It was an ideal day for tramping, cloudy yet bright, with a strong fresh wind almost too cold for sitting still and across a country green and fragrant with endless forest, and after the climb back of Tutule little more than rolling. It was noon before we came upon the new mud-and-tiled house of the cattle-tender of "dear aunty's" hacienda, and though the meal we enjoyed there was savory by Honduranean standards, it was not so completely Parisian as I had permitted myself to anticipate. That I was allowed to pay for it proved nothing, for the employees of the wealthy frequently show no aversion to accepting personal favors.
Not far beyond we came out on the edge of a tableland with a splendid view of the valley of Comayagua, far below, almost dead level, some ten miles wide and thirty long, deep green everywhere, with cloud shadows giving beautiful color effects across it in the jumble of green mountains with the purple tinge of distance beyond which lay Tegucigalpa. At the same time there began the most laborious descent of the journey, an utterly dry mountain face pitched at an acute angle and made up completely of loose rock, down which we must pick every step and often use our hands to keep from landing with broken bones at the bottom. The new buildings of the mine were in plain sight almost directly below us from the beginning, yet we were a full two hours in zigzagging by short legs straight down the loose-stone slope to them. The American manager was absent, but in the general store of the company I had not only the pleasure of spending an hour in the first thoroughly clean building I had seen in Honduras, but of speaking English, for the two Negro youths in charge of the place were natives of Belize, or British Honduras, and were equally fluent in my own tongue or Spanish, while their superiority in personal condition over the natives was a sad commentary on the boasted advantage of the republican form of government.
The thirsty, rock-sown descent continued, bringing us at last with aching thighs to the level of the vast valley, more than four thousand feet below the lodging-places of the few days past. Suaza mounted his horse and prepared to enter his native La Paz in style. So often had kingly quarters promised me by the self-styled sons of wealth in Latin America gradually degenerated to the monotonous tortilla level of general conditions that I had not been able entirely to disabuse myself of an expectation of disappointment. Sure enough, where the trail broke up into a score of paths among mud huts and pig wallows, my companion paused in the dark to say:
"Perhaps after all it will be better to take you right to my house for to-night. One always feels freer in one's father's house. My aunt might be holding some social affair, or be sick or—But we will surely call at her mansion to-morrow, and—"
"Como usted quiera?" I answered, swallowing my disappointment. At least his father's house should be something above the ordinary.
But to my astonishment we stopped a bit farther on in the suburbs before one of the most miserable mud hovels it had been my misfortune to run across in Honduras, swarming with pigs, yellow curs, and all the multitudinous filth and disarray indigenous to the country. The coldest of welcomes greeted us, the frowsy, white-bearded father in the noisome doorway replying to the son's query of why there was no light with a crabbed:
"If you want light why don't you come in the daytime?"
My companion told a boy of the family to go buy a candle, and his scrawny, unkempt mother bounded out of the hut with the snarl of a miser:
"What do you want a candle for?"
The boy refused to go and Suaza tied his horse to a bush and went in quest of one himself. I mentioned supper, hinting at my willingness to pay for anything that could be furnished, but to each article I suggested came the monotonous, indifferent Honduranean answer, "No hay." After much growling and an extended quarrel with her son, the woman set on a corner of a wabbly-legged table, littered with all manner of unsavory junk, two raw eggs, punctured and warmed, a bowl of hot water and a stale slab of pan dulce, a cross between poor bread and worse cake. I wandered on into the town in the hope of finding some imitation of a hotel. But though the place had a population of several thousand, it was made up exclusively of mud huts only two or three of which were faintly lighted by pine-splinters. The central plaza was a barren, unlighted pasture, a hut on the corner of which was reputed to be a shop, but when I had beaten my way into it I found nothing for sale except bottles of an imitation wine at monopoly prices. In my disgust I pounded my way into every hovel that was said to be a tienda. Not an edible thing was to be found. One woman claimed to have fruit for sale, and after collecting a high price for them she went out into the patio and picked a half-dozen perfectly green oranges.