I
From Tapachula to the Guatemalan border, there was a train every two or three days, provided traffic warranted so much service.
It took me through a bamboo forest, and dropped me at Suchiate, a straggling village of thatched huts beside a muddy river, where I had my first experience with the formalities attendant upon the crossing of a Central-American frontier.
First one had to secure permission from the Mexican authorities to leave their country. In a whitewashed shed three leisurely gentlemen in their shirt sleeves were viséing passports. Before they would proceed, one had to obtain stamps, procurable only at another shack, located as always in these countries at the opposite end of town, and reached by trudging through deep sand beneath a broiling sun. And when, after half an hour or more, one returned with the stamps, there were questions:
Why were we leaving Mexico? When? Where were we going? Why? What had we done in Mexico? Why the devil had we come there, anyhow? What was our profession? Married or single? How many children? Why? Where were they? And how?
And when one had convinced the officials of his respectability, there was another long hike across an endless sunny grass-plain, to a palm-thatched shelter at the river bank, where other officials ransacked the baggage. A boatman poled the few emigrants across the swirling waters to Guatemala. And the entire proceeding recommenced on the other side.
The Guatemalan officials had no office. They stood in the shade of a pepper tree, flanked on one side by a squad of barefooted soldiers, on the other by an ox-cart, and backed by the town’s juvenile population. They pretended very solemnly to read every word in the passports—although one traveler’s was in Russian and another’s in Syrian. They paused now and then to shake their heads doubtfully and exchange suspicious glances. But at length, when every one had proved his solvency by displaying thirty-five dollars in American currency—Guatemalan bills not being considered sufficient proof of solvency—they passed us all. Baggage was loaded upon the ox-cart, and we started for the custom-house, led by the soldiers, and followed by the juvenile population.
There was another wait of more than an hour while the custom inspector finished his lunch, took his siesta, and smoked his cigarette. At last, however, he made his appearance, scribbled in chalk all over the outside of trunks and suit-cases, filled out several printed reports, and collected from each of us ten Guatemalan dollars—or fourteen cents in American money—and the formalities were concluded.
We were officially admitted to the Republic of Guatemala.