"The same distance as to San Pedro."
"And how far is that?"
"Bastante lejo, señor" ("Plenty far, sir").
Cultivation of crops is unknown. When the brush and trees are cleared the stumps are left about two feet high; it is easier to do the chopping at that point than lower down. After the fallen growth has sufficiently dried out it is burned off and the stumpy field usually planted to corn. This corn is allowed to shift for itself until ripe, and after the stalks have rotted awhile the land may have an application of grass seed and be used for pasture, in hope that the stock will wear down the stumps until it becomes at last possible to perform an athletic feat, called for want of a more accurate term, "plowing." I saw four oxen all pulling in different directions, while a plow occasionally disturbed the weedy surface of the ground and turned up irregular lumps of hard soil. The proprietor looked on with pride and asked if I had ever plowed. I had. Did I plow like that? I did not. When this plowing has been acted out, and some sort of clod-breaking has taken place, sugar cane is planted, and the work of cultivation is ended. For a dozen years the cane will produce annual crops of more or less value without any attention whatever other than the cutting of the cane when ready for the mill.
THE OXEN STAGE OF AGRICULTURE
An interior road is an experience. A road is a route of travel along which various persons make their way as best they are able, under such conditions of weather and impassability as happen to exist. In the dry season some of these tracks wear down to a condition in which a cart can be coaxed over the right-of-way. In wet weather nearly all the native thoroughfares are wholly impassable except for sturdy oxen, which plow their way through the mud and sinkholes with deliberation born of long practice.
The man at the bottom of the scale is not to blame for his situation. He is the victim of a system that has made it exceedingly unwise for him to do anything other than what he does.
Poverty is the only protection of the people. For nearly two centuries pillage, plunder, piracy, and murder were the record of the Isthmus. Every buccaneer who sailed the Spanish main seems to have made a business of taking a chance at the Isthmus. It was open season for every kind of crook work that the minds of men could invent. Most of this activity was confined to the trade route in the middle of the Isthmus, but the influence and terror of this bloody age extended both ways as far as the country was inhabited. The common people were exploited, plundered, murdered, enslaved, and beaten at every turn.
Only a fool would work when to work meant that his head was marked for immediate oppression. If he forgot himself and got hold of anything of value, some one was ready to take it away from him without delay; and if he objected, he lost both his property and his head.