The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

The Spaniards themselves are not in their own country at all famous for their inns. No European nation has probably advanced so slowly towards civilization in this respect as Spain has done. And therefore, as these Costa Ricans are Spanish by descent and language, and as the country itself is so far removed from European civilization, we did not expect much. Had we fallen into the hands of Spaniards we should probably have received less even than we expected. But as it was we found ourselves in a comfortable second-class little German inn. It was German in everything; its light-haired landlord, frequently to be seen with a beer tankard in hand; its tidy landlady, tidy at any rate in the evening, if not always so in the morning; its early hours, its cookery, its drink, and I think I may fairly add, its prices.

On entering the first town I had visited in Central America, I had of course looked about me for strange sights. That men should be found with their heads under their shoulders, or even living in holes burrowed in the ground, I had not ventured to hope. But when a man has travelled all the way to Costa Rica, he does expect something strange. He does not look to find everything as tame and flat and uninteresting as though he were riding into a sleepy little borough town in Wiltshire.

We cannot cross from Dover to Ostend without finding at once that we are among a set of people foreign to ourselves. The first glance of the eye shows this in the architecture of the houses, and the costume of the people. We find the same cause for excitement in France, Switzerland, and Italy; and when we get as far as the Tyrol, we come upon a genus of mankind so essentially differing from our own as to make us feel that we have travelled indeed.

But there is little more interest to be found in entering San José than in driving through the little Wiltshire town above alluded to. The houses are comfortable enough. They are built with very ordinary doors and windows, of one or two stories according to the wealth of the owners, and are decently clean outside, though apparently rather dirty within. The streets are broad and straight, being all at right angles to each other, and though not very well paved, are not rough enough to elicit admiration. There is a square, the pláza, in which stands the cathedral, the barracks, and a few of the best houses in the town. There is a large and tolerably well-arranged market-place. There is a really handsome set of public buildings, and there are two moderately good hotels. What more can a man rationally want if he travel for business? And if he travel for pleasure how can he possibly find less?

It so happened that at the time of my visit to Costa Rica Sir William Ouseley was staying at San José with his family. He had been sent, as all the world that knows anything doubtless knows very well, as minister extraordinary from our Court to the governments of Central America, with the view of settling some of those tough diplomatic questions as to the rights of transit and occupation of territory, respecting which such world-famous Clayton-Bulwer treaties and Cass-Yrrisari treaties have been made and talked of. He had been in Nicaragua, making no doubt an equally famous Ouseley-something treaty, and was now engaged on similar business in the capital of Costa Rica.

Of the nature of this August work,—for such work must be very august,—I know nothing. I only hope that he may have at least as much success as those who went before him. But to me it was a great stroke of luck to find so pleasant and hospitable a family in so outlandish a place as San José. And indeed, though I have given praise to the hotel, I have given it with very little personal warrant as regards my knowledge either of the kitchen or cellar. My kitchen and cellar were beneath the British flag at the corner of the pláza, and I had reason to be satisfied with them in every respect.

And I had abundant reason to be greatly gratified. For not only was there at San José a minister extraordinary, but also, attached to the mission, there was an extra-ordinary secretary of legation, a very prince of good fellows. At home he would be a denizen of the Foreign Office, and denizens of the Foreign Office are swells at home. But at San José, where he rode on a mule, and wore a straw hat, and slept in a linendraper's shop, he was as pleasant a companion as a man would wish to meet on the western, or indeed on any other side of the Atlantic.

I shall never forget the hours I spent in that linendraper's shop. The rooms over the shop, over that shop and over two or three others, were occupied by Sir W. Ouseley and his family. There was a chemist's establishment there, and another in the possession, I think, of a hatter. They had been left to pursue their business in peace; but my friend the secretary, finding no rooms sufficiently secluded for himself in the upper mansion, had managed to expel the haberdasher, and had located himself not altogether uncomfortably, among the counters.

Those who have spent two or three weeks in some foreign town in which they have no ordinary pursuits, know what it is to have—or perhaps, more unlucky, know what it is to be without—some pleasant accustomed haunt, in which they can pretend to read, while in truth the hours are passed in talking, with some few short intervals devoted to contemplation and tobacco. Such to me was the shop of the expelled linendraper at San José. In it, judiciously suspended among the counters, hung a Panamá grass hammock, in which it was the custom of my diplomatic friend to lie at length and meditate his despatches. Such at least had been his custom before my arrival. What became of his despatches during the period of my stay, it pains me to think; for in that hammock I had soon located myself, and I fear that my presence was not found to be a salutary incentive to composition.

The scenery round San José is certainly striking, but not sufficiently so to enable one to rave about it. I cannot justly go into an ecstasy and sing of Pelion or Ossa; nor can I talk of deep ravines to which the Via Mala is as nothing. There is a range of hills, respectably broken into prettinesses, running nearly round the town, though much closer to it on the southern than on the other sides. Two little rivers run by it, which here and there fall into romantic pools, or pools which would be romantic if they were not so very distant from home; if having travelled so far, one did not expect so very much. There are nice walks too, and pretty rides; only the mules do not like fast trotting when the weight upon them is heavy. About a mile and a half from the town, there is a Savanah, so-called, or large square park, the Hyde Park of San José; and it would be difficult to imagine a more pleasant place for a gallop. It is quite large enough for a race-course, and is open to everybody. Some part of the mountain range as seen from here is really beautiful.