CENTRAL AMERICA--SAN JOSÉ TO GREYTOWN.
My purpose was to go right through Central America, from ocean to
ocean, and to accomplish this it was necessary that I should now
make my way down to the mouth of the San Juan river--to San Juan del
Norte as it was formerly called, or Greytown, as it is now named by
the English. This road, I was informed by all of whom I inquired,
was very bad,--so bad as to be all but impracticable to English
travellers.
And then, just at that moment, an event occurred which added greatly
to the ill name of this route. A few days before I reached San José,
a gentleman resident there had started for England with his wife,
and they had decided upon going by the San Juan. It seems that the
lady had reached San José, as all people do reach it, by Panamá and
Punta-arenas, and had suffered on the route. At any rate, she had
taken a dislike to it, and had resolved on returning by the San Juan
and the Serapiqui rivers, a route which is called the Serapiqui road.
To do this it is necessary for the traveller to ride on mules for
four, five, or six days, according to his or her capability. The
Serapiqui river is then reached, and from that point the further
journey is made in canoes down the Serapiqui river till it falls into
the San Juan, and then down that river to Greytown.
This gentleman with his wife reached the Serapiqui in safety; though
it seems that she suffered greatly on the road. But when once there,
as she herself said, all her troubles were over. That weary work of
supporting herself on her mule, through mud and thorns and thick
bushes, of scrambling over precipices and through rivers, was done.
She had been very despondent, even from before the time of her
starting; but now, she said, she believed that she should live to see
her mother again. She was seated in the narrow canoe, among cloaks
and cushions, with her husband close to her, and the boat was pushed
into the stream. Almost in a moment, within two minutes of starting,
not a hundred yards from the place where she had last trod, the canoe
struck against a snag or upturned fragment of a tree and was overset.
The lady was borne by the stream among the entangled branches of
timber which clogged the river, and when her body was found life had
been long extinct.
This had happened on the very day that I reached San José, and the
news arrived two or three days afterwards. The wretched husband, too,
made his way back to the town, finding himself unable to go on upon
his journey alone, with such a burden on his back. What could he
have said to his young wife's mother when she came to meet him at
Southampton, expecting to throw her arms round her daughter?
I was again lucky in having a companion for my journey. A young
lieutenant of the navy, Fitzm---- by name, whose vessel was lying at
Greytown, had made his way up to San José on a visit to the Ouseleys,
and was to return at the same time that I went down. He had indeed
travelled up with the bereaved man who had lost his wife, having read
the funeral service over the poor woman's grave on the lonely shores
of the Serapiqui. The road, he acknowledged, was bad, too bad, he
thought, for any female; but not more than sufficiently so to make
proper excitement for a man. He, at any rate, had come over it
safely; but then he was twenty-four, and I forty-four; and so we
started together from San José, a crowd of friends accompanying us
for the first mile or two. There was that Secretary of Legation
prophesying that we should be smothered in the mud; there was the
Consul and the Consul's brother; nor was female beauty wanting to
wish us well on our road, and maybe to fling an old shoe after us for
luck as we went upon our journey.
We took four mules, that was one each for ourselves, and two for our
baggage; we had two guides or muleteers, according to bargain, both
of whom travelled on foot. The understanding was, that one mule
lightly laden with provisions and a pair of slippers and tooth-brush
should accompany us, one man also going with us; but that the
heavy-laden mule should come along after us at its own pace. Things,
however, did not so turn out: on the first day both the men and both
the mules lagged behind, and on one occasion we were obliged to
wait above an hour for them; but after that we all kept in a string
together, having picked up a third muleteer somewhere on the road.
We had also with us a distressed British subject, who was intrusted
to my tender mercies by the Consul at San José. He was not a good
sample of a Britisher; he had been a gold-finder in California,
then a filibuster, after that a teacher of the piano in the country
part of Costa Rica, and lastly an omnibus driver. He was to act as
interpreter for us, which, however, he did not do with much honesty
or zeal.
Our road at first lay through the towns of Aredia and Barba, the
former of which is a pleasant-looking little village, where, however,
we found great difficulty in getting anything to drink. Up to this,
and for a few leagues further, the road was very fair, and the land
on each side of us was cultivated. We had started at eight a.m., and
at about three in the afternoon there seemed to be great doubt as to
where we should stop. The leading muleteer wished to take us to a
house of a friend of his own, whereas the lieutenant and I resolved
that the day's work had not been long enough. I take it that on the
whole we were right, and the man gave in with sufficient good humour;
but it ended in our passing the night in a miserable rancho. That at
the potrero, on the road to the volcanic mountain, had been a palace
to it.
And here we got into the forest; we had hitherto been ascending the
whole way from San José, and had by degrees lost all appearance of
tillage. Still, however, there had been open spaces here and there
cleared for cattle, and we had not as yet found ourselves absolutely
enveloped by woods. This rancho was called Buena-vista; and certainly
the view from it was very pretty. It was pretty and extensive, as I
have seen views in Baden and parts of Bavaria; but again there was
nothing about which I could rave.
I shall not readily forget the night in that rancho. We were, I
presume, between seven and eight thousand feet above the sea-level;
and at night, or rather early in the morning, the cold was very
severe. Fitzm---- and I shared the same bed; that is, we lay on the
same boards, and did what we could to cover ourselves with the same
blankets. In that country men commonly ride upon blankets, having
them strapped over the saddles as pillions, and we had come so
provided; but before the morning was over I heartily wished for a
double allowance.
We had brought with us a wallet of provisions, certainly not too
well arranged by Sir William Ouseley's most reprehensible butler.
Travellers should never trust to butlers. Our piece de résistance
was a ham, and lo! it turned out to be a bad one. When the truth of
this fact first dawned upon us it was in both our minds to go back
and slay that butler: but there was still a piece of beef and some
chickens, and there had been a few dozen of hard-boiled eggs. But
Fitzm---- would amuse himself with eating these all along the road:
I always found when the ordinary feeding time came that they had not
had the slightest effect upon his appetite.
On the next morning we again ascended for about a couple of leagues,
and as long as we did so the road was still good; the surface was
hard, and the track was broad, and a horseman could wish nothing
better. And then we reached the summit of the ridge over which we
were passing; this we did at a place called Desenganos, and from
thence we looked down into vast valleys all running towards the
Atlantic. Hitherto the fall of water had been into the Pacific.
At this place we found a vast shed, with numberless bins and troughs
lying under it in great confusion. The facts, as far as I could
learn, were thus: Up to this point the government, that is Don Juan
Mora, or perhaps his predecessor, had succeeded in making a road
fit for the transit of mule carts. This shed had also been built to
afford shelter for the postmen and accommodation for the muleteers.
But here Don Juan's efforts had been stopped; money probably had
failed; and the great remainder of the undertaking will, I fear, be
left undone for many a long year.
And yet this, or some other road from the valley of San José to the
Atlantic, would be the natural outlet of the country. At present
the coffee grown in the central high lands is carried down to
Punta-arenas on the Pacific, although it must cross the Atlantic to
reach its market; consequently, it is either taken round the Horn,
and its sale thus delayed for months, or it is transported across the
isthmus by railway, at an enormous cost. They say there is a point
at which the Atlantic may be reached more easily than by the present
route of the Serapiqui river; nothing, however, has as yet been
done in the matter. To make a road fit even for mule carts, by the
course of the present track, would certainly be a work of enormous
difficulty.
And now our vexations commenced. We found that the path very soon
narrowed, so much so that it was with difficulty we could keep our
hats on our heads; and then the surface of the path became softer and
softer, till our beasts were up to their knees in mud. All motion
quicker than that of a walk became impossible; and even at this
pace the struggles in the mud were both frequent and uncomfortable.
Hitherto we had talked fluently enough, but now we became very
silent; we went on following, each at the other's tail, floundering
in the mud, silent, filthy, and down in the mouth.
"I tell you what it is," said Fitzm---- at last, stopping on the
road, for he had led the van, "I can't go any further without
breakfast." We referred the matter to the guide, and found that
Careblanco, the place appointed for our next stage, was still two
hours distant.
"Two hours! Why, half an hour since you said it was only a league!"
But what is the use of expostulating with a man who can't speak a
word of English?
So we got off our mules, and draped out our wallet among the bushes.
Our hard-boiled eggs were all gone, and it seemed as though the
travelling did not add fresh delights to the cold beef; so we
devoured another fowl, and washed it down with brandy and water.
As we were so engaged three men passed us with heavy burdens on their
backs. They were tall, thin, muscular fellows, with bare legs, and
linen clothes,--one of them apparently of nearly pure Indian blood.
It was clear that the loads they carried were very weighty. They were
borne high up on the back, and suspended by a band from the forehead,
so that a great portion of the weight must have fallen on the muscles
of the neck. This was the post; and as they had left San José some
eight hours after us, and had come by a longer route, so as to take
in another town, they must have travelled at a very fast pace. It was
our object to go down the Serapiqui river in the same boat with the
post. We had some doubt whether we should be able to get any other,
seeing that the owner of one such canoe had been drowned, I believe
in an endeavour to save the unfortunate lady of whom I have spoken;
and any boat taken separately would be much more expensive.
So, as quick as might be, we tied up our fragments and proceeded. It
was after this that I really learned how all-powerful is the force of
mud. We came at last to a track that was divided crossways by ridges,
somewhat like the ridges of ploughed ground. Each ridge was perhaps a
foot and a half broad, and the mules invariably stepped between them,
not on them. Stepping on them they could not have held their feet.
Stepping between them they came at each step with their belly to
the ground, so that the rider's feet and legs were trailing in the
mud. The struggles of the poor brutes were dreadful. It seemed to me
frequently impossible that my beast should extricate himself, laden
as he was. But still he went on patiently, slowly, and continuously;
splash, splash; slosh, slosh! Every muscle of his body was working;
and every muscle of my body was working also.
For it is not very easy to sit upon a mule under such circumstances.
The bushes were so close upon me that one hand was required to guard
my face from the thorns; my knees were constantly in contact with the
stumps of trees, and when my knees were free from such difficulties,
my shins were sure to be in the wars. Then the poor animal rolled
so from side to side in his incredible struggles with the mud that
it was frequently necessary to hold myself on by the pommel of the
saddle. Added to this, it was essentially necessary to keep some sort
of guide upon the creature's steps, or one's legs would be absolutely
broken. For the mule cares for himself only, and not for his rider.
It is nothing to him if a man's knees be put out of joint against the
stump of a tree.
Splash, splash, slosh, slosh! on we went in this way for hours,
almost without speaking. On such occasions one is apt to become
mentally cross, to feel that the world is too hard for one, that
one's own especial troubles are much worse than those of one's
neighbours, and that those neighbours are unfairly favoured. I could
not help thinking it very unjust that I should be fifteen stone,
while Fitzm---- was only eight. And as for that distressed Britisher,
he weighed nothing at all.
Splash, splash, slosh, slosh! we were at it all day. At
Careblanco--the place of the _white-faced pigs_ I understood it to
mean;--they say that there is a race of wild hogs with white faces
which inhabit the woods hereabouts--we overtook the post, and kept
close to them afterwards. This was a pasture farm in the very middle
of the forest, a bit of cleared land on which some adventurer had
settled himself and dared to live. The adventurer himself was not
there, but he had a very pretty wife, with whom my friend the
lieutenant seemed to have contracted an intimate acquaintance on his
previous journey up to San José.
But at Careblanco we only stopped two minutes, during which, however,
it became necessary that the lieutenant should go into the rancho
on the matter of some article of clothes which had been left behind
on his previous journey; and then, again, on we went, slosh, slosh,
splash, splash! My shins by this time were black and blue, and I held
myself on to my mule chiefly by my spurs. Our way was still through
dense forest, and was always either up or down hill. And here we came
across the grandest scenery that I met with in the western world;
scenery which would admit of raving, if it were given to me to rave
on such a subject.
We were travelling for the most part along the side of a volcanic
mountain, and every now and then the declivity would become so steep
as to give us a full view down into the ravine below, with the
prospect of the grand, steep, wooded hill on the other side, one huge
forest stretching up the mountain for miles. At the bottom of the
ravine one's eye would just catch a river, looking like a moving
thread of silver wire. And yet, though the descent was so great,
there would be no interruption to it. Looking down over the thick
forest trees which grew almost from the side of a precipice, the eye
would reach the river some thousand feet below, and then ascend on
the other side over a like unbroken expanse of foliage.
Of course we both declared that we had never seen anything to equal
it. In moments of ecstasy one always does so declare. But there was
a monotony about it, and a want of grouping which forbids me to place
it on an equality with scenery really of the highest kind, with the
mountains, for instance, round Colico, with the head of the Lake
of the Four Cantons, or even with the views of the upper waters of
Killarney.
And then, to speak the truth, we were too much engulfed in mud, too
thoughtful as to the troubles of the road, to enjoy it thoroughly.
"Wonderful that; isn't it?" "Yes, very wonderful; fine break; for
heaven's sake do get on." That is the tone which men are apt to adopt
under such circumstances. Five or six pounds of thick mud clinging
round one's boots and inside one's trousers do not add to one's
enjoyment of scenery.
Mud, mud; mud, mud! At about five o'clock we splashed into another
pasture farm in the middle of the forest, a place called San Miguel,
and there we rested for that night. Here we found that our beef also
must be thrown away, and that our bread was all gone. We had picked
up some more hard-boiled eggs at ranchos on the road, but hard-boiled
eggs to my companion were no more than grains of gravel to a
barn-door fowl; they merely enabled him to enjoy his regular diet. At
this place, however, we were able to purchase fowls--skinny old hens
which were shot for us at a moment's warning. The price being, here
and elsewhere along the road, a dollar a head. Tea and candles a
ministering angel had given to me at the moment of my departure
from San José. But for them we should have indeed been comfortless,
thirsty, and in utter darkness. Towards evening a man gets tired
of brandy and water, when he has been drinking it since six in the
morning.
Our washing was done under great difficulties, as in these districts
neither nature nor art seems to have provided for such emergencies.
In this place I got my head into a tin pot, and could hardly
extricate it. But even inside the houses and ranchos everything
seemed to turn into mud. The floor beneath one's feet became mud with
the splashing of the water. The boards were begrimed with mud. We
were offered coffee that was mud to the taste and touch. I felt that
the blood in my veins was becoming muddy.
And then we had another day exactly like the former, except that the
ground was less steep, and the vistas of scenery less grand. The
weather also was warmer, seeing that we were now on lower ground.
Monkeys chattered on the trees around us, and the little congo ape
roared like a lion. Macaws flew about, generally in pairs; and we saw
white turkeys on the trees. Up on the higher forests we had seen none
of these animals.
There are wild hogs also in these woods, and ounces. The ounce here
is, I believe, properly styled the puma, though the people always
call them lions. They grow to about the size of a Newfoundland dog.
The wild cat also is common here, the people styling them tigers. The
xagua is, I take it, their proper name. None of these animals will, I
believe, attack a man unless provoked or pressed in pursuit; and not
even then if a way of escape be open to him.
We again breakfasted at a forest clearing, paying a dollar each for
tough old hens, and in the evening we came to a cacao plantation in
the middle of the forest which had been laid out and settled by an
American of the United States residing in Central America. This place
is not far from the Serapiqui river, and is called Padregal. It was
here that the young lieutenant had read the funeral service over the
body of that unfortunate lady.
I went with him to visit the grave. It was a spot in the middle of a
grass enclosure, fenced off rudely so as to guard it from beasts of
prey. The funeral had taken place after dusk. It had been attended by
some twelve or fourteen Costa Rican soldiers who are kept in a fort
a little below, on the banks of the Serapiqui. Each of these men had
held a torch. The husband was there, and another Englishman who was
travelling with him; as was also, I believe, the proprietor of the
place. So attended, the body of the Englishwoman was committed to its
strange grave in a strange country.
Here we picked up another man, an American, who also had been looking
for gold, and perhaps doing a turn as a filibuster. Him too the world
had used badly, and he was about to return with all his golden dreams
unaccomplished.
We had one more stage down to the spot at which we were to embark
in the canoe--the spot at which the lady had been drowned--and this
one we accomplished early in the morning. This place is called the
Muelle, and here there is a fort with a commandant and a small
company of soldiers. The business of the commandant is to let no
one up or down the river without a passport; and as a passport
cannot be procured anywhere nearer than San José, here may arise
a great difficulty to travellers. We were duly provided, but our
recently-picked-up American friend was not; and he was simply told
that he would not be allowed to get into a boat on the river.
"I never seed such a d----d country in my life," said the American.
"They would not let me leave San José till I paid every shilling
I owed; and now that I have paid, I ain't no better off. I wish
I hadn't paid a d----d cent."
I advised him to try what some further operation in the way of
payment would do, and with this view he retired with the commandant.
In a minute or two they both returned, and the commandant said he
would look at his instructions again. He did so, and declared that
he now found it was compatible with his public duty to allow the
American to pass. "But I shall not have a cent left to take me home,"
said the American to me. He was not a smart man, though he talked
smart. For when the moment of departure came all the places in the
boat were taken, and we left him standing on the shore. "Well, I'm
darned!" he said; and we neither heard nor saw more of him.
That passage down the Serapiqui was not without interest, though it
was somewhat monotonous. Here, for the first time in my life, I found
my bulk and size to be of advantage to me. In the after part of the
canoe sat the master boatman, the captain of the expedition, steering
with a paddle. Then came the mails and our luggage, and next to them
I sat, having a seat to myself, being too weighty to share a bench
with a neighbour. I therefore could lean back among the luggage; and
with a cigar in my mouth, with a little wooden bicher of weak brandy
and water beside me, I found that the position had its charms.
On the next thwart sat, cheek by jowl, the lieutenant and the
distressed Britisher. Unfortunately they had nothing on which to
lean, and I sincerely pitied my friend, who, I fear, did not enjoy
his position. But what could I do? Any change in our arrangements
would have upset the canoe. And then close in the bow of the boat sat
the two natives paddling; and they did paddle without cessation all
that day, and all the next till we reached Greytown.
The Serapiqui is a fine river; very rapid, but not so much so as to
make it dangerous, if care be taken to avoid the snags. There is not
a house or hut on either side of it; but the forest comes down to the
very brink. Up in the huge trees the monkeys hung jabbering, shaking
their ugly heads at the boat as it went down, or screaming in anger
at this invasion of their territories. The macaws flew high over
head, making their own music, and then there was the constant little
splash of the paddle in the water. The boatmen spoke no word, but
worked on always, pausing now and again for a moment to drink out of
the hollow of their hands. And the sun became hotter and hotter as we
neared the sea; and the musquitoes began to bite; and cigars were lit
with greater frequency. 'Tis thus that one goes down the waters of
the Serapiqui.
About three we got into the San Juan. This is the river by which the
great lake of Nicaragua empties itself into the sea; which has been
the channel used by the transit companies who have passed from ocean
to ocean through Nicaragua; which has been so violently interfered
with by filibusters, till all such transit has been banished from its
waters; and which has now been selected by M. Belly as the course for
his impossible canal. It has seen dreadful scenes of cruelty, wrong,
and bloodshed. Now it runs along peaceably enough, in its broad,
shallow, swift course, bearing on its margin here and there the
rancho and provision-ground of some wild settler who has sought to
overcome
"The whips and scorns of time--
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,"
by looking for bread and shelter on those sad, sunburnt, and solitary
banks.
We landed at one such place to dine, and at another to sleep,
selecting in each place some better class of habitation. At neither
place did we find the owner there, but persons left in charge of the
place. At the first the man was a German; a singularly handsome and
dirty individual, who never shaved or washed himself, and lived
there, ever alone, on bananas and musk-melons. He gave us fruit to
take into the boat with us, and when we parted we shook hands with
him. Out here every one always does shake hands with every one. But
as I did so I tendered him a dollar. He had waited upon us, bringing
water and plates; he had gathered fruit for us; and he was, after
all, no more than the servant of the river squatter. But he let the
dollar fall to the ground, and that with some anger in his face. The
sum was made up of the small silver change of the country, and I felt
rather little as I stooped under the hot sun to pick it up from out
the mud of the garden. Better that than seem to leave it there in
anger. It is often hard for a traveller to know when he is wished to
pay, and when he is wished not to pay. A poorer-looking individual
in raiment and position than that German I have seldom seen; but he
despised my dollar as though it had been dirt.
We slept at the house of a Greytown merchant, who had maintained an
establishment up the river, originally with the view of supplying
the wants of the American travellers passing in transit across the
isthmus. The flat-bottom steamers which did some five or six years
since ply upon the river used to take in wood here and stop for the
night. And the passengers were wont to come on shore, and call for
rum and brandy; and in this way much money was made. Till after a
time filibusters came instead of passengers; men who took all the
wood that they could find there--hundreds of dollars' worth of sawn
wood, and brandy also--took it away with them, saying that they would
give compensation when they were established in the country, but made
no present payment. And then it became tolerably clear that the time
for making money in that locality had passed away.
They came in great numbers on one such occasion, and stripped away
everything they could find. Sawn wood for their steam-boilers was
especially desirable, and they took all that had been prepared for
the usual wants of the river. Having helped themselves to this, and
such other chattels as were at the moment needed and at hand, they
went on their way, grimly rejoicing. On the following day most of
them returned; some without arms, some without legs, some even
without heads; a wretched, wounded, mutilated, sore-struck body of
filibusters. The boiler of their large steamer had burst, scattering
destruction far and near. It was current among the filibusters that
the logs of wood had been laden with gunpowder in order to effect
this damage. It is more probable, that being filibusters, rough
and ready as the phrase goes, they had not duly looked to their
engineering properties. At any rate, they all returned. On the whole,
these filibusters have suffered dire punishment for their sins.
At any rate, the merchant under whose roof we slept received no
payment for his wood. Here we found two men living, not in such
squalid misery as that independent German, but nevertheless
sufficiently isolated from the world. One was an old Swedish sailor,
who seemed to speak every language under the sun, and to have been in
every portion of the globe, whether under the sun or otherwise. At
any rate, we could not induce him to own to not having been in any
place. Timbuctoo; yes, indeed, he had unfortunately been a captive
there for three years. At Mecca he had passed as an Arab among the
Arabs, having made the great pilgrimage in company with many children
of Mahomet, wearing the green turban as a veritable child of Mahomet
himself. Portsmouth he knew well, having had many a row about the
Head. We could not catch him tripping, though we put him through his
facings to the best of our joint geographical knowledge. At present
he was a poor gardener on the San Juan river, having begun life as a
lieutenant in the Swedish navy. _He_ had seen too much of the world
to refuse the dollar which was offered to him.
On the next morning we reached Greytown, following the San Juan river
down to that pleasant place. There is another passage out to the sea
by the Colorado, a branch river which, striking out from the San
Juan, runs into the ocean by a shorter channel. This also has been
thought of as a course for the projected canal, preferable to that
of the San Juan. I believe them to be equally impracticable. The San
Juan river itself is so shallow that we were frequently on the ground
even in our light canoe.
And what shall I say of Greytown? We have a Consul-General there,
or at least had one when these pages were written; a Consul-General
whose duty it is, or was, to have under his special care the King
of Mosquitia--as some people are pleased to call this coast--of
the Mosquito coast as it is generally styled. Bluefields, further
along the coast, is the chosen residence of this sable tyrant; but
Greytown is the capital of his dominions. Now it is believed that, in
deference to the feelings of the United States, and to the American
reading of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and in deference, I may add,
to a very sensible consideration that the matter is of no possible
moment to ourselves, the protectorate of the Mosquito coast is to be
abandoned. What the king will do I cannot imagine; but it will be
a happy day I should think for our Consul when he is removed from
Greytown. Of all the places in which I have ever put my foot, I
think that is the most wretched. It is a small town, perhaps of two
thousand inhabitants, though this on my part is a mere guess, at the
mouth of the San Juan, and surrounded on every side either by water
or impassable forests. A walk of a mile in any direction would be
impossible, unless along the beach of the sea; but this is of less
importance, as the continual heat would prevent any one from thinking
of such exercise. Sundry Americans live here, worshipping the
almighty dollar as Americans do, keeping liquor shops and warehouses;
and with the Americans, sundry Englishmen and sundry Germans. Of the
female population I saw nothing except some negro women, and one
white, or rather red-faced owner of a rum shop. The native population
are the Mosquito Indians; but it seems that they are hardly allowed
to live in Greytown. They are to be seen paddling about in their
canoes, selling a few eggs and chickens, catching turtle, and
not rarely getting drunk. They would seem from their colour and
physiognomy to be a cross between the negro and the Indian; and such
I imagine to be the case. They have a language of their own, but
those on the coast almost always speak English also.
My gallant young friend, Fitzm----, was in command of a small
schooner inside the harbour of Greytown. As the accommodation of the
city itself was not inviting, I gladly took up my quarters under his
flag until the English packet, which was then hourly expected, should
be ready to carry me to Colon and St. Thomas. I can only say that
if I was commander of that schooner I would lie outside the harbour,
so as to be beyond the ill-usage of those frightful musquitoes. The
country has been well named Mosquitia.
There was an American man-of-war and also an English
man-of-war--sloops-of-war both I believe technically--lying off
Greytown; and we dined on board them both, on two consecutive days.
Of the American I will say, speaking in their praise, that I never
ate such bacon and peas. It may be that the old hens up the Serapiqui
river had rendered me peculiarly susceptible to such delights; but
nevertheless, I shall always think that there was something peculiar
about the bacon and peas on board the American sloop-of-war 'St.
Louis.'
And on the second day the steamer came in; the 'Trent,' Captain Moir;
we then dined on board of her, and on the same night she sailed for
Colon. And when shall I see that gallant young lieutenant again?
Putting aside his unjust, and I must say miraculous consumption
of hard-boiled eggs, I could hardly wish for a better travelling
companion.