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

d the distant view of it the day before from the lofty rim of the valley backed by long blue ranges of mountains had enhanced my desire to visit the place, even though it lay somewhat off the dir

re which hung a sign with the owner's name and possibly some hint of his business, generally that of hawking a few bolts of cloth, straw hats, or ancient and fly-specked cheap products from foreign parts. The t

which I was fortunate to have a newspaper to spread before depositing my bundle. The lawyer took leave of me with the customary "At your orders; here you are in your own house," and marched ministerially away with the several pompous friends who had accompanied him. But a few moments later, having shaken them off, he returned to collect ten cents-one real for rent and anothe

tripes, faded straw hats, and bare feet, were mountain Indians with well-developed chests; for military service-of the catch-them-with-a-rope variety-is compulsory in Honduras. But the population in general was anemic and stunted. Two prisoners were at work in the streets; more properly they sat smoking cigarettes and putting a finger cautiously to their lips when I passed in silent request not to wake up their guard, who was sound asleep on his back in the shade, his musket lying across his chest. The town had one policem

I saw or heard the next human being, or any other evidence of his existence except a stretch of barb-wire and one lone telegraph wire sagging from one crooked stick to another. The four stony dry but flat leagues along the valley floor had brought me to San Antonio, all the population of which was loafing and mildly celebrating New Year's, as they would celebrate any other possible excuse not to work. Here I obtaine

virtue was doubly pleasing, for the rafters above were so high that even when I had tied my hammock by the very ends of the ropes I could only climb in by mounting a chair and swinging myself up as into a trapez

ind-cooled plains, brought me to Támara. A passing company of soldiers had all but gutted the village larder, but at dusk in the last hut I got not only food but meat, and permission to swing my hammock from t

stounding sight; merely what in other lands would have been considered a large village, a chiefly one-story place with a whitewashed church, filling only a small proportion of a somewhat barren valley surrounded by high rocky and partly wooded hills. I marched down through Comayagüel

turned out to be a massive stone vessel in the basement with a drizzle of cold water from a faucet above that was sure to run dry about the time the victim was well soaped; its frontiersman rooms were furnished with little more than weak-kneed canvas cots, and the barefoot service of the

chief of police, an American soldier of fortune named Lee Christmas. He was a man nearing fifty, totally devoid of all the embroidery of life, golden toothed and graying at the temples, but still hardy and of youthful vigor, of the dress and manner of a well-paid American mechanic, who sat chewing his black cigar as complacently as if he were still at his throttle on the railroad of Guatemala. Following the latest revolution he had reorganized what, to use his own words, had been "a bunch of barefooted apes in faded-blue cotton rags" into the solemn military company that was now to suffer its first formal inspection. The native secretary, standing a bit tremulously in the edge of the shade, called from the list in his hand first the name of Christmas himself, then that of the first assistant, and his own, he himself answering "present" for each of these. Next were the commanders, clerks, under-secretaries, and the like in civilian garb, each, as his name was pronounced, m

ness of throwing their feet around," confided the chief sadl

aordinary occasion that they were even more ox-like in their clumsiness and nearer frightened apes in demeanor than in their native jungles. The quaking fear of making a mis-

icked up along the line one day in Guat

the great ceremony that rang forth on the awe-s

est of it. But if you see the sign on my door,' Ladies Only To-day,' d

with a dozen chairs in cotton shrouds, but congress, the ministry, and the "West Point of Honduras," the superintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or two at Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic "soldiers" in misfit overalls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting for the mule-back mail-train to arrive that they may lock up in preparation for beginning to look over the correspondence ma?ana. It is not the custom to make appointments in Tegucigalpa. If one resident desires the presence of another at dinner, or some less excusable function, he wanders out just before the hour set until he picks up his guest so

ic resembles a high-school periodical, concocted by particularly thick-headed students without faculty assistance or editing. A history of their childish governmental activities would fill volumes. In 1910 all the copper one-centavo coins were called in and crudely changed to two-centavo pieces by surcharging the figure 2 and adding an s, a much smaller one-centavo coin being issued. The "government" may have made as much as $50 by the transaction. Not long before my arrival, the current postage-stamps, large quantities of which had been bought by foreign firms within the country, were suddenly declared worthless, and the entire accumulated correspondence for the next steamer returned to the senders, instead of at least being forwar

nglishman, "which I will lend the government

t expressed his regrets that the nationa

the visible world, sits the little capital, rather compact in the center, then scattered along the little river and in the suburb of Comayaguela beyond it. The dull-red tile roofs predominate, and the city is so directly below that one can see almost to the bottom of every tree-grown patio. A few buildings are of two stories, and the twin-towers of the little white cathedral stand somewhat above the g

now suffered to fall here and there into a disrepair that made it as useless for such traffic as a mountain trail. The first day of thirty miles brought us to Sabana Grande, with a species of hotel. During the second, there were many down-grade short-cuts, full of loose stones and dusty dry under the ever warmer sun, with the most considerable bridge in Honduras over the Pasoreal

by us now and then, and mule-trains or screaming wooden carts crawled past on their way up to the capital. All traffic between Tegucigalpa and the outside world passes either over this route or the still longer trail from Puerto Cortez, on the north coast, from which a toy railroad limps a few miles inland before losing its courage and turning back. By daylight the f

t. The passengers included a shifty-eyed old priest in charge of two nuns, the rules of whose order forbade them to speak to men, and the mozo of an influential Honduranean who had shot a man the night before and was taking advantage of his master's personal friendship with the judge of the district. The launch wound between bushy banks and came out at last on a rich-blue bay shut off in the far distance by several jagged black volcanic islands, toward one of which i

ration as any other prison warden devoid of humanity or oversight. The steamer I awaited was due before I arrived, but day after day I lay marooned on the blazing volcanic rock without a hint as to its whereabouts. Not even exercise was possible, unless one cared to race up and down the sharp jagged sides of the sea-girt volcano. The place ranks high as an incubator of malignant fevers and worse ailments, and to cap the climax the ice-machine was brok

ed natives' waded lazily back and forth from the beach to the clumsy tenders, exchanging the meager products of the country for ill-packed merchandise from my own. Night settled down over their unfinished task, the self-same mo

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