Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond

difference between a "buen camino" and a mere "road" is so slight in Central America that I concluded to follow the more direct trail. The next essential was to change my wealt

, worth some forty cents. My load was heavier, as befitted an exit from even quasi-civilization. The rucksack was packed with more than fourteen pounds, not counting kodak and weapon, and fo

some immense red-hot ingot swinging overhead in a foundry. The road-and in Central America that word seldom represents anything better than a rocky, winding trail with rarely a level yard-sweated up and down sharp mountain faces, picking its way as best it could over a continual succession of steep lofty ridges. Even before I lost the railway to view I was dripping wet from cap to shoes, drops fell const

I met seemed friendly enough. Darkness thickened and I was planning to swing my hammock among the trees when I fell upon the hut of Coronado Cordón. It was a sieve-like structure of bamboo, topped by

s the nigh

ou may sleep on this

t of a horseman who had also sought hospitality, where a steady breeze swept through. His wife squatted for an hour or more

reak until six and I had been awake and ready since three. Coronado slept on, but his se?ora arose and, covering her breasts with a small apron, took to grinding corn for tortilla

ing in my bundle, it soaked even belt and holster, rusting the weapon within it, and leaving a visible trail behind me. Once, at the careless nod of an Indian, I strained up an all but perpendicular slope, only to have the trail end hundreds of feet abov

ike as the inhabitants. These were almost obsequious peons, wearing a sort of white pajamas and moderate-sized straw hats, all strangely clean. Each carried a machete, generally with a curved point, and not a few had guns. Toward evening I struck a bit of level going amid dense vegetation without a breath of air along the bank of a river that must be forded lower down, which fact I took advantage of to perpetrate

refusal I declined to accept and swung my hammock under the eaves. A woman was cooking on the earth floor for several peon travelers, but treated me only with a stony silence. One of the Indians, howev

and an officer who would have ranked as a vagabond in another country sold me three tortillas and a shellful of coffee saved from his rations. Another cluster of huts marked the

I sat in a fairly easy chair in the shaded corner of a barnyard among pigs, chickens, and turkeys while my tortillas were preparing, I got the first definite information as to the tramp before me. Tegucigalpa, the capital, was said to be fifteen days distant by mule. On foot it mi

length to a great artificial mound, originally built of cut-stone, but now covered with deep grass and a splendid grove of immense trees, until in appearance only a natural hill remained. Ab

w of a mountain, from which spread a vast panorama of pine-clad world. But the trails of Honduras are like spendthrift adventurers, struggling with might and main to gain an advantage, only wantonly to throw it away again a moment later. This one pitched headlong down again, then climbed, then descended over and again, as if setting itself some useless task for the mere pleasure of showin

the dusk. The owner lived elsewhere; for which no one could blame him. I marched out along the great tile-floored veranda to mention to the stupid mayordomo the relationship of money and food. He referred me to a filth-encrusted woman in the cavern-like kitchen, where three soiled and bedraggled babies slept on a dirtier reed mat on the filthy earth floor, another in a hammock made of a grain sack and two pieces of rope, amid dogs, pigs, and chickens, not to mention other unp

y of bathing pointed silently upward at the rafters of the veranda. These were at least ten feet above the tiled floor and I made several ineffectual efforts before I could reach them at all, and then only succeeded in hanging my sleeping-net so that it doubled me up like a jack-knife. Rearranging it near the corner of the veranda, I managed with great effort to climb into it, but to have fallen ou

place, and the night was a pandemonium of their coughing, snoring, and night-maring, mingled with the hubbub of dogs, roosters, turkeys, cattle, and a porcine multitude t

dy rumpled and stained almost beyond repair; and, fifth, but by no means last, the few American bills I carried in a secret pocket had been almost effaced by humidity and friction. Furthermore, the "road" completely surpassed all human powers of description. When it was not splitting into a half-dozen faint paths, any one of which was sure to fade from existence as soon as it had succeeded in leading me astray in a panting chase up some perpendicular slope, it was splashing through mud-holes or small rivers. At the first stream I squandered a half-hour disrobing and dressing again, only to find that some two hu

red my hungry query with a cheery "Cómo no!" and in due time set before me black beans and blacker coffee and a Hondur

onditions, themselves, or their surroundings, which we of civilized lands think of as humanity's privilege and requirement, than the mangy yellow curs that slink in and

t, her pulse close to the hundred mark. When I had treated her to the best of my ability, the mother stated that a friend in a neighboring hut had been suffering for more than a week with chills and fever, but that she was "embarrassed" and must not take anything that might bring that condition prematurely to a head. I prescribed not without some layman misgiving. Great astonishment spread throughout the

se trees whispering together far above. A half-hour up, the trail, all but effaced, was cut off by a newly constructed rail fence tied together with vines run through holes that had been pierced in the buttresses of giants of the forest. There was no other route in sight, however, and I climbed the obstruction and sweated another half-hour upward. A vista of at least eight heavily wooded ranges

more the muddy path along it between dense walls of damp jungle. It grew worse and worse, falling in with a smaller stream and leaping back and forth across it every few yards, sometimes permitting me to dodge across like a tight-rope walker on wet mossy stones, more often delaying me to remove shoes and leggings. An hour of this and the scene changed. A vast mountain wall rose before me, and a sharp rocky trail at times like steps cut by nature in the rock face led u

of the mountain, with thinner pine forests and the red soil showing through here and there; not all down either, for the trail had the confirmed habit of falling into bottomless sharp gullies every few yards and struggling out again up the steepest of banks, though the privilege of thrusting my face into the clear mountain stream at the bottom of each made me pardon these monotonous vaga

autiful forms of plant and bird life, with rarely a habitation or a fellow-man to break the spell of pure, unadulterated nature. For brea

'homme, plus j'

f lodging a stranger. This time I slept indoors. My host himself swung my hammock from two of the beams in his large, single-room house made of slats filled in with mud. Though a man of some education, subscriber to a newspaper of Salvador and an American periodical in Spanish, and surrounded by pine forests

ckens had died. A few beans were found, and, as I ate, several men drifted into the hut and gradually and diffidently fell to asking strange and childish questions. It is hard for those of us trained to democracy and accustomed to intercourse only with "civilized" people to realize that

on a bundle of rags on the dank earth floor, the daughter of eighteen climbed a knotched stick into a cubbyhole under the roof, and when the pine splinter flickered out I was able for the first night in Honduras to get out of my knee-cramping breeches and into more comfortable sleeping garments. The festered heel gave me considerable annoyance. A bread and milk poultice would no doubt have drawn the fever out of it, but even had any such luxury been obtainable I should have applied it internally. During the night I awoke times without number. Countless curs, tha

ome one had said the trail to Santa Rosa was easy and comparatively level. But such words have strange meanings in Honduras. Not once during the day did there appear a level space ten yards in length. Hour after hour a narrow path, one of a score in which to go astray, worn in the whitish rock of a tumbled and irregular series of soft sandstone ridges with thin forests of pine or fir, clambered and sweated up and down incessantly by slopes steeper than any stairway, until I felt like the overworked chambermaid of a t

es sure I had reached the summit, only to see the trail, like some will-o'-the-wisp, draw on ahead unattainably in a new direction. I had certainly ascended four thousand feet when I threw myself down at last among the pines of the wind-swept summit. A draught from the gourd of a passing peon gave me new life for the corresponding descent. Several of these fellow-roadsters now appeared, courteous fellows, often with blac

it arrived from a market-place kitchen. Here I spent Sunday, with the extreme lassitude following an extended tramp in the hungry wilderness. The doctor turned up in the afternoon, an imposing monument of a man from Texas with a wild tangle of dark-brown beard, and the soft eyes and gentle manners of a girl. He had spent some months in the region, more to the advantage of the inhabitants than his own, for disease was far more wide spread than wealth, and the latter was extremely elusive even where it existed. Hookworm was the second most common ailment, with cancer and miscarriages frequent. The entire region he had found virtually given over to free love. The grasping priests made it all but impossible for the poorer classes to marry, and the cu

e, disease, and unmorality. The population is largely Indian, unwashed since birth, and with huge hoof-like bare feet devoid of sensation. There is also considerable Spanish blood, generally adulterated, its possessors sometimes shod and wearing nearly white cotton suits and square white straw hats. In intelligence the entire place resembles children without a child's po

ht me there in that time. As it was, I had broken the mule-back record, and many is the animal that succumbs to the up and down trails of Honduras. This one might, were such triteness permissible, have been most succinctly characterized by a well-known description of war. It was rougher than any stone-quarry pitched at impossible angles, and the attraction of gravity for my burden passed belief. To this I had been forced to add not merely a roll of silver reales b

natural bathtub among the blazing rocks, fell upon what after all proved to be a porkless feast. The doctor's treatment had reduced the swelling in foot and ankle, but the wound itself was more painful than ever and called for frequent soaking. In midafternoon I passed a second village, as somnolent as the belly-gorged zopilotes that half-jumped, half-flew sluggishly out of the way as I advanced. Here was a bit of fairly flat and shaded going,

drink and let hunger feed upon itself. But now it was needed, not a trickle appeared. Once I fancied I heard a stream babbling below and tore my way through the jungle down a sharp slope, but I had only caught the echo of the distant river. It was well on into the night when the welcome sound again struck my ear. This time it was real, and I fought my way down through clutching undergrowth and stone heaps to a stream, sluggish and blue in color, but welcome for all that, to swing my hammock among stone heaps from two elastic saplings, for it was just my luck to have found the one spot in Honduras where there were no trees large enough to furnish shelter. Luckily nothing worse than a heavy dew fell. Now and then noisy boisterous bands of natives passed along the

Guatemalan Oxfords needed so badly. I found the huts where several of them lived, but not where any of them worked. The first replied from his hammock that he was sick, the second had gone to Tegucigalpa, the third was "somewher

e people of Honduras that a white man of patience can in time force them to do his bidding by sheer force of will, by merely looking long and fixedly at them. Many the "gringo" who has misused this power in Central America. Before we reached her home she had not only posed but insisted on my stopping to photograph her with her children "dressed up" as befitted so

prepared to swing my hammock inside the hut the sulky host informed me that he only permitted travelers the corredor. Two other guests-ragged, soil-encrusted arrieros-were already housed within, but there were at least some advantages in swinging my own net outside from the rafters of the eaves. Pigs jolted against me now and then and before I had entirely fallen asleep I was disturbed by a procession of dirty urchins, each carrying a blazing pine stick, who came one by one to look me over. I was just settling down again when Pablo himself appeared, an uncanny f

, but her solicitous husband insisted on propping her up in bed and holding her with an arm about the shoulders while I "put them both on paper." His purpose, it turned out, was to send the picture to the shrine of "la Virgen de los Remedios" that she might cure the groaning wife of her ailment, and he insisted that it must show "bed and all and the color of her face" that the Virgin might know what was required of her. I went through the motions of taking a photograph and explained as

ot and carrying their entire possessions on their heads and backs. Frequently a little wooden cross or a heap of stones showed where some traveler had fallen by the wayside, perhaps at the hands of his fellow-man; for the murder rate, thanks largely to drink and vendettas, is high in Hondu

t is in demand. At ten I lost the way, found it again, and began an endless, rock-strewn climb upward through pines, tacking more times than I could count, each leg of the ascent a toilsome journey in itself. Not the least painful of road experiences in Honduras is to reach the summit of such a range after hours of heavy labor, to take perhaps a dozen steps along

ranean custom to puncture with a small hole before dropping into hot water, no doubt because there was no other way of getting the universal uncleanliness into them. Nor did I ever succeed in getting them more than half cooked. Once I offered an old woman an extra real if she would boil them a full three minutes without puncturing them. She asserted that without a hole in the end "the water could not get in to cook them," but a

toil and sweat, and the clear water of mountain stream offset somewhat the evil effects under which even a horseman would probably have succumbed. The inhabitants of the Honduranean wilds are distinctly less human in their habits than the wild men of the Malay Peninsula. For the latter at least build floors of split bamboo above the ground. Without exaggeration the people

ce at a child-birth! In this region all "gringoes" have the reputation of being physicians, and the in

de, but I could only plod on, for to sleep out at this height would have been dangerous. Luckily a corner of moon lighted up weirdly a moderately wide trail. I had tramped an hour or more into the night when a flickering light ahead among the trees showed what might have

woman ordered the girl to heat me black coffee and tortillas. The child was naked to the waist, though the bitter cold wind howled with force through the hut, the walls and especially the gables and roof of which were far from whole. The woman complained of great pain in her right leg, and knowing she would otherwise groan and howl the night through in the hope of attracting the Virgin's attention, I induced her to swallow two sedative pills. The smoke made me weep as I swung my hammock from two soot-blackened rafters, but the fire soon went out and I awoke from the first doze shivering until the hut shook. The temperature was not low compared with our northern winters, but the wind carried a penetrating chill that reached the marrow of the bones. I rose and tried unsuccessfully to relight the fire. The half-naked girl proved more skilful and I sat huddled on a stool over th

f solid wooden wheels behind gaunt little oxen identical with those of northwest Spain even to the excruciating scream of its greaseless axle. In th

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wing salacious comments as I wandered from house to house trying to buy food. At a corner of the plaza the comandante called to me from his hut. I treated him with the haughty air of a superior, with frequent reference to my "orders from the government," and he quickly subsided from patronizing insolence to humility and sent a soldier to lead me to "where food is prepared for strangers." Two ancient crones, pottering about a mud stove in an open-work reed kitchen through which the mounta

comandante, its generals, colonels, lieutenants, and all the lesser fry at the head; and an imperative command soon brought the entire force of fifty or more hurrying barefoot and startled, their ancient muskets under their arms, from the four somnolent corners of the city. I kept the

ugh it is by no means uncommon in Central America for countrymen to refuse to sell on the road produce they are carrying to town for that purpose. I asked for a real's worth. Luckily they misunderstood, for the price was "two hands for a medio," and as it was I had to leave lying on the grass several of the ten fine large oranges one of the aborigines had counted

d always thick with loose stones. A band of arrieros cooking their scanty supper under a shelter tent asserted there were houses some two leagues on, but for hours I hobbled over mountains of pure stone, my maltreated feet wincing at every step, without verifying the assertion. Often the descents were so steep I had to pick each footstep carefully in the darkness, and more than one climb required the assistance of my hands. A swift stream all but swept me off my feet, and in the stony climb beyond I lost both trail and telegraph wire and

rying on their own backs a bundle of the Santa Rosa cigars with which their animals were laden. Except for her soldiers, accustomed to "show off" before their fellows, every person I had met in Honduras had been kindly and courteous-if dirty-and never with a hint of coveting my meager hoard. Beggars seemed as unknown as robbers-perhaps from lack of initiative and energy. From Esperanza on, the Indian boys I met driving mules or carrying nets of oranges all folded their hands before them like a Buddhist at prayer when they approached me, but instead of mumbling some request for alms, as I expected, they greeted me with an almost obsequious "Adi

cerquita! De día no llega! A la tardecita l

nt of distance, in leagues or hours, and to reach a place reported "Just around the li

shared two eggs and coffee and turned in together. Unfortunately I let my companion persuade me against my better judgment to lay aside my hammock and sleep on his "bed," a sun-dried ox-hide thrown on the earth floor, on my side of which, "because he was more used to hard beds than those se?ores gringoes," he spread most of the colchón (mattress)-which consisted of two empty grainsacks. Either these or the painfully thin blanket over us housed a nimble breed I had miraculously esca

stop for "breakfast," and promised we should spend the night either in the gold mine of which she was a chief stockholder or at her home in La Paz, which I gathered to be a great mansion filled with all the gleanings of that lady's many trips to Europe and the States. I had long since

ttle more than rolling. It was noon before we came upon the new mud-and-tiled house of the cattle-tender of "dear aunty's" hacienda, and though the meal we enjoyed there was savory by Honduranean standards, it

ain face pitched at an acute angle and made up completely of loose rock, down which we must pick every step and often use our hands to keep from landing with broken bones at the bottom. The new buildings of the mine were in plain sight almost directly below us from the beginning, yet we were a full two hours in zigzagging by short legs straight down the loose-stone slope to them. The American manager was absent, but in the general store o

prepared to enter his native La Paz in style. So often had kingly quarters promised me by the self-styled sons of wealth in Latin America gradually degenerated to the monotonous tortilla level of general conditions tha

One always feels freer in one's father's house. My aunt might be holding some soc

my disappointment. At least his father's h

across in Honduras, swarming with pigs, yellow curs, and all the multitudinous filth and disarray indigenous to the country. The coldest of wel

why don't you com

y a candle, and his scrawny, unkempt mother bo

ou want a

raw eggs, punctured and warmed, a bowl of hot water and a stale slab of pan dulce, a cross between poor bread and worse cake. I wandered on into the town in the hope of finding some imitation of a hotel. But though the place had a population of several thousand, it was made up exclusively of mud huts only two or three of which were faintly lighted by pine-splinters. The central plaza was a barren, unlighted pasture, a hut on the c

and drink in La Paz? Gra

ven amenable to crude sarcasm, and the

what he needs to e

that also overrun every household and live, like the dogs, on the offal of the patio or backyard that serves as place of convenience. They have at least the doubtful virtue of partly solving the sewer problem, which is not a problem to Honduraneans. A tortilla or other food held carelessly is sure to be snatched by some cat, pig, or dog; a bundle left unwatched for a moment is certain to be rooted about the floor or deposited with filth. These people utterly lack any notion of improvement. A child or an animal, for instance, climbs upon the ta

How soft and fine! How costly!" and "How much did this cost?-and that?" Suaza displayed my medicine-case to the open-mouthed throng-and would I give mother some pills for her colic, and would I please photograph each one of the family-and so on to the end of patience. There was no mention made of the wealthy aunt and her mansion after the day dawned. The invitation to spend a few days, "as many as you like," amid the luxuries of Paris and the Seven Seas had tapered down to the warmed eggs and black coffee, the only real food I ate being that I had bought in a

á," and dear mamá collected about what a first-c