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.