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Salvador has the smallest foreign colony of any Central-American country. Since it is entirely a coffee country, and since Central-Americans are essentially coffee planters, it has little need for outsiders.
It judges the gringo largely by the occasional deluges of tourists who make the brief automobile journey up from the port of La Libertad during their “Go-from-New-York-to-Frisco-through-the-Panama-Canal” trip. As this is the only capital hereabouts that can be reached within a couple of hours from the seacoast, they all rush up the mountains to laugh at “one of those ridiculous little countries that O. Henry used to write about!”
One group came up during my sojourn.
They came in five automobiles, pausing at the central plaza to exclaim, “So this is Paris!” They looked at the leading hotel—an unimpressive but comfortable establishment—and roared, “There’s the Ritz!” They stopped for dinner, and demanded frijoles, having learned the name of that dish from Latin-American fiction, and being anxious to tell their friends at home about a real native dinner. They waited with much trepidation, having heard that all native dishes were peppery. And when the waiter brought frijoles, they screamed with laughter.
“We tried in every way to explain to that little brown fellow that we wanted a native dinner,” each would later tell the people at home, “and what do you think he brought us? Beans! Just think of it! Beans!”
After lunch they rode about town again. The monument in the central plaza interested them. The suspender-manufacturer from Buffalo called it “Napoleon crossing the Delaware.” Great applause greeted the sally. Thereafter, pleased with his success, the wit rode through town standing up in the front seat, and shouting through megaphoned hands his descriptions of the other sights.
Old-Timers damned him, as they always damn the tourist.
“He’s the sort,” they said, “that brings us all into disrepute.”
But the natives merely smiled. They were accustomed to this oft-repeated phenomenon. When asked their opinion of the tourists, they merely replied, “All of them seemed very jolly, señor.”