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]