The boys walked around the hotel and then into the street beyond. A few natives were moving about, but that was all. The sun, striking the pavement, made the place like a furnace, and they were glad to retreat once more to the shelter of the court.
“Where is Hockley?” asked Professor Strong, as he, too, roused up.
“I don’t know,” answered Darry, and the others said the same.
“Perhaps he is taking a look around on his own account,” suggested Mark. “He said something about wanting to see the lumber yards, so that he could write to his father and tell him how they handled lumber down here.”
“They handle it here very much as they do everywhere else in South America,” answered the professor. “Some is carried on wagons, but a great deal is transported on the backs of mules.”
“How can a mule carry a long stick of timber?” asked Frank. “If he carried it sideways it would more than block the street.”
“They use two or more mules and it is wonderful how they balance the loads. Then, too, the natives carry a great lot of things on their shoulders and heads.”
“What are the real natives?” asked Darry. “I’ve seen all sorts of people here—white, black, red, and mixed.”
“The real natives are the Indians, Crane,” returned the professor, with a smile. “They lived here long before the days of Columbus, just as they inhabited our own country. Next to the Indians come the Spaniards who were the first settlers. The Spaniards introduced the negroes, who came from Africa and from the West Indies as slaves. The intermixture of these races have produced the mestizoes, who are of Spanish and Indian blood, the mulattoes, of negro and creole blood, and the zambos, of negro and Indian blood. These people are also intermixed, so that it is sometimes impossible to tell what a person is.”
“Like the man in New York who came up to be naturalized,” said Mark. “His father was an Englishman and his mother a Frenchwoman. His grandfather had been born in Germany and his grandmother in Italy. He had emigrated to Canada and there married a Canadian Indian woman. Then he had moved down to New York, and his oldest daughter had married an Irishman. If they have any children it will be hard to tell what they will be.” And there was a general laugh at this sally.