Salvador, the smallest, is so tiny that from its center one could sometimes look westward to the Pacific Ocean, and eastward to the mountains of Honduras.
III
If Salvador sometimes indulges in what the people of larger nations describe as “comic opera,” it is normally peaceful.
It appeared so tranquil at the time of my visit that I was surprised to learn of its being under martial law.
“Oh, that’s easily explained,” said the gentleman who shared my seat. “Our president, Alfonso Quiñonez Molina, is a very excellent man, but he has his enemies. Under martial law, he can draft any one into the army. As soon as an opponent criticizes him, he makes him a General. Thus the critic becomes susceptible to military discipline, and ventures no further criticism.”
IV
A few hours of leisurely travel brought me to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
It was a warm, sunny capital, only a trifle over two thousand feet in altitude, extremely low for a Central-American city. Its population numbered only some fifty or sixty thousand. Its people, being of mestizo composition, did not affect the barbaric raiment of the Guatemalan Indians. The half-breed maidens wrapped themselves in filmy shawls of pink or blue, but after the blazing serapes of the previous country these garments seemed colorless. The city itself was somewhat drab. A few of its structures were of the heavy masonry found elsewhere in Central America, and its Governmental Palace was imposing in its wealth of marble columns, yet the city as a whole—being another favorite objective of the local earthquakes—was constructed mainly of wood and corrugated iron, even to the cathedral, which, although painted to suggest stone, was convincing only at a distance.
But it was a decidedly pleasant city, with many parks and tinkling fountains. Pretty señoritas were abundant. Priests in black robes—unrestricted by law in this country—were to be seen everywhere. Men walked through the market-places ringing dinner bells, and carrying little boxes containing a tiny image of the Virgin, to Whom one might bow for a penny. Horse cars rattled through the streets with much crackling of the drivers’ whips. There was music each night in the plaza, and flirtation beneath the palm trees. The tropic air was balmy and soothing. About the whole city there was an atmosphere of contentment—and a touch of that fictional romance which the traveler craves.