Chapter XIX: A Very Peculiar “royal Highway”

I was told that Tegucigalpa was fifteen days’ journey from Zacapa by mule, perhaps a little less on foot! I wanted to reach the capital in time to see an old friend before he left for the United States, but if I had been the richest man in the world I could have gone no faster. To realize this made me feel very helpless, yet I knew that our own country must once have been much like Honduras. How different our life would be now without railroads, or even roads!

There was not a yard of real road on all of my two weeks’ tramp from the border to the capital. Trails through forests and mountains in the United States are smooth and easy in comparison with this ancient route between Guatemala City and Tegucigalpa. Yet it is called the _camino real_, that is, the royal highway! I saw nothing either royal or highway-like about it.

Often I climbed for hours, sometimes by stone steps cut in the mountain, only to come down on the other side. My clothes were worn out, and the American paper money in my pocket was almost ruined by perspiration and the tearing jungle. Within a few hours midsummer heat would change to the chill of late autumn. For miles I stumbled among loose stones where there was always danger of spraining an ankle. I waded and swam through rivers; I splashed through mud; now and then I got soaked by a sudden shower. After losing time at two streams in undressing and dressing again, I decided thereafter to plunge in, shoes and all. At times I had to follow the bed of a stream, wading across it and back, or scrambling up its steep bank and down again. Now and then I lost my way, and had to stop to get my bearings; there was seldom anyone to ask. For the most part the trail seemed to have built itself, without human aid, and it had a habit of falling into deep gullies and struggling out again like a drunken man.

At least there was often the pleasure of drinking from a clear cool mountain stream; and I must admit that occasionally the trails of Honduras give the finest walking in the world. What could be more pleasant than to wander along grassy upland paths, with magnificent forest vistas on either side, or through the forests themselves, range after blue range of mountains spreading away to the horizon? For miles at a time I did not see a human being.

Crooked telegraph poles, on which was strung one lone sagging wire, were often useful in showing me the way. The telegraph lines of Honduras belong to the government, and one can send a message anywhere in the country for a nickel. The mail of Honduras is usually carried by a lazy barefoot youth wearing faded khaki and an ancient straw hat. He may have a pack mule, but whether he has or not he takes very long indeed to get from one town to another.

Valuable Forests

Mahogany and other valuable hardwoods are found in the great forests of Honduras, but there is no such thing as a mahogany forest. Trees of this species grow far apart; it is considered good luck to find sixty mahogany trees in 25,000 acres. Tree “hunters” recognize a mahogany tree by its great size and its brightly colored leaves. They bring in cutters, who may have to build a road to reach the tree or to haul it out. It is a day’s work for two men to cut down a tree.

Panama Mail Steamship Co., San Francisco

Immense mahogany timbers ready for shipment.
]

A single log of genuine curly mahogany may sell for $10,000. In our country an inch board is often cut into sheets as thin as paper, for veneering other wood. Much of our “mahogany” furniture is really mahogany veneer and some of it is perhaps not even that, but an imitation, for real mahogany comes only from the lands of the Caribbean. Yet in Honduras mahogany logs are used not only to make tables but even rail fences! On a hillside that might produce food for many people I often saw a _milpa_, or tiny cornfield, fenced off with mahogany slabs that to a furniture manufacturer would be worth ten times all the corn produced by the patch in a lifetime. But as I have already said, the great problem is to get the wood to market. Like ebony, rosewood, cocobola and snakewood—other valuable hardwoods of Central America—mahogany will not float, and there are no railways or roads.

Scenes along the Way

The first sizable Honduras town I saw was Santa Rosa. Four thousand feet above sea level, with fine scenery all about it, the place looked very pretty from a distance with its white church bulking above the low houses. But the people are not very industrious or progressive. There were no hotels, restaurants, electric lights, carriages or automobiles. When I asked for lodging, the people sent me to the drugstore, where an American doctor had a “room” made by curtaining off with canvas a part of the public hallway to the _patio_. The doctor was away from home, and I slept in his bed that night.

Tobacco grows about Santa Rosa, and every native hut is a cigar factory. Men, women, and even children smoke the rather crude cigars, and quantities of these are sent, on men’s backs or on pack animals, to other parts of Honduras.

A street corner in Santa Rosa, Honduras. The men in the foreground are
soldiers, and the store behind them is one of the best.
]

The doctor whose room I had used came home next day and proved to be a huge man from Texas. He worked very hard, for the people of Honduras have almost no doctors, and he received very little pay because his patients were all so poor. The great majority of the natives live and die without any medical attention whatever, except for what relief they may get from a rare wandering pill peddler. Most of them think any “gringo” is a doctor, so they were always calling upon me to prescribe for them. As I had a small medicine case with me for my own use I sometimes did try to help them. They were always astonished that I would accept no payment, and now and then an old woman insisted on paying me by refusing to take money for my lodging or a meal. Hookworm, cancer, and other dreadful diseases were very common; smallpox was raging in one town I passed through.

One man with whom I spent a night insisted that I take a photograph of his sick wife, showing her bed and “even the color of her face,” so that he could send the picture to the Virgin of the Remedies at a distant shrine. He imagined that in that way she could be cured. Some of the people were afraid of a camera, but many of them wanted their pictures taken. As I had only a few films, and those who wished to be photographed insisted on spending two or three hours in dressing up for the occasion, I often refused; but I had a hard time explaining matters.

Along the trail, I would frequently pass a crude wooden cross showing where someone had died from disease, had been killed accidentally, or had been murdered. There is no capital punishment in Honduras, unless a military chief orders an execution, and as prisoners are usually released each time there is political revolution, murder is not considered a very serious offense. To remember this when passing a wooden cross up on a lonely mountain top was never very pleasant.

Meeting Strange People

I saw several bands of soldiers wandering, rather than marching, northward. They were ragged and barefooted, and were followed by their bedraggled women and children. All were on foot and carried all they owned on their backs and heads. The soldiers of Honduras are usually as badly disciplined as they are clothed. They carry their rifles at all angles even when on parade. They are fond of being officers—indeed, there are almost as many generals and colonels as there are privates. Now and then some of them were rather impudent, but I could always pay them back. I would show their commander my letters and passes from important officials and have him make the troops line up and drill so that I could take pictures of them.

The women of Honduras, as well as the men, smoke the black cigars of
Santa Rosa. They weave their own skirts, often working in words
having a religious meaning.
]

There were many prisoners also, working in gangs. Sometimes they were chained together, yet they did not seem badly treated. I remember passing one group who were supposed to be working on the road but who were all loafing in the shade and smoking. They laid their fingers on their lips as a sign to me not to waken the guard, who was sleeping on his back with his rifle lying across him.

One day I met a pair of pure-blooded Indians carrying oranges in big nets. They sold me “two hands,” or ten fine oranges, for a Honduras nickel. Later I met larger bands of them going to market, each carrying a load on his back, partly supported by a strap across the forehead. It was five or six days before I saw the first vehicle, a two-wheeled cart with solid wooden wheels, the greaseless axle screaming so loudly that I could hear it a mile away. The cart was drawn by two oxen having the yoke bound to their horns.

Honduran Hospitality

Except for an occasional soldier, all the Hondurans were very courteous. To be sure, like most Spanish-speaking people, they often said “My home is yours” without really meaning it. A man who was my companion one day gave me to understand that he lived in a palace and wanted me to come and stay with him that night. But when we reached his home it was just a miserable hut, and his family would not let me in until I offered to pay the usual price for a lodging. The man who had invited me went out to get a candle, and I had to try a dozen houses before I could buy food enough for a supper. The country people of Honduras depend entirely on candles for light, and as they do not read in the evening—or, for that matter, much at any time—they often have no light at all.

A company of soldiers in a Honduras town.
]

There seemed to be at least two _chuchos_ (yellow mongrel dogs) for every human inhabitant. Often they kept me awake most of the night. The people do not feed their dogs, or their pigs either, but leave the animals to pick up what they can.

About sunset on the last day of the year I came to Comayagua, second largest “city” of Honduras and formerly the capital. No sort of hotel was to be found in the town; the central _plaza_ was a sheep pasture; the _tiendas_, little den-like stores, sold almost nothing to eat. The mongrel _chuchos_ were more numerous than the people, and so hungry that if you did not watch they would grab a _tortilla_ out of your hand. It was a very languid place, as if everyone were suffering from the hookworm disease which makes people feel lazy and good-for-nothing.

The central _plaza_ of Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras. Bright purple
bougainvillea covers the arbor.
]

The “City of the Silver Hills”

On New Year’s Day—a very hot one!—I started out on the last lap of my journey to the present capital. In the afternoon I had a chance for a fine swim in a river of clear water. (At such times I sometimes washed my clothing, which soon dried in the bright sunshine.) The next morning just at sunrise I came in sight of my goal, Tegucigalpa, the “City of the Silver Hills.” When I walked into the central _plaza_ I showed that I had been fifteen days on the road. But there were still some clothes in my knapsack, and at the post office I found a pair of American shoes which I had mailed to myself at that address months before.

Pan American Union

The President’s palace at Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is rather an imposing
and romantic-looking building.
]

With its 40,000 inhabitants, the capital is really the only important town in the country, yet it is not a very bustling place. I stopped at the Hotel Jockey Club, which might have been worse and might have been much better. The only bath was in the basement—a stone vessel into which trickled cold water. The bare rooms were furnished with sagging cots. Barefooted servants fed us in the dining room on the usual Honduran food, while a variety of barnyard creatures looked on.

A corner of Tegucigalpa, showing Picacho, the hill from which the
capital has often been captured during revolutions.
]

Sleepy little shops, frequently owned by foreigners, put up their wooden shutters at dusk, and after that there was not much left for a visitor to do but to roam the dark cobbled streets. On Sunday evenings a band played in the central _plaza_ while the population promenaded. To be fair to Tegucigalpa, I should say that I found some very nice people there, and I will testify that it has one of the finest climates in the world.

Honduras has almost no policemen except in the capital. I arrived just in time for the first official inspection of a new police force. It had been organized by General Lee Christmas, a famous American soldier-of-fortune who was once a conductor on the railroad in Guatemala and later was a general in the Honduran army. Not only he and I but the president and all the diplomatic corps were there. The Indians who had been made into policemen looked scared. Very solemnly each stepped forward when his name was called, saluted the chief, and then fell back into rank.

From Picacho, a long ridge of mountains ending in a blunt nose close above Tegucigalpa, one gets a good view of the city. There is a saying that anyone who captures Picacho may sleep in the palace. Most of the frequent revolutions in Honduras begin and end when someone with a few hundred soldiers captures that hill. From it one can look down into the _patio_ of nearly every home. Most of the buildings are one story high, roofed with red tile. Above them stands a whitewashed cathedral with twin towers. Mountains roll away on every side, and over them wind two ribbon-like roads.

Down to the Pacific

Of the two routes the traveler may take out of Tegucigalpa (except for the hard trail by which I had come) one goes through Comayagua and on to the short railway from Puerto Cortés; the other and shorter goes down to Amapala on the Pacific. An American who had been working in the mines of San Juancito took my things on his horse, and I walked down to the coast in a day and a half. The night I spent at Pespire, far below the capital, on the edge of the blazing tropics, but I started out again at three in the morning, for there was a fine moon. As soon as the hot sun appeared, lizards came out to warm themselves on the rocks. Natives wearing spurs on their bare feet rode past. Mule trains coughing in the dust, and creaking wooden carts, carried freight.

With the fantastic ranges of the interior and even the last low foothills left behind, I plodded across a dusty plain covered with withered grass and mesquite, where cattle panted for water. The owners of the American mines have helped the government build a road for automobiles, which climbs 2,000 feet out of the central valley and descends 5,000 feet to the coast. But much of the traffic is still of the old-fashioned kind.

Soldiers of Amapala, the Pacific port of Honduras. They look rather
lazy, but probably they are suffering from the hookworm disease
which takes away a person’s energy.
]

On the Atlantic side of Honduras there are many ports, but Amapala is the only one on the Pacific. It is not on the mainland but on the island of Tigre, twenty-four miles out in the Bay of Fonseca. From the top of an extinct volcano that rises above Amapala one can see three countries—Honduras, Salvador, and Nicaragua. Barefooted soldiers wrote down many facts about us as we landed from our launch at the narrow wooden wharf. Then we settled down in a not very comfortable hotel to wait until a steamer on the San Francisco-Panama route came along to carry us southward.

Amapala is on a volcanic island in the ocean, twenty-four miles from
the mainland. From the top of this island one can see three
countries.
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