myself of
-what he had done, and asked us to aid in what
-was to follow. We knew nothing of the rights
-or the wrongs of the revolutionists, but we considered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>
-that a man who was going down a rope
-into a small boat while three soldiers sat waiting
-for him in an outer room was performing a
-sporting act that called for our active sympathy.
-So we followed Griscom to his friend’s office,
-and, having passed the soldiers, were ushered
-into his presence and introduced to him and his
-friends. He was a little man, but was not at all
-alarmed, nor did he pose or exhibit any braggadocio,
-as a man of weaker calibre might have
-done under the circumstances. When we offered
-to hold the rope for him, or to block up the
-doors so that the soldiers might not see what
-was going forward, he thanked us with such
-grateful politeness that he made me feel rather
-ashamed of myself; for my interest in the matter
-up to that point had not been a very serious or
-a high one. Indeed, I did not even know the
-gentleman’s name. But as we did not know the
-names of the government people against whom
-he was plotting either, we felt that we could not
-be accused of partiality.</p>
-
-<p>The prisoner did not want his wife to know
-what had happened, and so sent her word that
-important legal business would detain him at
-the office, and that his dinner was to be brought
-to him there. The rope by which he was to
-escape was smuggled past the soldiers under the
-napkin which covered this dinner. It was then
-seven o’clock and nearly dark, and as our rebel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>
-friend feared our presence might excite suspicion,
-he asked us to go away, and requested us to return
-in half an hour. It would then be quite
-dark, and the attempt to escape could be made
-with greater safety.</p>
-
-<p>But the alcalde during our absence spoiled
-what might have been an excellent story by
-rushing in and carrying the diplomat off to jail.
-When we returned we found the office locked
-and guarded, and as we walked away, in doubt
-as to whether he had escaped or had been arrested,
-we found that the soldiers were following
-us. As this continued throughout the evening
-we went across the isthmus the next morning
-to Colon, the same soldiers accompanying us on
-our way.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_217.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE CANAL IN THE INTERIOR</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>The ship of war <i>Atlanta</i> was at Colon, and as
-we had met her officers at Puerto Cortez, in Honduras,
-we went on board and asked them to see
-that we were not shot against church walls or
-hung. They were exceedingly amused, and
-promised us ample protection, and though we
-did not need it on that occasion, I was impressed
-with the comforting sense that comes to a traveller
-from the States when he knows that one
-of our White Squadron is rolling at anchor in
-the harbor. And later, when Griscom caught
-the Chagres fever, we had every reason to be
-grateful for the presence in the harbor of the
-<i>Atlanta</i>, as her officers, led by Dr. Bartolette and
-his assistant surgeon, Mr. Moore, helped him
-through his sickness, visiting him daily with the
-greatest kindness and good-will.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>Colon did not impress us very favorably. It
-is a large town of wooden houses, with a floating
-population of Jamaica negroes and a few Chinese.
-The houses built for the engineers of the canal
-stretch out along a point at either side of a
-double row of magnificent palms, which terminate
-at the residence intended for De Lesseps.
-It is now falling into decay. In front of it,
-facing the sea, is a statue of Columbus protecting
-the Republic of Colombia, represented by
-an Indian girl, who is crouching under his outstretched
-arm. This monument was presented
-to the United States of Colombia by the Empress
-Eugenie, and the statue is, in its fallen
-state, with its pedestal shattered by the many
-storms and time, significant of the fallen fortunes
-of that great lady herself. If Columbus
-could have protected Colombia from the French
-as he is in the French statue protecting her
-from all the world, she would now be the richest
-and most important of Central-American republics.</p>
-
-<p>Colon seems to be owned entirely by the Panama
-Railroad Company, a monopoly that conducts
-its affairs with even more disregard for
-the public than do other monopolies in better-known
-localities. The company makes use of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>
-the seaport as a freight-yard, and its locomotives
-run the length of the town throughout the
-entire day, blowing continually on their whistles
-and ringing their bells, so that there is little
-peace for the just or the unjust. We were exceedingly
-relieved when the doctors agreed that
-Griscom was ready to put to sea again, and we
-were able to turn from the scene of the great
-scandal and its fever fields to the mountains of
-Venezuela, and of Caracas in particular.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">THE PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dc_s.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="">
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="drop-cap">S</span>HOVED off by itself in a corner of
-Central Park on the top of a wooded
-hill, where only the people who live
-in the high apartment-houses at
-Eighty-first Street can see it, is an equestrian
-statue. It is odd, bizarre, and inartistic, and suggests
-in size and pose that equestrian statue to
-General Jackson which mounts guard before the
-White House in Washington. It shows a chocolate-cream
-soldier mastering with one hand a
-rearing rocking-horse, and with the other pointing
-his sword towards an imaginary enemy.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes a “sparrow” policeman saunters
-up the hill and looks at the statue with unenlightened
-eyes, and sometimes a nurse-maid
-seeks its secluded site, and sits on the pedestal
-below it while the children of this free republic
-play unconcernedly in its shadow. On the base
-of this big statue is carved the name of Simon
-Bolivar, the Liberator of Venezuela.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>Down on the northeastern coast of South
-America, in Caracas, the capital of the United
-States of Venezuela, there is a pretty little plaza,
-called the Plaza Washington. It is not at all
-an important plaza; it is not floored for hundreds
-of yards with rare mosaics like the Plaza
-de Bolivar, nor lit by swinging electric lights,
-and the president’s band never plays there. But
-it has a fresh prettiness and restfulness all its
-own, and the narrow gravel paths are clean and
-trim, and the grass grows rich and high, and the
-branches of the trees touch and interlace and
-form a green roof over all, except in the very
-centre, where there stands open to the blue sky
-a statue of Washington, calm, dignified, beneficent,
-and paternal. It is Washington the statesman,
-not the soldier. The sun of the tropics
-beats down upon his shoulders; the palms rustle
-and whisper pleasantly above his head. From
-the barred windows of the yellow and blue and
-pink houses that line the little plaza dark-eyed,
-dark-skinned women look out sleepily, but understandingly,
-at the grave face of the North
-American Bolivar; and even the policeman, with
-his red blanket and Winchester carbine, comprehends
-when the gringos stop and take off their
-hats and make a low bow to the father of their
-country in his pleasant place of exile.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_223.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">STATUE OF SIMON BOLIVAR, CARACAS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>Other governments than those of the United
-States of America and the United States of
-Venezuela have put up statues to their great
-men in foreign capitals, but the careers of Washington
-and Bolivar bear so striking a resemblance,
-and the histories of the two countries
-of which they are the respective fathers are so
-much alike, that they might be written in parallel
-columns. And so it seems especially appropriate
-that these monuments to these patriots
-should stand in each of the two continents on
-either side of the dividing states of Central
-America.</p>
-
-<p>It will offend no true Venezuelan to-day if it
-be said of his country that the most interesting
-man in it is a dead one, for he will allow no one
-to go further than himself in his admiration for
-Bolivar; and he has done so much to keep his
-memory fresh by circulating portraits of him on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>
-every coin and stamp of the country, by placing
-his statue at every corner, and by hanging his
-picture in every house, that he cannot blame
-the visitor if his strongest impression of Venezuela
-is of the young man who began at thirty-three
-to liberate five republics, and who conquered
-a territory more than one-third as great
-as the whole of Europe.</p>
-
-<p>In 1811 Venezuela declared her independence
-of the mother-country of Spain, and her great
-men put this declaration in writing and signed
-it, and the room in which it was signed is still
-kept sacred, as is the room where our declaration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>
-was signed in Independence Hall. But the
-two men who were to make these declarations
-worth something more than the parchment upon
-which they were written were not among the
-signers. Their work was still to come, and it
-was much the same kind of work, and carried
-on in much the same spirit of indomitable energy
-under the most cruel difficulties, and with a
-few undrilled troops against an army of veterans.
-It was marked by brilliant and sudden
-marches and glorious victories; and where Washington
-suffered in the snows of Valley Forge,
-or pushed his way through the floating ice of
-the Delaware, young Bolivar marched under
-fierce tropical suns, and cut his path through
-jungle and swamp-lands, and over the almost
-impenetrable fastnesses of the Andes.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_227.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">STATUE OF WASHINGTON DECORATED WITH FLORAL WREATHS
-BY THE VENEZUELANS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>Their difficulties were the same and their aim
-was the same, but the character of the two men
-were absolutely and entirely different, for Bolivar
-was reckless, impatient of advice, and even
-foolhardy. What Washington was we know.</p>
-
-<p>The South-American came of a distinguished
-Spanish family, and had been educated as a
-courtier and as a soldier in the mother-country,
-though his heart remained always with his own
-people, and he was among the first to take up
-arms to set them free. Unless you have seen
-the country through which he led his men, and
-have measured the mountains he climbed with
-his few followers, it is quite impossible to understand
-the immensity of the task he accomplished.
-Even to-day a fast steamer cannot
-reach Callao from Panama under seven days,
-and yet Bolivar made the same distance and on
-foot, starting from the South Atlantic, and continuing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>
-on across the continent to the Pacific side,
-and then on down the coast into Peru, living on
-his way upon roots and berries, sleeping on the
-ground wrapped in a blanket, riding on muleback
-or climbing the steep trail on foot, and freeing
-on his way Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador,
-Bolivia, and finally Peru, the home of the Incas.</p>
-
-<p>The history of this campaign is one too glorious
-and rich in incident and color to be crowded
-into a few pages, and the character of its chief
-actor too varied, and his rise and fall too dramatic,
-to be dismissed, as it must be here, in a
-few paragraphs. But every American who loves
-a hero and who loves a lover—and Bolivar was
-very much of both, and perhaps too much of the
-latter—should read the life of this young man
-who freed a country rich in brave men, who
-made some of these who were much his senior
-in years his lieutenants, and who, after risking
-his life upon many battle-fields and escaping
-several attempts at assassination, died at last
-deserted except by a few friends, and with a
-heart broken by the ingratitude of the people
-he had led out of captivity.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>It is difficult to find out, even in his own
-country, why the Venezuelans, after heaping
-Bolivar with honors and elevating him to the
-place of a god, should have turned against him,
-and driven him into exile at Santa Marta. Some
-will tell you that he tried to make himself dictator
-over the countries which he had freed; others
-say that it was because he had refused to be a
-dictator that the popular feeling went against
-him, and that when the people in the madness
-of their new-found freedom cried, “Thou hast
-rid us of kings; be thou king,” he showed them
-their folly, and sought his old home, and died
-there before the reaction came, which was to
-sweep him back once more and forever into the
-place of the popular hero of South America.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_231.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS, VENEZUELA,
-DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN RESIDENTS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>It was sixteen years after his death that a
-hero-worshipping friend was brave enough to
-commission an artist to design a statue to his
-memory. On the neck of this statue the artist
-hung the representation of a miniature in the
-shape of a medallion, which had been given to
-Bolivar by the family of Washington. On the
-reverse was a lock of Washington’s hair and the
-inscription, “This portrait of the founder of
-liberty in North America is presented by his
-adopted son to him who has acquired equal
-glory in South America.”</p>
-
-<p>Some one asked why the artist had stripped
-from the breast of Bolivar all of the other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>
-medals and stars that had been given him by
-different countries in the hour of his triumph,
-and the artist answered that he had done as his
-patron and the friend of Bolivar thought would
-best please his hero. And ever after that it was
-decreed that every bust or statue or engraving
-of the Liberator should show him with this
-portrait of Washington hanging by a ribbon
-about his neck; and so you will see in the
-National Portrait Gallery that while the coats
-of his lieutenants glitter with orders and crosses,
-Bolivar’s bears this medal only. It was his
-greatest pride, and he considered it his chief
-glory. And the manner of its bestowal was
-curiously appropriate. In 1824 General Lafayette
-returned to this country as the guest of
-the nation, and a banquet was given to him by
-Congress, at which the memory of Washington
-and the deeds of his French lieutenant were
-honored again and again. It was while the
-enthusiasm and rejoicings of this celebration
-were at their height that Henry Clay rose in
-his place and asked the six hundred Americans<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>
-before him to remember that while they were
-enjoying the benefits of free institutions founded
-by the bravery and patriotism of their fore-fathers,
-their cousins and neighbors in the southern
-continent were struggling to obtain that same
-independence.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_234.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">SIMON BOLIVAR</p>
-
-<p>“No nation, no generous Lafayette,” he cried,
-“has come to their aid; alone and without help
-they have sustained their glorious cause, trusting
-to its justice, and with the assistance only of
-their bravery, their deserts, and their Andes—and
-one man, Simon Bolivar, the Washington of
-South America.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_235.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">VIEW OF LA GUAYRA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>And you can imagine the six hundred Americans
-jumping to their feet and cheering the
-name of the young soldier, and the French
-marquis eagerly asking that he might be the one
-to send him some token of their sympathy and
-admiration. Lafayette forwarded the portrait
-of Washington to Bolivar, who valued it so
-highly that the people who loved him valued
-the man he worshipped; and to-day you will see
-in Caracas streets and squares and houses named
-after Washington, and portraits of Washington
-crossing the Delaware, and Washington on horseback,
-and Washington at Mount Vernon, hanging
-in almost every shop and café in the capital.
-And the next time you ride in Central Park you
-might turn your bicycle, or tell the man on the
-box to turn the horses, into that little curtain of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>
-trees, and around the hill where the odd-looking
-statue stands, and see if you cannot feel some
-sort of sympathy and pay some tribute to this
-young man who loved like a hero, and who
-fought like a hero, with the fierceness of the
-tropical sun above him, and whose inspiration
-was the calm, grave parent of your own country.</p>
-
-<p>Bolivar’s country is the republic of South
-America that stands nearest to New York, and
-when people come to know more concerning it,
-I am sure they will take to visiting it and its
-capital, the “Paris of South America,” in the
-winter months, as they now go to southern Europe
-or to the Mediterranean.</p>
-
-<p>There are many reasons for their doing so.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>
-In the first place, it can be reached in less than
-six days, and it is the only part of South America
-to which one can go without first crossing
-the Isthmus of Panama and then taking a long
-trip down the western coast, or sailing for nearly
-a month along the eastern coast; and it is a
-wonderfully beautiful country, and its cities of
-Caracas and Valencia are typical of the best
-South-American cities. When you have seen
-them you have an intelligent idea of what the
-others are like; and when you read about revolutions
-in Rio Janeiro, or Valparaiso, or Buenos
-Ayres, you will have in your mind’s eye the
-background for all of these dramatic uprisings,
-and you will feel superior to other people who
-do not know that the republic of Venezuela is
-larger than France, Spain, and Portugal together,
-and that the inhabitants of this great territory
-are less in number than those of New York city.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_239.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE RAILROAD UP THE MOUNTAIN</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>La Guayra is the chief seaport of Venezuela.
-It lies at the edge of a chain of great mountains,
-where they come down to wet their feet in the
-ocean, and Caracas, the capital, is stowed away
-three thousand feet higher up behind these
-mountains, and could only be bombarded in
-time of war by shells that would rise like rockets
-and drop on the other side of the mountains,
-and so cover a distance quite nine miles away
-from the vessel that fired them. Above La
-Guayra, on the hill, is a little fortress which was
-once the residence of the Spanish governor
-when Venezuela was a colony of Spain. It is of
-interest now chiefly because Charles Kingsley
-describes it in <i>Westward Ho!</i> as the fortress in
-which the Rose of Devon was imprisoned. Past
-this fortress, and up over the mountains to the
-capital, are a mule-trail and an ancient wagon-road
-and a modern railway.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>It is a very remarkable railroad; its tracks cling
-to the perpendicular surface of the mountain like
-the tiny tendrils of a vine on a stone-wall, and
-the trains creep and crawl along the edge of its
-precipices, or twist themselves into the shape of
-a horseshoe magnet, so that the engineer on the
-locomotive can look directly across a bottomless
-chasm into the windows of the last car. The
-view from this train, while it pants and puffs on
-its way to the capital, is the most beautiful combination
-of sea and plain and mountain that I
-have ever seen. There are higher mountains and
-more beautiful, perhaps, but they run into a
-brown prairie or into a green plain; and there
-are as beautiful views of the ocean, only you have
-to see them from the level of the ocean itself, or
-from a chalk-cliff with the downs behind you and
-the white sand at your feet. But nowhere else
-in the world have I seen such magnificent and
-noble mountains running into so beautiful and
-green a plain, and beyond that the great blue
-stretches of the sea. When you look down from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>
-the car-platform you see first, stretching three
-thousand feet below you, the great green ribs of
-the mountain and its valleys and waterways leading
-into a plain covered with thousands and thousands
-of royal palms, set so far apart that you
-can distinguish every broad leaf and the full
-length of the white trunk. Among these are the
-red-roofed and yellow villages, and beyond them
-again the white line of breakers disappearing and
-reappearing against the blue as though some one
-were wiping out a chalk-line and drawing it in
-again, and then the great ocean weltering in the
-heat and stretching as far as the eye can see, and
-touching a sky so like it in color that the two are
-joined in a curtain of blue on which the ships
-seem to lie flat, like painted pictures on a wall.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_243.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN CARACAS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>You pass through clouds on your way up that
-leave the trees and rocks along the track damp
-and shining as after a heavy dew, and at some
-places you can peer through them from the steps
-of the car down a straight fall of three thousand
-feet. When you have climbed to the top of the
-mountain, you see below you on the other side
-the beautiful valley in which lies the city of Caracas,
-cut up evenly by well-kept streets, and diversified
-by the towers of churches and public buildings
-and open plazas, with the white houses and
-gardens of the coffee-planters lying beyond the
-city at the base of the mountains.</p>
-
-<p>Venezuela, after our experiences of Central<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>
-America, was like a return to civilization after
-months on the alkali plains of Texas. We found
-Caracas to be a Spanish-American city of the first
-class, with a suggestion of the boulevards, and
-Venezuela a country that possessed a history of
-her own, and an Academy of wise men and artists,
-and a Pantheon for her heroes. I suppose
-we should have known that this was so before we
-visited Venezuela; but as we did not, we felt as
-though we were discovering a new country for
-ourselves. It was interesting to find statues of
-men of whom none of us had ever heard, and
-who were distinguished for something else than
-military successes, men who had made discoveries
-in science and medicine, and who had written
-learned books; to find the latest devices for
-comfort of a civilized community, and with them
-the records of a fierce struggle for independence,
-a long period of disorganization, where the
-Church had the master-hand, and then a rapid
-advance in the habits and customs of enlightened
-nations. There are the most curious combinations
-and contrasts, showing on one side a
-pride of country and an eagerness to emulate
-the customs of stable governments, and on the
-other evidences of the Southern hot-blooded temperament
-and dislike of restraint.</p>
-
-<p>On the corner of the principal plaza stands the
-cathedral, with a tower. Ten soldiers took refuge
-in this tower four years ago, during the last<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>
-revolution, and they made so determined a fight
-from that point of vantage that in order to dislodge
-them it was found necessary to build a fire
-in the tower and smoke them out with the fumes
-of sulphur. These ten soldiers were the last to
-make a stand within the city, and when they fell,
-from the top of the tower, smothered to death,
-the revolution was at an end. This incident of
-warfare is of value when you contrast the thing
-done with its environment, and know that next
-to the cathedral-tower are confectionery-shops
-such as you find on Regent Street or upper
-Broadway, that electric lights surround the cathedral,
-and that tram-cars run past it on rails
-sunk below the surface of the roadway and over
-a better street than any to be found in New York
-city.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_247.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE MARKET OF CARACAS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>Even without acquaintances among the people
-of the capital there are enough public show-places
-in Caracas to entertain a stranger for a fortnight.
-It is pleasure enough to walk the long, narrow
-streets under brilliantly colored awnings, between
-high one- and two-story houses, painted in blues
-and pinks and greens, and with overhanging red-tiled
-roofs and projecting iron balconies and open
-iron-barred windows, through which you gain
-glimpses beyond of cool interiors and beautiful
-courts and gardens filled with odd-looking plants
-around a splashing fountain.</p>
-
-<p>The ladies of Caracas seem to spend much of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>
-their time sitting at these windows, and are always
-there in the late afternoons, when they
-dress themselves and arrange their hair for the
-evening, and put a little powder on their faces,
-and take their places in the cushioned window-seats
-as though they were in their box at the opera.
-And though they are within a few inches
-of the passers-by on the pavement, they can look
-through them and past them, and are as oblivious
-of their presence as though they were invisible.
-In the streets are strings of mules carrying bags
-of coffee or buried beneath bales of fodder, and
-jostled by open fiacres, with magnificent coachmen
-on the box-seat in top-boots and gold
-trimmings to their hats and coats, and many soldiers,
-on foot and mounted, hurrying along at a
-quick step in companies, or strolling leisurely
-alone. They wear blue uniforms with scarlet
-trousers and facings, and the president’s body-guard
-are in white duck and high black boots,
-and are mounted on magnificent horses.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_251.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">VIEW OF CARACAS</p>
-
-<p>There are three great buildings in Caracas—the
-Federal Palace, the Opera-house, and the Pantheon,
-which was formerly a church, and which
-has been changed into a receiving-vault and a memorial
-for the great men of the country. Here,
-after three journeys, the bones of Bolivar now
-rest. The most interesting of these buildings is
-the Federal Palace. It is formed around a great
-square filled with flowers and fountains, and lit
-with swinging electric lights. It is the handsomest
-building in Caracas, and within its four sides
-are the chambers of the upper and lower branches
-of the legislature, the offices of the different
-departments of state, and the reception-hall of
-the president, in which is the National Portrait
-Gallery. The palace is light and unsubstantial-looking,
-like a canvas palace in a theatre, and
-suggests the casino at a French watering-place.
-It is painted in imitation of stone, and the statues
-are either of plaster-of-paris or of wood,
-painted white to represent marble. But the theatrical
-effect is in keeping with the colored walls
-and open fronts of the other buildings of the city,
-and is not out of place in this city of such dramatic
-incidents.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_252.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">PRESIDENT CRESPO, OF VENEZUELA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>The portraits in the state-room of the palace
-immortalize the features of fierce-looking, dark-faced
-generals, with old-fashioned high-standing
-collars of gold-braid, and green uniforms. Strange
-and unfamiliar names are printed beneath these
-portraits, and appear again painted in gold letters
-on a roll of honor which hangs from the ceiling,
-and which faces a list of the famous battles
-for independence. High on this roll of honor
-are the names “General O’Leary” and “Colonel
-Fergurson,” and among the portraits are the
-faces of two blue-eyed, red-haired young men,
-with fair skin and broad chests and shoulders,
-one wearing the close-clipped whiskers of the
-last of the Georges, and the other the long Dundreary
-whiskers of the Crimean wars. Whether
-the Irish general and the English colonel gave
-their swords for the sake of the cause of independence
-or fought for the love of fighting, I do
-not know, but they won the love of the Spanish-Americans
-by the service they rendered, no matter
-what their motives may have been for serving.
-Many people tell you proudly that they are descended<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>
-from “O’Leari,” and the names of the
-two foreigners are as conspicuous on pedestals
-and tablets of honor as are their smiling blue
-eyes and red cheeks among the thin-visaged,
-dark-skinned faces of their brothers-in-arms.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_253.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">LEGISLATIVE BUILDING, CARACAS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>At one end of the room is an immense painting
-of a battle, and the other is blocked by as
-large a picture showing Bolivar dictating to members
-of Congress, who have apparently ridden out
-into the field to meet him, and are holding an
-impromptu session beneath the palm leaves of
-an Indian hut. The dome of the chamber,
-which latter is two hundred feet in length, is
-covered with an immense panorama, excellently
-well done, showing the last of the battles of the
-Venezuelans against the Spaniards, in which the
-figures are life-size and the action most spirited,
-and the effect of color distinctly decorative.
-These paintings in the National Gallery would
-lead you to suppose that there was nothing but
-battles in the history of Venezuela, and that her
-great men were all soldiers, but the talent of the
-artists who have painted these scenes and the
-actors in them corrects the idea. Among these
-artists are Arturo Michelena, who has exhibited
-at the World’s Fair, and frequently at the French
-Salon, from which institution he has received a
-prize, M. Tovar y Tovar, A. Herrea Toro, and
-Cristobal Rojas.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_255.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE PRESIDENT’S BODY-GUARD OF COWBOYS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>It was that “Illustrious American, Guzman
-Blanco,” one of the numerous presidents of Venezuela,
-and probably the best known, who was
-responsible for most of the public buildings of
-the capital. These were originally either convents
-or monasteries, which he converted, after
-his war with the Church, into the Federal Palace,
-the Opera-house, and a university. Each of
-these structures covers so much valuable ground,
-and is situated so advantageously in the very
-heart of the city, that one gets a very good idea
-of how powerful the Church element must have
-been before Guzman overthrew it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>He was a peculiar man, apparently, and possessed
-of much force and of a progressive spirit,
-combined with an overmastering vanity. The
-city was at its gayest under his régime, and he
-encouraged the arts and sciences by creating various
-bodies of learned men, by furnishing the
-nucleus for a national museum, by subsidizing
-the Opera-house, and by granting concessions
-to foreign companies which were of quite too
-generous a nature to hold good, and which now
-greatly encumber and embarrass his successors.
-But while he was president, and before he
-went to live in luxurious exile on the Avenue
-Kléber, which seems to be the resting-place of
-all South-American presidents, he did much to
-make the country prosperous and its capital attractive,
-and he was determined that the people
-should know that he was the individual who accomplished
-these things. With this object he
-had fifteen statues erected to himself in different
-parts of the city, and more tablets than one can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>
-count. Each statue bore an inscription telling
-that it was erected to that “Illustrious American,
-Guzman Blanco,” and every new bridge and
-road and public building bore a label to say that
-it was Guzman Blanco who was responsible for
-its existence. The idea of a man erecting statues
-to himself struck the South-American mind
-as extremely humorous, and one night all the
-statues were sawed off at the ankles, and to-day
-there is not one to be seen, and only raw places
-in the walls to show where the memorial tablets
-hung. But you cannot wipe out history by pulling
-down columns or effacing inscriptions, and
-Guzman Blanco undoubtedly did do much for
-his country, even though at the same time he
-was doing a great deal for Guzman Blanco.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_259.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">BAPTIZING INDIANS AT A VENEZUELAN STATION AT THE CUYUNI RIVER</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>Guzman was followed in rapid succession by
-three or four other presidents and dictators, who
-filled their pockets with millions and then fled
-the country, only waiting until their money was
-first safely out of it. Then General Crespo, who
-had started his revolution with seven men, finally
-overthrew the government’s forces, and was
-elected president, and has remained in office
-ever since. To set forth with seven followers to
-make yourself president of a country as large as
-France, Portugal, and Spain together requires a
-great deal of confidence and courage. General
-Crespo is a fighter, and possesses both. It was
-either he or one of his generals—the story is told
-of both—who, when he wanted arms for his
-cowboys, bade them take off their shirts and
-grease their bodies and rush through the camp of
-the enemy in search of them. He told them to
-hold their left hands out as they ran, and whenever
-their fingers slipped on a greased body they
-were to pass it by, but when they touched a man
-wearing a shirt they were to cut him down with
-their machetes. In this fashion three hundred
-of his plainsmen routed two thousand of the regular<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>
-troops, and captured all of their rifles and
-ammunition. The idea that when you want
-arms the enemy is the best person from whom
-to take them is excellent logic, and that charge
-of the half-naked men, armed only with their
-knives, through the sleeping camp is Homeric
-in its magnificence.</p>
-
-<p>Crespo is more at home when fighting in the
-field than in the council-chamber of the Yellow
-House, which is the White House of the republic;
-but that may be because he prefers fighting
-to governing, and a man generally does best
-what he likes best to do. He is as simple in his
-habits to-day as when he was on the march with
-his seven revolutionists, and goes to bed at eight
-in the evening, and is deep in public business by
-four the next morning; many an unhappy minister
-has been called to an audience at sunrise.
-The president neither smokes nor drinks; he is
-grave and dignified, with that dignity which enormous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>
-size gives, and his greatest pleasure is to
-take a holiday and visit his ranch, where he watches
-the round-up of his cattle and gallops over his
-thousands of acres. He is the idol of the cowboys,
-and has a body-guard composed of some of
-the men of this class. I suppose they are very
-much like our own cowboys, but the citizens of
-the capital look upon them as the Parisians regarded
-Napoleon’s Mamelukes, and tell you in
-perfect sincerity that when they charge at night
-their eyes flash fire in a truly terrifying manner.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_263.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">A TYPICAL HUNTING-PARTY IN VENEZUELA</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>I saw the president but once, and then but
-for a few moments. He was at the Yellow
-House and holding a public reception, to which
-every one was admitted with a freedom that betokened
-absolute democracy. When my turn
-came he talked awhile through Colonel Bird,
-our consul, but there was no chance for me to
-gain any idea of him except that he was very
-polite, as are all Venezuelans, and very large.
-They tell a story of him which illustrates his
-character. He was riding past the university
-when a group of students hooted and jeered at
-him, not because of his politics, but because of
-his origin. A policeman standing by, aroused to
-indignation by this insult to the president, fired
-his revolver into the crowd. Crespo at once
-ordered the man’s arrest for shooting at a citizen
-with no sufficient provocation, and rode on
-his way without even giving a glance at his tormentors.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>
-The incident seemed to show that he
-was too big a man to allow the law to be broken
-even in his own defence, or, at least, big enough
-not to mind the taunts of ill-bred children.</p>
-
-<p>The boys of the university are taken very seriously
-by the people of Caracas, as are all boys
-in that country, where a child is listened to, if
-he be a male child, with as much grave politeness
-as though it were a veteran who was speaking.
-The effect is not good, and the boys, especially
-of the university, grow to believe that
-they are very important factors in the affairs of
-the state, when, as a matter of fact, they are
-only the cat’s-paws of clever politicians, who use
-them whenever they want a demonstration and do
-not wish to appear in it themselves. So these
-boys are sent forth shouting into the streets, and
-half the people cheer them on, and the children
-themselves think they are patriots or liberators,
-or something equally important.</p>
-
-<p>I obtained a rather low opinion of them
-because they stoned an unfortunate American
-photographer who was taking pictures in the
-quadrangles, and because I was so far interested
-in them as to get a friend of mine to translate
-for me the sentences and verses they had written
-over the walls of their college. The verses
-were of a political character, but so indecent that
-the interpreter was much embarrassed; the single
-sentences were attacks, anonymous, of course,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>
-on fellow-students. As the students of the University
-of Venezuela step directly from college
-life into public life, their training is of some interest
-and importance. And I am sure that the
-Venezuelan fathers would do much better by
-their sons if they would cease to speak of the
-university in awe-stricken tones as “the hot-bed
-of liberty,” but would rather take away
-the boys’ revolvers and teach them football, and
-thrash them soundly whenever they caught them
-soiling the walls of their alma mater with nasty
-verses.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_267.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span>There are some beautiful drives around Caracas,
-out in the country among the coffee plantations,
-and one to a public garden that overlooks
-the city, upon which President Crespo has spent
-much thought and money. But the most beautiful
-feature of Caracas, and one that no person
-who has visited that place will ever forget, is the
-range of mountains above it, which no president
-can improve. They are smooth and bare of
-trees and of a light-green color, except in the
-waterways, where there are lines of darker green,
-and the clouds change their aspect continually,
-covering them with shadows or floating over
-them from valley to valley, and hovering above
-a high peak like the white smoke of a volcano.</p>
-
-<p>I do not know of a place that will so well repay
-a visit as Caracas, or a country that is so
-well worth exploring as Venezuela. To a sportsman<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>
-it is a paradise. You can shoot deer
-within six miles of the Opera-house, and in six
-hours beyond Macuto you can kill panther, and
-as many wild boars as you wish. No country
-in South America is richer in such natural products
-as cocoa, coffee, and sugar-cane. And in
-the interior there is a vast undiscovered and
-untouched territory waiting for the mining engineer,
-the professional hunter, and the breeder
-of cattle.</p>
-
-<p>The government of Venezuela at the time of
-our visit to Caracas was greatly troubled on account
-of her boundary dispute with Great Britain,
-and her own somewhat hasty action in sending
-three foreign ministers out of the country for
-daring to criticise her tardiness in paying foreign
-debts and her neglect in not holding to the terms
-of concessions. These difficulties, the latter of
-which were entirely of her own making, were interesting
-to us as Americans, because the talk
-on all sides showed that in the event of a serious
-trouble with any foreign power Venezuela looked
-confidently to the United States for aid. Now,
-since President Cleveland’s so-called “war” message
-has been written, she is naturally even more
-liable to go much further than she would dare go
-if she did not think the United States was back
-of her. Her belief in the sympathy of our government
-is also based on many friendly acts in the
-past: on the facts that General Miranda, the soldier<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>
-who preceded Bolivar, and who was a friend
-of Hamilton, Fox, and Lafayette, first learned
-to hope for the independence of South America
-during the battle for independence in our own
-country; that when the revolution began, in 1810,
-it was from the United States that Venezuela
-received her first war material; that two years
-later, when the earthquake of 1812 destroyed
-twenty thousand people, the United States Congress
-sent many ship-loads of flour to the survivors
-of the disaster; and that as late as 1888
-our Congress again showed its good feeling by
-authorizing the secretary of the navy to return
-to Venezuela on a ship of war the body of General
-Paez, who died in exile in New York city,
-and by appointing a committee of congressmen
-and senators to represent the government at his
-public funeral.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_271.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE CUYUNI RIVER<br>
-
-With View of the English Station that was sacked by Venezuelan Troops, and from which Inspector Barnes was taken Prisoner</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>All of these expressions of good-will in the
-past count for something as signs that the United
-States may be relied upon in the future, but
-it is a question whether she will be willing to go
-as far as Venezuela expects her to go. Venezuela’s
-hope of aid, and her conviction, which
-is shared by all the Central-American republics,
-that the United States is going to help her and
-them in the hour of need, is based upon what
-they believe to be the Monroe Doctrine. The
-Monroe Doctrine as we understand it is a very
-different thing from the Monroe Doctrine as they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>
-understand it; and while their reading of it is
-not so important as long as we know what it
-means and enforce it, there is danger nevertheless
-in their way of looking at it, for, according to
-their point of view, the Monroe Doctrine is expected
-to cover a multitude of their sins. President
-Monroe said that we should “consider any
-attempt on the part of foreign powers to extend
-their system to any portion of this hemisphere as
-dangerous to our peace and safety, and that we
-could not view any interposition for the purpose
-of oppressing those governments that had declared
-their independence, or controlling in any
-other manner their destiny, by any European power,
-in any other light than as a manifestation of
-an unfriendly disposition to the United States.”</p>
-
-<p>He did not say that if a Central-American republic
-banished a British consul, or if Venezuela
-told the foreign ministers to leave the country
-on the next steamer, that the United States
-would back them up with force of arms.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_274.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">VENEZUELAN STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER<br>
-
-The Barracks and House in which the English Police were confined</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>Admiral Meade’s squadron touched at La
-Guayra while we were at the capital, the squadron
-visiting the port at that time in obedience to
-the schedule already laid out for it in Washington
-some months previous, just as a theatrical
-company plays a week’s stand at the time and at
-the place arranged for it in advance by its agent,
-but the Venezuelans did not consider this, and
-believed that the squadron had been sent there
-to intimidate the British and to frighten the
-French and German men-of-war which were then
-expected in port to convey their dismissed ministers
-back to their own countries. One of the
-most intelligent men that I met in Caracas, and
-one closely connected with the Foreign Office,
-told me he had been to La Guayra to see our
-squadron, and that the admiral had placed his
-ships of war in the harbor in such a position
-that at a word he could blow the French and
-German boats out of the water. I suggested to
-one Venezuelan that there were other ways of
-dismissing foreign ministers than that of telling
-them to pack up and get out of the country in a
-week, and that I did not think the Monroe Doctrine
-meant that South-American republics could
-affront foreign nations with impunity. He answered
-me by saying that the United States had
-aided Mexico when Maximilian tried to found an
-empire in that country, and he could not see that
-the cases were not exactly similar.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_275.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">ENGLISH STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER<br>
-
-Inspector Barnes, Chief of the English Police who were captured by the Venezuelan
-troops, is seated on the steps</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>They will, however, probably understand better
-what the Monroe Doctrine really is before their
-boundary dispute with Great Britain is settled,
-and Great Britain will probably know more
-about it also, for it is possible that there never
-was a case when the United States needed to
-watch her English cousins more closely than in
-this international dispute over the boundary-line
-between Venezuela and British Guiana. If England
-succeeds it means a loss to Venezuela of a
-territory as large as the State of New York, and
-of gold deposits which are believed to be the
-richest in South America, and, what is more important,
-it means the entire control by the English
-of the mouth and four hundred miles of the
-Orinoco River. The question is one of historical
-records and maps, and nothing else. Great
-Britain fell heir to the rights formerly possessed
-by Holland. Venezuela obtained by conquest
-the lands formerly owned by Spain. The problem
-to be solved is to find what were the possessions
-of Holland and Spain, and so settle what is
-to-day the territory of England and Venezuela.
-Year after year Great Britain has pushed her
-way westward, until she has advanced her claims
-over a territory of forty thousand square miles,
-and has included Barima Point at the entrance
-to the Orinoco. She has refused positively,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>
-through Lord Salisbury, to recede or to arbitrate,
-and it is impossible for any one at this writing to
-foretell what the outcome will be. If the Monroe
-Doctrine does not apply in this case, it has
-never meant anything in the past, and will not
-mean much in the future.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_277.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">DR. PEDRO EZEQUIEL ROJAS<br>
-
-Minister of Foreign Affairs</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_278.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">MAP EXPLAINING VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE</p>
-
-<p>Personally, although the original Monroe Doctrine
-distinctly designates “this hemisphere,” and
-not merely this continent, I cannot think the
-principle of this doctrine should be applied in
-this instance. For if it does apply, it could be
-extended to other disputes much farther south,
-and we might have every republic in South America
-calling on us for aid in matters which could
-in no possible way affect either the honor or the
-prosperity of our country.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span></p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_279.jpg" alt=""></div>
-<p class="caption">THE CITY OF CARACAS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>In any event the Monroe Doctrine is distinctly
-a selfish one, so far, at least, as all rules for self-preservation
-must be selfish, and I should prefer
-to think that we are interfering in behalf of
-Venezuela, not because we ourselves are threatened
-by the encroachments of Great Britain, but
-because we cannot stand by and see a weak
-power put upon by one of the greatest. It may
-be true, as the foreign powers have pointed out,
-that the aggressions of Great Britain are none of
-our business, but as we have made them our
-business, it concerns no one except Great Britain
-and ourselves, and now having failed to avoid
-the entrance to a quarrel, and being in, we must
-bear ourselves so that the enemy may beware
-of us, and see that we issue forth again with
-honor, and without having stooped to the sin
-of war.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>Caracas was the last city we visited on our
-tour, and perhaps it is just as well that this was
-so, for had we gone there in the first place we
-might have been in Caracas still. It is easy to
-understand why it is attractive. While you
-were slipping on icy pavements and drinking in
-pneumonia and the grippe, and while the air was
-filled with flying particles of ice and snow, and
-the fog-bound tugs on the East River were
-shrieking and screeching to each other all
-through the night, we were sitting out-of-doors
-in the Plaza de Bolivar, looking up at the big
-statue on its black marble pedestal, under the
-shade of green palms and in the moonlight, with
-a band of fifty pieces playing Spanish music,
-and hundreds of officers in gold uniforms, and
-pretty women with no covering to their heads
-but a lace mantilla, circling past in an endless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>
-chain of color and laughter and movement.
-Back of us beyond the trees the cafés sent out
-through their open fronts the noise of tinkling
-glasses and the click of the billiard-balls and a
-flood of colored light, and beyond us on the
-other side rose the towers and broad façade of
-the cathedral, white and ghostly in the moonlight,
-and with a single light swinging in the
-darkness through the open door.</p>
-
-<p>In the opinion of three foreigners, Caracas
-deserves her title of the Paris of South America;
-and there was only one other title that appealed
-to us more as we saw the shores of La Guayra
-sink into the ocean behind us and her cloud-wrapped
-mountains disappear, and that, it is not
-necessary to explain, was “the Paris of North
-America,” which stretches from Bowling Green
-to High Bridge.</p>
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-<p class="ph1">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[A]</a> Since this was written, Professor S. H. Woodbridge, of the
-Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been successful in
-having a bill passed which hinders the lottery still further by
-closing to it apparently every avenue of advertisement and correspondence.</p>
-
-<p>The lottery people in consequence are at present negotiating
-with the government of Venezuela, and have offered it fifty thousand
-dollars a year and a share of the earnings for its protection.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[B]</a> Guiteris died a few months after our visit.</p>
-
-</div>
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-
-<p>Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.</p>
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