A Gringo in Mañana-Land

I

I started in haste for Honduras, but haste achieved nothing in these lands.

One of the eccentricities of the average Central-American republic is that the traveler has little difficulty in entering the country, yet having entered, finds his departure balked by countless formalities. Apparently the government is eager to welcome any one, but if it can discover that the visitor is a rapscallion, is determined to add him to the permanent population.

Slipping into Salvador through the back yard, I was not required even to display a passport. On the day preceding my intended departure from the Capital, I learned that I must call upon the Secretary of Foreign Relations, and convince His Excellency of my respectability before I should be permitted to leave.

A pretty señorita in the outer office of the State Department ceased powdering her nose to listen to my plea.

“Cómo no? Why not, señor? If you will kindly return the day after to-morrow—”

She smiled sweetly in dismissal, and having settled the matter in the favorite Latin-American fashion, reopened her vanity case, upon the mirror of which was pasted the photograph of her sweetheart, who seemed even more important than this affair of State. Gringo-like, I persisted.

“How about to-day?”

“Impossible, señor. The Secretary is in conference. And the Sub-secretary has gone home.”

“Where does he live?”

“Quién sabe? Who knows, señor?”

Evidently annoyed at my insistence, she finally discovered a clerk who professed that he did know. He wrote out the address for me: “Numero —, Calle 10 Poniente.” It was only the middle of the morning, but it was already fairly hot in San Salvador. I hiked through sun-blanched streets, only a few of which were numbered. At length I asked a policeman for directions. He glanced at my perspiring forehead, and assured me that I was now at the Tenth Street Poniente.

So I knocked at the proper number, and inquired of a servant whether His Excellency were at home. I learned that he was. A colored gentleman in pajamas rose from a hammock in the patio, and shook hands very cordially. Not to be outdone in politeness, I made an elaborate speech, emphasizing my regret at having to leave his delightful country, and begging that he would do me the favor to grant permission.

“The permission is yours, señor!”

“Do I not require your visé on my passport?”

“Not mine, señor, but that of the Sub-Secretary of Foreign Relations. I am only an humble employee of the street-cleaning department. But muchas gracias for your visit. Always my house is yours, at Numero —, Seventh Street Poniente.”

When I did reach the Tenth Street Poniente, it was to discover that the address given me at the State Department was wrong. His Excellency lived somewhere else. But at last, after four hours of a house-to-house canvass, I found him. Having obtained the necessary visé, I caught the first train to La Unión, on the Gulf of Fonseca, from which one could look across a strip of blue water and see the hills of Honduras itself.

“How soon can I catch a boat?” I inquired.

The citizens of La Unión shrugged their shoulders.

“Perhaps the day after to-morrow, señor, or the day after that. But quién sabe? In the meantime you had better visit the local commandante to secure permission.”

II

As a matter of fact, the boat did not leave for several days.

La Unión was the usual type of Central-American port town—a colorless, uninteresting little city, with numerous buzzards hopping about its mud-flats, as hot as blazes, and devoid of entertainment.

I was welcomed at a small hotel with an inquiry as to whether I possessed a watch. No one knew the time. But since it was growing dark, the proprietor assumed that it was nearing the hour for supper. A slatternly maid brought out some tableware that had barely survived the last earthquake, and served the usual Central-American meal of beans, rice, beans, chicken, beans, coffee, and more beans.

On the hotel wall a notice proclaimed that this establishment was preferred not only by tourists, but by people of good taste. Its principal attraction seemed to be Berta, its beautiful bar-maid. Berta, although a rather dark-complexioned young person, had a pleasant smile that revealed the whitest of teeth. She took great care of those teeth. At five-minute intervals, she rinsed them with a glass of water, and expectorated upon the bar-room floor. The town bachelors spent most of their idle hours—about sixteen each day—whispering sweet nothings to Berta, to which she smiled roguishly but shook her head. Such was her popularity that she had never learned to open a beer bottle. Whenever a patron wished a drink, Berta had only to glance toward the group of idlers, and some energetic young man would step forward to open the bottle by chewing off the top.

Berta was studying English. She would sit on the counter, with a book before her, reciting: “Wan, too, tree, fo-ur, fivvy, sixxy, ay-it, tenny.” The proprietor’s wife sat beside her in a large armchair, examining my photographs with untiring interest. She was rather stout, and inclined either to head-ache or stomach-ache or both. She fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan, and groaned, and exclaimed from time to time, “Ay! What heat it is making to-day!” She would hold up each photograph, and inquire, “What is this?” The inscription was written on the back of each, but the Señora did not read Spanish, much less English. Berta always interpreted for her, with fantastic results: “A tee-pee-cal stritty sinny een Gua-te-ma-la.” Then she would smile again, and the scowls of the local swain would suggest that if the boat did not sail pretty soon for Honduras, the village buzzards would have a change of diet.

III

When the launch did leave for Honduras, there was further formality. It was scheduled to depart a las nueve en punto—at nine o’clock sharp—with much verbal emphasis on the sharp. A squad of Salvadorean soldiers manned the dock, and halted me at my approach. My baggage was placed in the office, and the door locked, and I was motioned to a bench. Stevedores were loading the diminutive vessel with a set of dilapidated furniture, which did not appear worth transporting from one place to another, but which was being appraised by a pompous official, and duly taxed, while its owner waved his hands and proclaimed that he was being robbed. Official and owner finally adjourned to the governor’s residence to settle the dispute, and did not reappear until nearly noon.

Meanwhile the passengers waited. Cargo difficulties having been adjusted, the pompous official called each of us to the office in turn, collected a small fee, and took our names and histories. He then compiled a list, and sent it away to be typewritten for presentation to the commandante of police. After another hour or two, the list reappeared, covered with huge red seals, and flowing signatures. There followed next a minute inspection of baggage, which, in other lands, occurs only when one enters the country. My notes aroused suspicion. The inspector examined each page, pretending to read it. Was I carrying away the country’s military secrets? The eight barefoot soldiers gathered closer, and glared suspiciously. These secrets were important.

But at last we were permitted to embark, still with formality. The soldiers lined up before the gangway. The official read our names from the list, and we embarked one by one, surveyed by the accusing eyes of authority. The captain of the launch took the wheel, and jangled a bell as a signal to the engineer three feet behind him; the engineer jangled another bell to let the captain know he had understood the signal correctly. And we were off for Honduras, visible just across the bay—at some hour of mid-afternoon en punto.

IV

It was a brief voyage, through island-dotted waters alive with pelicans and seagulls, to Amapala, the one Honduranean port of entry on the Pacific, situated upon a volcanic island.

Another official glanced idly at my passport, and waved aside my baggage without examining it. Several weeks later, when I departed, the same official was to raise as much rumpus as the Salvadorean authorities had raised, but to-day he offered no difficulties. Within a few minutes, we were all back in the launch, chugging toward the mainland, to San Lorenzo, where commenced the automobile road to the Honduran capital.

Arriving too late to catch the daily truck, we settled ourselves for the night. San Lorenzo was merely a ramshackle village of thatched huts in the jungle, a village in keeping with Honduras’ reputation as the most backward country in Central America.

Two Chinamen, however, had opened a neat little hotel there, and were ready for business. And there was entertainment in plenty, for Hop On and Hop Off, co-proprietors of the establishment, were engaged in discharging their native servant. The Honduranean, a big, niggerish-looking fellow with murder in his eye—in both eyes, to be accurate—was objecting to being discharged. He kept slouching from table to table, picking up dishes, and smashing them on the floor. Hop On and Hop Off were going frantic with rage at each new act of vandalism, but neither of them was of heroic stature, wherefore they resorted to strategy rather than force. They had taken shelter behind two doors at opposite ends of the dining room, and would pop out from concealment one at a time to shout curses at their erstwhile employee. No sooner would the Honduranean rush at one with his knife, than the door would slam shut in his face, while the other door opened and the other Hop screamed curses from the opposite wall. Finally, tired with the exertion, the big native accepted his discharge as final, and strolled outside to tell his troubles to the rest of the village, which had assembled to watch the excitement.

They were all ugly-visaged fellows. They lacked the gentle suavity of the neighboring peoples. They might have been no taller than Size B Irishmen, but after one had dwelt among the Lilliputians of Guatemala, they looked like giants. A taint of negro blood was evident in their features, for Honduras—which has a long strip of coast upon the Caribbean—was in past years a favorite refuge for run-away slaves from the West Indies, and its population to-day is the most heterogeneous in Central America. Little tufts of goat-like whiskers on chin and cheek did not add to their personal beauty. Altogether, this was the least charming race I had yet discovered on my travels.

Having accepted his discharge as final, the servant picked up an ax, and seated himself cross-legged on the ground before the hotel, hoping apparently that the Chinamen might venture outside into the gathering dusk. They continued, however, to revile him from the security of their two heavy doors, until the audience tired and drifted away, whereupon the quarrel seemed to die from lack of interest, and the Honduranean himself, having tossed the ax away with a gesture of disgust, wandered off down the street.

Supper was finally served on such tableware as remained unbroken. The village prostitute, aged sixteen, then took the center of the stage, and recited for our benefit the story of her life. While unfortunates in most lands prefer not to air their sorrows publicly, those of Latin America find a certain dramatic pleasure in so doing. For the next two hours the assembled guests heard the tale of her marriage to the handsome Sebastiano, of Sebastiano’s sudden death in an earthquake, and of the long succession of gentlemen who had consoled her for Sebastiano’s demise. Then some one bought her a drink, and she vanished into the night.

Later, the Honduranean returned, this time with a shot-gun. Thereupon the Chinamen bolted their doors, and everybody retired to bed.

V

I was awakened at 4 a.m. by a great pounding upon my door.

Bill, a husky American truck-driver, was going up to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, and desired company. The business-like Chinese were already on the job with breakfast. We ate it in grouchy early-morning silence, and drove off toward the mountains through an inky-black fog.

“I know every inch of the way,” consoled Bill. “There’ll be no trouble unless somebody takes a shot at us, or blows up a bridge. They haven’t started yet, but they’re likely to, any minute. Somebody cut the telegraph wires last night.”

From time to time, as we raced through the darkness, stern voices called upon us to halt. From the road ahead a group of hard-faced natives would emerge into the glare of our searchlights, covering us with rifles. They were the federal soldiers, barefoot and tattered, with nothing to distinguish them from revolutionists. They examined my passport, ransacked the cargo in search of arms or ammunition, and finally permitted us to continue.

Eventually the sun made its appearance, revealing the most broken of landscapes. The name “Honduras” means depths, and the land is well named. A forty-five degree slope was considered fairly level here. On such grades, the peasants had built their patches of cornfield. Even these patches were infrequent, for the whole tumbled country seemed to go straight up or down. The road itself scaled precipitous heights, and twisted around narrow cliffs, where the least mistake of a chauffeur might send a car tumbling over and over into infinity. It was all ruggedly beautiful, particularly as we climbed into the coolness of six thousand feet above the sea, where the hills were covered with pines, but it was a cruel country—such a country as discourages agriculture and effectually prevents the transportation that might open up its vast store of mineral wealth—a country suited only for warfare and revolution. And from the time of the conquest revolution has been its principal product.

Bill, however, who had lived here for something over a decade, loved both the country and its people.

“They’re all right, if you know how to handle ’em. Take that boy of mine up there on the cargo. Mighty good boy. I got ’im tied up with rope just now. Came in drunk and kinder ugly last night. But he’s comin’ out of it. I’ll buy him a bracer at the next stop, and he’ll be all right. Best boy on the road.”

Bill spoke always with conviction. He finished off each sentence with ejaculations suitable only to the pulpit. Then he spat.

“I wouldn’t go home for a million dollars. Can’t stand the damned sissies back there. Give me roughnecks! I ain’t got much use for them society fellows. I’ve got a brother in Minneapolis. He was a regular guy when we was kids. Could lick anybody in school. But he made a lot of money and married one of them fiddle-ly-diddle-lies, and went all to pieces. I came home to see him two years ago. He met me at the station with a big car, all dressed up in a fur overcoat, and he says, ‘Bill, you’re just in time for luncheon.’ I looked at him. I says, ‘I guess you mean lunch, don’t you?’ He took me to a regular mansion. Out came the fiddle-ly-diddle-ly. He says, ‘Mable, may I present my long-lost brother from Honduras?’ Christ! Why couldn’t he say, ‘Bill, meet the old woman’? She holds out her hand, way up in the air, like they do in the movies, and says, ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’ God!”

He gave the wheel a violent twist, and we shot around a mountain cliff. He drove along a narrow precipice with one wheel almost hanging over the rugged gulch below.

“They took me down to ‘luncheon.’ One of them big English stiffs in a boiled shirt came out and gave us each a little cup of soup and a cracker. I just looked at my brother. ‘Joe,’ I says, ‘ain’t this lime-juicer goin’ to give us nothin’ to eat?’ He says, ‘We’ll have dinner in the evening; you’ll soon get accustomed to it.’ ‘Accustomed hell!’ I says; ‘to-night I’ll be down in a restaurant, gettin’ a regular feed. I’ll be eatin’ corn-beef and cabbage, same as you used to eat. I ain’t sore at you, Joe, I’m disappointed. You was a regular guy before you got them society ideas. But you don’t make a sissy out of me. I’m goin’ straight back to Honduras.’”

He drove along the precipice with savage relish. Presently, as we passed a little native farm in a rugged valley, he called my attention to it.

“That’s where my wife comes from. No fiddle-ly-diddle-ly for me. She’s an Indian—pure-blooded Indian—but she’s white—whiter’n you are—and a damned good wife, too. We don’t take luncheon in our house. We eat lunch. Luncheon! Christ!”

VI

No one having shot at us from the hills or blown up a bridge, we raced into Tegucigalpa in the early afternoon.

Every one in the Capital was awaiting the revolution, but the city remained unperturbed.

It was an old, weatherbeaten town. A river wandered through it, bordered by high cement walls, and spanned by an aged stone bridge of many arches. The streets were hilly. Sidewalks might be level, but after one had followed them for a certain distance, one was apt to find himself ten feet above the driveway, sometimes able to descend by a flight of steps, but usually forced to jump or retrace his way. The houses were aged and bullet-scarred. If any of them had been constructed within the past forty years, the climate had quickly given it an appearance of venerability.

The central plaza was unattractive. There were a few palms and much purple bougainvillea, but they were surrounded by a rickety railing green with mildew, and interspersed with unattractive monuments. The buildings facing the plaza were of nondescript architecture. On one side was a yellowed cathedral, with several varieties of weeds sprouting in niches originally intended for images of the saints. On another was a row of arched portales, of flimsy wooden structure, housing several courtrooms, a barber shop, a fashionable club, and a number of cheap saloons. On the other two sides were stores.

The most imposing edifice in the city was the Presidential Palace. It stood upon the river bank, towering above massive ramparts like an ancient feudal castle. From its loop-holed walls machine-guns could sweep the old Spanish bridge. And from its windows the president could maintain a watchful eye upon the National Treasury across the street—a dilapidated old building whose contents at the moment consisted principally of a national debt.

FROM HIS PALACE THE PRESIDENT COULD WATCH THE TREASURY TO SEE THAT NO ONE STOLE THE NATIONAL DEBT

Why any one should fight for possession of this city, with its depleted finances, was a mystery later explained.

“The government took in eight million pesos last year,” said a well-posted American resident, “and only spent five million, yet it describes itself as penniless, and pays only the soldiers and police, keeping such employees as the school teachers waiting six months for their salaries. Three million pesos, almost half the country’s receipts, have disappeared. That’s why everybody is constantly squabbling for the presidency of the republic. That’s why Tegucigalpa remains the most ramshackle capital in Central America.”

VII

The current political controversy was but a typical incident in the history of Honduras.

The term of President Rafael López Gutiérres had come to an end. During his two and a half years of office, he had weathered thirty-three insurrections. He was ready to retire. But his fellow politicians, although they had already prospered to the extent of three million pesos, demanded that he follow the Central-American custom of turning over his office to one of their own group, in order that their prosperity might continue. And the President gave his support to his personal friend, Bonilla.

At the elections recently held, there had arisen two other candidates, Carías and Árias. Through some oversight, the President had allowed a few of their supporters to help in the counting of the ballots. As a result, Carías led with fifty thousand votes, Árias following with thirty-five thousand, and Bonilla (the presidential favorite) bringing up the rear with only twenty thousand. And although Carías led, he failed to receive the absolute majority required by the Constitution to insure his election. It therefore devolved upon Congress to choose one of the three. And Congress favored Árias. To sum up the situation, the people preferred one candidate, Congress another, and the President another.

A revolution appeared inevitable. The President had declared martial law. Soldiers were everywhere. One could distinguish them from civilians because they carried rifles, and because when there were two or more of them they marched one behind the other in the center of the street, sometimes in cadence. A few had blue uniforms, a few had khaki; most of them wore whatever garments they happened to be wearing when drafted. Many were soldiers of fortune from neighboring countries—professional scrappers called in by a President who knew that his people were against him. They would stop me on the street occasionally to ask that I lend them a peseta—twenty-five cents—until pay-day, but they impressed me as a doubtful risk.

The city was ablaze with election slogans, scribbled with chalk upon every doorway—“Viva Árias!”—“Viva Carrías!”—“Muerto Bonilla!” Translated into “Live Árias,” “Live Carrías,” and “Death to Bonilla,” they seemed indicative of the earnest nature of Central-American political campaigns. All three candidates were now in the city. Each had a troop of his followers living at his residence for protection. One, who was stopping at the principal hotel, was surrounded by twenty armed gunmen, who sat about the bar-room and the lobby, scanning everybody who entered, and ready to take a precautionary shot at a member of another party. Each had spies watching the others, to see that they did not slip out of town to some assembly-point in the mountains. Some day, one of them would do it. In the meanwhile, the President in office kept a close eye on all three. From time to time a detachment of soldiers would come marching through town, bringing to prison a party of conspirators caught hatching insurrections in the neighboring villages.

The American Minister, Franklin Morales, was holding daily conferences at the Legation, bringing the candidates together in an effort to reach an agreement. Each took turns making speeches about his love of Honduras, his aversion to bloodshed, and his earnest hope that the muddle might be solved peacefully. When asked for a specific suggestion as to the solution, each seemed to think that it could be most satisfactorily achieved by the withdrawal of the other two candidates.

Meanwhile, every one in Tegucigalpa ripped up the boards of his floor, brought out the rifle and ammunition secreted for such an emergency, and waited for the fireworks. And the time-scarred old Capital seemed to be saying to itself: “Another revolution can’t do me any harm.”

But when I inquired as to just when the fireworks would start, it developed that a revolution was as undependable as transportation facilities had been.

“Who knows, señor? Perhaps the day after to-morrow, perhaps the day after that. Quién sabe?”

VIII

I settled at a small hotel, where one enjoyed the advantage of intimate association with a native family.

There were only two other guests, but the family was multitudinous. A young man had fallen in love with the landlady’s daughter, and married her, and had brought so many relatives of his own to live at his mother-in-law’s expense, that they filled all the rooms, until there was space only for three boarders. Just how they all managed to exist on the trifling income of the establishment was an unfathomable mystery, but they contrived somehow not only to feed and clothe themselves, but also to keep a servant.

She was an anemic little girl in a tattered linen dress. She was always smiling as she raced from one room to another to answer a summons. Everybody seemed to take fiendish delight in calling for her. The cry of, “Petrona! Petrona!” echoed across the patio from morning until night. Even the parrot had adopted the slogan, and throughout his waking hours would screech, “Petrona!” And Petrona, always cheerful, obeyed each call.

One of the other guests was a married lady, whose husband had sent her to Tegucigalpa to keep her out of the way of an expected battle elsewhere. With the extreme faithfulness of Latin-American wives, she locked herself in her room, to which Petrona brought her meals. She emerged only to wash baby clothes at the hotel pump, or to scream instructions to her numerous progeny in the patio—a noisy little brood of future revolutionists who paid no heed to her many injunctions.

The other guest was a Spaniard, who had just come up from Nicaragua to bring twenty-four prize game-cocks for Sunday’s rooster fight. He was a tall, horse-faced, loquacious individual, who talked continuously at the table, mostly in subtle smut. He was an artist at the use of double entente, and had raised vulgarity above the level of pure nastiness, so that it was now quite suitable for dinner-table conversation in the presence of ladies. He was a jovial person, predisposed toward the singing of love songs, to which he could wave time with his knife and never spill a bean. If his game-cocks won on Sunday, he was planning to hire an airplane and fly home to Nicaragua. He intended to load it with beautiful women, and sail as close as possible to the romantic tropical moon.

His roosters were tied to stanchions in the patio. They were continually glaring at one another, flapping their wings, crowing challenges, and straining at the cords that held each of them by the foot. Whenever the Spaniard ceased his vigilance, one of the married lady’s children was certain to unloose a bird, and watch him peck a neighbor to death. But on Saturday the survivors were sent to the arena, packed into individual compartments in a large wooden box, and thereafter the hotel was peaceful. The box disappeared down the street on the shoulders of a peon, accidentally inverted, so that the game-cocks stood on their heads—an indignity which should have made them scrapping mad for the morrow.

The revolution not having materialized, I went to the cock-fight. It was held in a back yard, where a rude board shack had been improvised. There was a dirt-floored ring, surrounded by a four-foot wall, and overlooked by a rickety grand-stand and a still more rickety bleachers.

The ring was already thronged with natives, each holding a rooster in his arms, and shoving it at another fellow’s rooster in order to provoke the martial spirit. The birds were fluttering, blinking beady eyes at other birds, and clucking loudly to express their irritation. Back against the adobe rampart of the establishment were some forty other prospective contestants, each in an individual cage, crowing noisily as though he would proclaim himself the father of the largest egg ever laid in Honduras.

There was much delay. It seems that the gentlemen in the ring were trying to match their birds, but each desired to pair off his own with one that could be easily licked. There was much argument, much waving of hands, much indignant protest. At length it was settled. A little fat man beside me commenced sawing off the spurs from a rooster’s legs, and fitting thereon two sharp curved blades of steel. At the money counter—a rough wooden board presided over by a tall stony-faced man with heavy black eyebrows and the general air of the professional gambler—there was great excitement. Men crowded about it, shouting, “Two pesos on the red one!” “One peso on the gallina!”

The umpire—a well-dressed, impressive-looking individual who had once held office in the Honduran cabinet—inspected the steel gaffs, and the fight commenced. The two owners released their birds, and withdrew. For a moment both cocks eyed one another. Then, in apparent indifference, they turned away, and pecked unconcernedly at the ground, strolling around the ring as though neither saw the other. They walked clumsily, bothered by the long blades they carried. Occasionally they stopped, raised their heads, and crowed. Then they resumed their pecking at the earth, hunting imaginary worms. This, however, was all bluff, designed to throw the adversary off his guard. Quick as a flash one turned and flew at the other. They met in mid-air with a great flurry of feathers. Back they drew, crouching. Then they were at it again, clawing and pecking until the world became saturated with flying rooster.

The spectators went frantic with joy. They screamed applause. They shouted advice at the contestants.

Again the cocks drew back, crouching. A wild yell went up from the stands. I could observe nothing, but these fellows were experts, and they saw the end before it came. For suddenly, without warning, one of the cocks toppled upon its side, gushing blood from its trembling beak. In a flash the other was upon it, pecking triumphantly at its head. And the crowd poured into the ring.

There were other combats. The intermissions were long, and marked always with much bickering. The fight might end in a minute; the intermission was always at least a half hour. After the roosters were paired there was delay for the fixing of the gaffs, delay for the betting, delay while each owner brought in another cock to peck his fighter into the proper rage. But these people could tolerate any delay, especially if it were in the interests of the national sport. When two cocks did not appear eager to slaughter themselves to make a Honduran holiday, the wrathful spectators hurled abuse at them.

“Cowards! You are worse than hens! Carramba!”

But there was only one such pair. The others were game. They might strut about interminably in their effort to secure an advantage, but once they clashed, they fought to the death. Sometimes it came unexpectedly, with one quick blow of the knife. Usually one of the birds sank weakly on a severed leg, yet wriggled valiantly toward the other, only to be pecked again and again until the whole back of its neck was a ghastly wound. And two of the contestants—big strong birds, with glorious plumage of many shades, and equipped with long, powerful legs—hurled themselves at each other the moment they were released. They met with a crash, and tumbled over and over, clawing and biting, and rolling the length of the arena in an indistinguishable mess of feathered warrior. The crowd was upon its feet. Men screamed with joy. And after it was all over they hugged one another.

The little fat man turned to me:

“How do you like it? Muy bonita, verdad? Very nice, what?”

“Awfully nice.”

“There will be others. We shall fight until dark.” But I strolled back to the comparative quiet of the hotel. The Spaniard’s birds had all been defeated, wherefore he was going home by the usual means of travel.

IX

A week passed, and nothing happened.

Rumors flew thick and fast, however. Every one discussed the forthcoming revolution as a certainty. Now and then a peon would drop casually into the hotel to inquire in whispers whether the guests had any ammunition to sell. He never used the word “ammunition,” but resorted to harmless-sounding synonyms unintelligible except to the born conspirator.

One noticed that the men of the upper classes were more democratic than usual. Men of distinguished appearance would stop in the plaza to chat with the barefoot rabble whom they ordinarily passed without recognition. Politicians were now cultivating good will. They would soon need this rabble as cannon fodder.

It was said that Carías would start his insurrection on Christmas Eve. The government, as a precaution against the assembling of a crowd, forbade the holding of the usual midnight mass at the Cathedral. When I spoke English over the telephone the day before, in conversation with a member of the American colony, I was interrupted by the frantic voice of a censor, clamoring that I confine myself to Spanish, and shortly thereafter a police official waited upon me and put me through a courteous third degree.

A later report stated that the government had taken five hundred prisoners, and that the revolution was postponed. But an air of expectancy still hung over the Capital. Christmas Eve—La Noche Buena—was gloomy. A drizzle of rain fell intermittently. The street lamps, never very bright in Tegucigalpa, seemed unusually dim. The sidewalks were deserted save for patrols of soldiers, who stopped me at each corner to search for weapons.

SOLDIERS STOPPED A PEDESTRIAN AT EVERY CORNER TO SEARCH FOR WEAPONS

On the night before, all had been gayety. Over in Camyaguela, the suburb across the river, there had been a religious festival—la fiesta de la Concepción la Purísima—the festival of the Purest Conception. The Cathedral had been surrounded by improvised board shacks where booze was sold. At tables in the open, lighted by flaring torches, there had been roulette wheels and other gambling devices. There had been music in the plaza, and the belles of the town—all with white faces, but with tell-tale arms and necks varying in color from a creamy tint to a deep chocolate brown—had paraded around and around the park, while the young dandies fairly impaled themselves on the fence-pickets to watch them.

But to-night gayety stayed indoors. Through the open windows I could see an occasional tinsel-decked tree, but more frequently a navidad, the old Spanish Christmas decoration—a triangular stage in one corner of the parlor, covered with artificial grass, with a little cave at the rear, wherein reposed replicas of Mary and Jesus. Other figures filled the foreground, according to the family’s resources. There were the three wise men, mounted on toy burros. There were tin soldiers and paper soldiers, cardboard houses, cardboard trees, toy animals, toy railway trains—everything imaginable—until the humble manger was surrounded by all the creatures of the zoo and all the inventions of modern civilization. The whole display was decked with pine-boughs and thatches of banana leaf. Each family was very proud of its navidad, and if I paused to indulge a traveler’s curiosity by staring through the window—an impulse quite irresistible in these countries, where windows open directly upon the street, and are left unshuttered by a people whose greatest joy in life is to be looked at—the family would invite me inside, that I might examine the display at close range.

They were quietly happy, these people, yet they seemed listening always for the first boom of the cannon. Nothing happened, however. Nothing ever did happen in Latin America while I was present. From day to day I had heard what sounded like the rattle of musketry, and had rushed out to see the fighting, only to learn that the rattle came from the ungreased wheels of an ox-cart lumbering over the rough cobbles.

At the Consul’s Christmas dinner, attended by a dozen of the leading Americans in town, every one had had the same experience.

“There was a crowd gathering on the hill to-day,” some one remarked. “The police came up in a body and dispersed it.”

“Did you hear the shooting night before last?” another inquired. “There were several pistol shots, and then the burst of a machine-gun. I wonder how soon they will really start?”

But the American Minister, from the seat of honor at the right of the host, merely smiled.

“There will be no revolution,” he predicted.

“Do you mean the United States will intervene?”

He merely smiled again. Still, I felt that there was hope. The ox-carts were sounding more and more like musketry every day.

X

Christmas having provided no thrills, Tegucigalpa looked forward to New Year’s. On that day Congress was to convene to choose a president. Whoever was chosen would probably be obliged to fight the other two candidates.

In the meantime, I hired a mule and rode out to see the American-owned Rosario mines at San Juancito, forty kilometers from the capital.

The trail was rugged, but it led through magnificent scenery, among pine-clad mountains, ascending a ridge seven thousand feet high, where the clouds formed a heavy wet blanket yet opened occasionally to permit a glimpse of wild tropical forest below.

Most mining properties are situated in barren, desolate regions. That of the Rosario Company, the largest silver mine in Central America, is situated in a glorious valley, and from its neat white buildings one looks down upon a misty wilderness that stretches away through countless lower valleys, with a silver ribbon of water curling through them toward the sea. Despite its isolation, and the one rough mule trail that connects the mine with the rest of the world, it roared with industry. There was a reverberating chorus of giant crushers, the rattle of cars on many miles of narrow-gauge track, the crash of ore-bearing rock dumped into the stamp-mills, the hum of massive machinery.

“We brought everything out in ox-cart or on muleback,” said the young-appearing superintendent. “We now have seventy miles of tunnel, and employ eight hundred men in Rosario—thirteen hundred indirectly. And less than thirty gringo bosses run the whole thing. We used to have twice the force, but we’ve cut it down. There’s efficiency, nowadays, even forty kilometers from a town in Honduras. We turned out two million ounces of silver this year.”

The gringo bosses were quiet, earnest young men, intent upon their work. There were none of the roistering adventurers that one looks for in the wilds of a Honduran jungle. They drank moderately—very moderately, it seemed to one who had worked in an Andean mining camp—and never carried revolvers, except when visiting the native town in the gulch below, which averaged two murders every Sunday. They spent most of their spare time in the club room—a comfortable room with a big fireplace, pool tables, piano and victrola, and a complete library.

The camp was at an altitude of five thousand feet. The night was cold. The blazing fire was agreeable.

“This is the tropics,” said one of them, “and I have to pay double life insurance rates for living here, when it’s much more healthy than any place in the United States.”

The superintendent drew me aside, and led me upstairs to hear his radio. The blare of jazz was as clear as though one listened in from New York.

“That’s Vincent Lopez, in the grill-room of the Pennsylvania. Wait a minute ’til I get Schenectady, and we’ll have a bed-time story.”

Out here in the wilderness, forty kilometers from the nearest town, and many hundred miles from a railway, gringo energy had produced all the comforts of home. And gringo industry was furnishing much of the wealth that flowed into the Honduran treasury.

XI

The real mainstay of the Honduran treasury is the East Coast, where several American fruit companies own extensive banana plantations.

It has little connection with the rest of the country. A newly instituted service by airplane now enables one to reach it from Tegucigalpa in a couple of days, but unless one can afford this method of travel, one must go by mule, and the journey takes about two weeks.

The several gringo concerns have so developed the formerly worthless, fever-stricken swamps of the Caribbean, that to-day it contains almost half the population of Honduras, and produces eighty-two per cent. of the country’s revenue, and both ratios are increasing in favor of the Coast. Nearly all the revolutions start in this region, partly because of its isolation from the Capital where the government holds sway, and partly because in cutting off the revenue the revolutionists can starve the government into surrender.

With every revolution—as in all these countries—come rumors that some American company is back of it, financing a new régime as the cheapest road to new concessions. The rumors are so recurrent that some of them are probably true. But the Honduraneans as a whole are rather fond of insurrection, whether started by foreigners or by their own countrymen. Living in a country for the most part unfertile and unproductive, whose resources can be developed only by much toil and trouble, they find it easier to leave constructive work to the gringo, while they squabble among themselves for control of the government.

XII

January first arrived, and Congress met.

I went to the Capitol with Mario Ribas, who was the Associated Press Correspondent and the editor of Tegucigalpa’s leading magazine. He was a Spaniard and a neutral in politics.

“If any one starts shooting,” he advised, “the quickest way out of the building is that of sliding down the shed, running across the patio, and climbing over the roof.”

The legislators met in a long, narrow room filled with plain wooden benches. On the wall were the pictures of former presidents, almost none of whom had been able to finish his term before succeeded by one of the others. The chamber’s only real embellishments were the many flags and draperies of blue and white that hung from the ceiling.

At the entrance was a company of boy soldiers from the military school—none of them twenty years of age, but considered the most dependable of the government troops. Their officers scanned every one who entered the Capitol, but they knew Ribas, and passed us without question.

The congressmen assembled gradually, each of them appearing a trifle nervous. They wore high hats and Prince Albert coats, but a suspicious bulge at the hip testified that each was ready for a possible emergency, and when a coat swung accidentally open, one caught a glimpse of a well-filled cartridge belt.

Still, the first day passed without disturbance. There was a slight row when the august body voted down a motion to make some trifling alteration to the minutes of the last meeting. The deputy whose motion was defeated rose indignantly. With the amazing sensitiveness of the Latin-American, he felt that he had been personally insulted. Furiously he turned and stamped out of Congress, seizing his hat and cane from the rack outside, and knocking down the hats of several other deputies in his haste. They all rushed out, picked up their hats, wiped off the dust, and hung them up again. Then the meeting resumed, interrupted by other slight rows, as other men took offense because their suggestions were not received enthusiastically, and followed the exit of the first.

Finally the remaining few sent a committee to inform the President that they were ready to listen to his opening message. The cadets formed a double line from the Palace to the Capitol, and the President came in person, walking at the head of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps. He was a worried-looking little man, and he walked with tired step. Four bands cheered him with the National Anthem, all playing in different tempo, a boom of cannon greeted him from the fortress, and his boy soldiers presented arms at sixty different angles. The crowds applauded, and I was reaching into my pocket for a handkerchief to wave at him, when a firm hand closed upon my wrist, and I looked into the hard face of a Honduran secret service man.

“Pardon, señor!” he said, as he saw that I had only a handkerchief. “One can not be too careful these days.”

Then the President disappeared into the Capitol to read his message, and the soldiers barred the gates to sight-seers.

“There’ll be nothing happening to-day,” said Ribas. “It takes them a while to get started. Wait until they meet to-morrow.”

XIII

But nothing happened on the morrow, or the day after that. Congress was still indulging in oratory. From time to time some one suggested a vote on the presidential question, but whenever it appeared that Árias might have enough supporters present to elect him, the adherents of Carías and Bonilla hastily seized their high silk hats and rushed outside so that there would be no quorum.

By this time most of the deputies were wearing two guns. Rumor stated that one Congressman had also added to his equipment a machete, a sword cane and a pair of brass knuckles. It began to look as though he might be able to settle the dispute. Then, by order of the President, the military stopped each Congressman at the door and disarmed him. And the indignant legislators were so incensed that they refused to meet. The Hall of Congress stood empty.

Rumors flew thick and fast again. Carías had slipped out of the city last night! He had gone to the east coast to organize his revolution! No, señor, he had done nothing of the kind! He had gone to the west coast. Ay, but he had just been seen at his dwelling in Tegucigalpa, he was still in the city! Perhaps the revolution would start right here!

There came another night when the outbreak was expected.

“Do not go out this evening,” urged little Petrona, as she brought my evening beans to the table. “You may be killed in the street if you are not careful.”

But my experience in Latin America had taught me that it is always some one else who is killed there. Having missed seeing so many insurrections elsewhere, I felt it a duty to witness this one. And I wandered through the dim streets, deserted as on Christmas Eve, and gloomy again with drizzling rain. The soldiery were again on patrol, searching me at every half block, even though they had seen me searched by their cohorts just a few feet away.

No open windows gave me a view to-night of families gathered about a Christmas tree. Doors and windows alike were shut and tightly barred. Not a soul was to be met except the barefoot troops. Not a light was to be seen except the flickering street lamp at each corner.

At the leading hotel the door was unlocked, and I pushed inside. Instead of the usual swarm of native aristocrats, the only occupants of the café were the bartender, a bootblack, and three gringos. They were Doc, Sparks, and Pop. Doc had the little bootblack on his knee, feeding him cheese, and teaching him to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sparks was shaking dice with the bartender to determine which should give the other his hat and go home bareheaded. Pop had four bottles of whiskey before him, with which the party was about to adjourn to his room, and he was covering the back of an envelope with figures in his effort to determine how four bottles could be evenly distributed among three men. Seeing me he threw the pencil in the air.

“Solved!” he cried.

And we adjourned to Pop’s quarters in the second story of the annex. I had some qualms as to the advisability of joining, for I dreaded the prospect of missing the revolution, but the other gringos already had reached the stage where refusal of such an invitation is considered an affront. Arrived in Pop’s room, they listened to my protest, and overruled it.

“You don’t need to see a revolution. We’ll tell you all about everything that happened in the whole history of Honduras. What do you want first?”

“How about the last revolution?”

Doc, elected raconteur for the three, assumed the attitude of a high-school declaimer, and announced:

“The last revolution.” He cleared his throat, and commenced dramatically. “I was standing in the doorway of the Young Men’s Christian Association—”

“In the doorway of the Agurcia,” corrected Sparks.

“Of the Agurcia, when suddenly a machine-gun started banging down the street, and the bar-room door went shut behind me, catapulting me into the middle of the road. I picked myself up, and made a rush for the W.C.T.U. across the way—

“For the what?”

“For the establishment across the way, and they slammed the doors in my face. I made a bee-line for the Epworth League meeting around the corner, and the barkeeper there—”

He paused to pour another round and forgot to resume. He walked out to the balcony with the empty bottle and returned with the sorrowful comment, “Nobody to throw it at. What do you want to hear about next?”

“Tell him about the badger fight,” suggested Pop.

Pop had stripped off his clothing, and now sat naked on the bed, a rather slender old gentleman, whose white hair still gave him something of dignity. Young Sparks was crawling under the bureau after the corkscrew. Doc, big and rotund, with cheerful ruddy face, again took the floor.

“The badger fight. We got the Salvadorean minister to be the badger’s second. He came direct from some diplomatic function, wearing his top hat, and his long coat, and his striped pants, and his spats, and patent leather shoes. We took him up to the hill, where we had the badger-cage all padded with straw. The dog that was to fight the badger was a big, ugly bloodhound. All the minister had to do was take hold of the rope, and pull the badger out of the cage, we explained, only we thought it best to put a stove-pipe over each of his legs, and cover his chest with a baseball protector, and put a mask over his face, and long gauntlets on his arms. You should have seen him in that get-up, with a silk hat on top of it all. We gave him the end of the rope, and said ‘Go!’ He was so scared, he forgot to let go of the rope, and when we all started yelling down hill, he beat the whole gang, still dragging behind him the old slop bucket that was in the badger-cage. But he was game. He took us all back to town and bought the—”

Association of ideas brought Doc’s eye to another bottle, and he emptied it into the glasses, shampooing Pop’s white hair with the dregs of it.

“At-a-boy, shampoo it!” chuckled Pop.

And Doc shampooed industriously. “Gimme the scissors,” he commanded. “Don’t cut it off!” protested Sparks. But Pop was game. “Cut it all off!” he cried recklessly. The party was getting rough. Sparks seized an armful of bottles and commenced hurling them from the balcony. They crashed noisily upon the silent street. Pop seized a paper bag, blew it up, and smote it with a loud, “Bang!”

If I were ever going to see the revolution, it was time to make my exit. I ducked out quietly, strolled downstairs and around the corner, and reached the avenue just in time to hear the excitement. A volley of musketry sounded from the barracks a few blocks away. Policemen were blowing their whistles, and running up and down. I chased after one.

“Where is it?” I demanded.

He was too busy blowing his whistle to answer me. More policemen joined us, and we ran toward the plaza, colliding with another patrol running from the opposite direction. Here or there a scattering shot resounded, but one could not judge its source. We raced around corners, up and down the street, asking other parties where the trouble was to be found, but no one knew. At length the shooting subsided, and I went home to bed.

The next morning I made inquiries.

“There was no revolution, señor! Only a couple of drunken Americanos blowing up paper bags and smashing bottles!”

XIV

Tegucigalpa was quiet again.

The American Minister drove past my hotel in a big automobile filled with American naval officers in gold braid and cocked hats. The warship Rochester, flag-ship of the Panama squadron, was now anchored off Amapala. Admiral Dayton had come up to the Capital with his staff on what was described officially as “nothing more than a courtesy visit.” But it was reported that American gunboats were now lying off the east coast ports, ready to protect American property at the banana plantations. And it was humorously said in Tegucigalpa that the Admiral was about to reconvene Congress and preside over it himself.

THE WARSHIP ROCHESTER HAD ANCHORED AT AMAPALA ON WHAT WAS DESCRIBED AS A COURTESY VISIT

“There will be much speculation regarding this visit,” suggested an American at the Legation.

The Minister smiled.

“I think there will be no speculation at all.”

Honduras apparently had taken the hint. Just how the election difficulties were to be solved, no one knew, but every one agreed that they would be solved peacefully. Wherefore I caught the daily passenger truck down to Amapala to continue my journey to Nicaragua.

But, as always in these countries, the unexpected happened. The American warship, as soon as peace had settled upon Honduras, steamed away. And a few days later the whole Republic was in flames. Cable dispatches informed the world that Carías had slipped out of Tegucigalpa, joined forces awaiting him near the Nicaraguan border, and started back to the capital, that President Gutierrez had fled to Amapala and died there from nervous strain, that the other candidates were leading troops in other sections of the country, that machine-guns were sweeping the streets of the cities, that American citizens were taking refuge in the Legation, that the Rosario mines were calling for protection, and that American marines were landing at the banana plantations of the East Coast.

Such is life in Honduras!