“Did you hear the shooting night before last?” another inquired. “There were several pistol shots, and then the burst of a machine-gun. I wonder how soon they will really start?”
But the American Minister, from the seat of honor at the right of the host, merely smiled.
“There will be no revolution,” he predicted.
“Do you mean the United States will intervene?”
He merely smiled again. Still, I felt that there was hope. The ox-carts were sounding more and more like musketry every day.
X
Christmas having provided no thrills, Tegucigalpa looked forward to New Year’s. On that day Congress was to convene to choose a president. Whoever was chosen would probably be obliged to fight the other two candidates.
In the meantime, I hired a mule and rode out to see the American-owned Rosario mines at San Juancito, forty kilometers from the capital.
The trail was rugged, but it led through magnificent scenery, among pine-clad mountains, ascending a ridge seven thousand feet high, where the clouds formed a heavy wet blanket yet opened occasionally to permit a glimpse of wild tropical forest below.
Most mining properties are situated in barren, desolate regions. That of the Rosario Company, the largest silver mine in Central America, is situated in a glorious valley, and from its neat white buildings one looks down upon a misty wilderness that stretches away through countless lower valleys, with a silver ribbon of water curling through them toward the sea. Despite its isolation, and the one rough mule trail that connects the mine with the rest of the world, it roared with industry. There was a reverberating chorus of giant crushers, the rattle of cars on many miles of narrow-gauge track, the crash of ore-bearing rock dumped into the stamp-mills, the hum of massive machinery.