COSTA RICA—THE “RICH COAST”
If we travel by the shortest and most comfortable route from Nicaragua
to Costa Rica—the “Rich Coast”—we shall take a steamer on the Pacific
from Corinto to Puntarenas (“Sandy Point”) where we can get a train for
the capital. Or we can take a boat at Granada and sail down Lake
Nicaragua to the border of Costa Rica. Let us, however, go down the
Atlantic coast—called the Mosquito Coast from the Misskitos or
Mosquitos, a race of mixed African and Indian blood.
Weather-blackened old San Juan del Norte, otherwise known as Greytown,
will be the Caribbean terminus of the Nicaraguan Canal, if it is ever
built. It is a typical east-coast town, low, swampy, ill smelling, with
black inhabitants in the majority. In the days of the gold rush to
California it was a thriving city. Then this coast, from Yucatan to
Costa Rica, was a part of the British Mosquito Kingdom, of which only
British Honduras (Belize) now remains. To-day the whole population of
Greytown rush to their doors to stare at any new white man who lands
there.
We take a boat from Greytown to Port Limón, the principal port of what
many people consider the most charming land in America. Limón harbor is
bounded by a white crescent beach fringed with graceful coconut palms.
Several million bunches of bananas a year are shipped from Limón to the
United States and Europe. The Caribbean shore is noted also for its
turtles, which furnish us soup and tortoise shell. On the Pacific coast
pink pearls and mother-of-pearl are obtained.
[Illustration:
United Fruit Company
Coffee picking on a plantation not far from San José.
]
Limón is the eastern terminus of the short transcontinental railway
which passes through the capital, San José. One of the three railroads
in Spanish-America most famous for scenic beauty, it carries us inland
through an ever-changing panorama of banana plantations, cane fields,
thatched villages, dense jungles and forests. We pass magnificent trees,
festooned with moss and vines, as we make our way through rugged gulches
and beside foaming rivers. In the distance lofty mountains tower toward
flimsy white clouds that float in the bluest of skies. From Port Limón
to San José the railway is owned by an English corporation but it is
leased by the Northern Railway Company, a subsidiary of the United Fruit
Company. From San José to the Pacific coast the railway is owned and
operated by the Costa Rican Government.
[Illustration:
Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco
A cart full of coffee beans delivering its load.
]
Into the Highlands Once More
The train climbs mountain sides until the stream it has been following
becomes a mere ribbon far below. It crawls along winding cliffs that
look out upon endless vistas of waving palm-tree tops. Soon we are up in
the exhilarating coolness of the highlands, among rolling hills. The
banana lands and the uncomfortably hot weather have been left behind at
the foothills. Up to an altitude of three of four thousand feet, we pass
many coffee plantations, the red berries glistening in the morning dew.
The bushes climb hills so steep that the planters and pickers would seem
to need ladders. Costa Rica coffee, which is considered excellent, is
sold mostly in the European countries. To the Costa Ricans it is one of
their most important products.
[Illustration:
Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco
One of the processes in preparing coffee for the market consists in
washing it.
]
Other products of this rich land are tobacco, sugar, cacao, rubber,
vanilla, and hides; but all these are of small account compared to
bananas and coffee. Costa Rica has minerals, too, but its agricultural
products are more important. Columbus rightly named the region “Rich
Coast.” Yet fertile as it is, and despite its name, it was very poor
until it had been opened up by foreign capital.
Costa Rica, with its 23,000 square miles, is about half as large as
Pennsylvania. Except Salvador, it is the smallest republic in the
Americas. Everywhere but on the east coast it is very mountainous, with
many volcanoes. Not only is the scenery beautiful; the climate is
splendid at all but the lowest levels. Most of the country is so
healthful that Canal Zone doctors recommend it to convalescents, and
many American employees go to Costa Rica for their yearly vacations
instead of returning to the United States.
The railroad reaches a height of almost five thousand feet at the top of
the pass some ninety miles from the Atlantic. The mountains seem to roll
over one another in all sorts of shapes, like a school yard full of boys
playing rough and tumble. Here are great gorges, there hollows or plots
of almost level land covered with small farms. Some of the peaks are two
miles high, and from the top of one of them both oceans can be seen.
[Illustration:
Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco
Both coffee and rosewood are shipped from Puntarenas, Costa Rica.
]
From the summit, the train descends two thousand feet toward the
capital. On the way we stop at Cartago, the old capital and seat of
Spanish rule, picturesque with its red-tiled roofs. It was named for
Carthage, famous city of antiquity. When independence was declared, some
of the people of Cartago refused to join the revolutionists, and the
latter made San José their capital. Many wealthy Costa Ricans still
prefer to live in Cartago. It lies on the slope of the volcano Irazú,
which has a number of worn-out craters. Mt. Poas makes more trouble for
the region. In April, 1910, an earthquake was felt throughout the
plateau, and in Cartago one thousand people, one-tenth of the
population, perished in the ruins of their city. To-day there are still
signs of this disaster, but most of the wrecked area has been rebuilt.
The visitor who wanders about Cartago on a summer evening (the only kind
of evening the city has) and sees the gay crowds at the outdoor band
concert or coming from the movies or the theater, finds it hard to
realize that it has been the scene of a great tragedy.
[Illustration:
United Fruit Company
The National Theater at San José, Costa Rica, is a very costly and
handsome building.
]
The Delightful Costa Rican Capital
The train goes on down into a fertile valley dotted with little farms
and puffs into San José, the most delightful capital in Central America
and one of the most interesting small cities anywhere below the Rio
Grande. It lies in a natural amphitheater of mountains that are always
green, their heads often lost in clouds. It is a city of quaint Spanish
architecture, yet with every modern comfort, a city of the loveliest
climate, a quiet, peaceful city slumbering beneath a warm sun that never
burns, with the most attractive _plazas_. and, some people think, the
most beautiful women in the world.
The most delightful thing about San José is that, though it is so
up-to-date in some ways, it remains as picturesquely charming as a city
of old Spain. Nearly every woman one meets wears a very large shawl.
Even among the lower classes this wrap is often richly embroidered,
though the wearer may be barefoot. It is often of silk, in brilliant
colors, with a fringe a foot long. The one- or two-story houses squat
contentedly about the big cathedral, like chicks about a hen. Oxen plod
slowly through the narrow Moorish streets behind the driver’s goad—for
the Spanish way is to walk ahead and coax the animals to follow by
goading them in the neck. Their noses almost touch the ground, their
massive shoulders swing from side to side in unison, because of the yoke
bound to their horns. In the coffee fields just outside the capital, the
peons laugh and chat as they fill their baskets with the red berries
that will some day cheer the café customers of Paris and Berlin.
A Progressive Land
Columbus discovered the “Rich Coast” in 1493, and by the time of his
fourth voyage, in 1502, it seems already to have been settled. Fortune
favored it from the beginning. As it had few gold mines, it did not
attract to its shores those swashbuckling adventurers whose descendants
still keep so many of the neighboring countries in turmoil. It was not
settled by _conquistadores_ from hot-blooded Andalusia, bent on
enslaving the Indians and doing no work themselves, but by people from
Galicia in the northwestern corner of Spain. Although other Spaniards
consider the Gallegos (people of Galicia) rather stupid, they are the
hardest-working farmers in Spain. Those who came to America did not
intermarry with the Indians of Costa Rica but took the country away from
the native tribes. To-day, once we have passed the black fringe along
the Caribbean coast, we find few Indians and not many half-breeds, but a
race that is eighty per cent pure Spanish, even among the lowly peons.
It is no wonder that the people of Costa Rica seem happier than most
Central Americans. Their country is not only fertile and charming, but
usually it is one of the most peaceful of the Latin-American lands. The
two smallest republics on the American continents, Salvador and Costa
Rica, are among the most progressive.
The Costa Ricans are paying off their national debt. They have enough
primary and grammar schools for all the children, and colleges in the
chief cities. The law requires all children to go to school. Not being
troubled by constant civil wars, Costa Rica has had time to progress.
The land is fairly divided; most of the people own their own farms and
are contented. Nearly every countryman has his own little estate, with a
patch of bananas, a fruit garden, and a place to grow vegetables.
Costa Rica refused to join the other countries of Central America in a
federation, because it knew that it could get on better alone than by
combining with its quarrelsome neighbors. True, in 1872 it had its ninth
constitution which, for the next ten years, was almost suspended by a
dictator of the Diaz type; and since then the constitution has often
been changed. But on the whole it has had a peaceful history. Its
president and members of Congress are elected for four years. It has a
small standing army of five hundred soldiers in time of peace, but as
all men between the ages of eighteen and sixty are in the militia, it
can quickly call upon 50,000 reserves if war breaks out.
Costa Rica has a population of about 500,000, of whom only 3,500 are
Indians. Most of its people live on the central plateau, in an area of
about 3,500 square miles, so that nearly five-sixths of its territory is
still covered with forest and jungle. The four principal cities are in
the one mountain district, and are so close together that they are
connected by a wagon road barely thirty miles long. Most of its roads
and forms of transportation are still quite primitive. Away from the
railroad nearly all travel is on horseback, or in oxcarts. The small
horses are almost all singlefoot—that is, their gait is an amble—which
makes them easy to ride. Nearly every traveler carries saddlebags across
his shoulders, instead of a suitcase in his hand, and horses are seen at
almost every station.
Although San José is a city of only about 40,000 inhabitants it boasts a
two-million-dollar national theater which is as richly decorated as any
in the United States. This theater was badly damaged by an earthquake in
March, 1924, but it has been almost entirely rebuilt. It really benefits
only the rich and the well-to-do, since most of the people cannot afford
to attend it. Often it is closed for a whole year. Yet everyone is
required to help pay for it, because it is maintained by the government.
[Illustration:
Canal Zone. Photo by E. Hallen, Official Photographer
The city of Panama from Ancon Hill, looking out across the Pacific’s
broad expanse.
]