Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

Incredible as it may seem, where there were train loads of bananas at every siding, we were unable to get even a sample of edible fruit anywhere between Limon and San José, although we asked for it at every stopping place. All that was destined for shipment was unripe, and, while there were several other kinds of fruits for sale, there was not a single ripe banana.

The negroes we saw along the railroad, as well as those observed in Limon, were a constant study for us, especially when congregated in large numbers in halls or churches. Like the negroes of Martinique they are, in the words of Lafcadio Hearn, “A population fantastic, astonishing—a population of the Arabian Nights.”[6] They exhibit the whole gamut of skin tints from the milk-white of the albino to the coal-black of the Nubian.

Some of the women are remarkable for beauty of form and delicacy of features. Lissome, statuesque, and of graceful bearing, they are Juliets in ebony, who exhibit the classic proportions of “ox-eyed” Juno or of the Venus of Milo. As simple as children, they, like their sisters in the Antilles, are as talkative as parrots and their laugh is as hearty as it is spontaneous.

But it is the dress of the Costa Rican negress that arrests attention, especially when she is seen in public gatherings of any kind. Then the design and color of her attire is bizarre in the extreme. She selects by preference the most flaunting and garish colors, and, when she appears in her Sunday costume, one would declare that she had tried to combine the hues of tropical birds, and to mimic the gorgeousness of the blue-red-yellow macaw.

The description given by Sir F. Treves of the dress of the negress of Martinique, sums up in a few words the salient features of the Sunday costume of her sister in Costa Rica. “The headdress,” he writes, “is very picturesque. It consists of a ‘madras,’ an ample handkerchief wound about the head turban fashion, and finished by a projecting end, which stands up like the eagle’s feather in an Indian’s hair. The color of the madras will be usually a canary yellow striped with black. The hues of the dress are bewildering. Here are a skirt of roses and a foulard of sky-blue, a gown of scarlet and yellow with a terra-cotta scarf across the breast, a dress of white striped with orange below a foulard of green, a frock of primrose spotted with red and completed by a scarf of mazarine blue. Add to this the necklace of gold beads, the heavy bracelets, the great earrings, and the ‘trembling pins’ that fix the madras, and then realize over all, the white light of a tropical moon.”[7]

The two places along our route in which we were specially interested were the village of Matina, in the fertile valley watered by the river of that name, and Cartago, which was founded by the Spaniards in 1563, and was, during colonial times, the capital of the country.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century Matina was a port of some importance and the centre of the largest and best cacaotales—cacao haciendas—in Costa Rica, but owing to the frequent incursions of pirates and Mosquito Indians, this fertile territory had to be evacuated. There was also another reason for abandoning it and that was the hot, enervating, pernicious atmosphere, and the torrential rains, which were the causes of malaria and malignant fevers from which the district was never exempt. So bad was the reputation of the Matina valley in this respect that people, as the Costa Rican writer, Don Ricardo F. Guardia, informs us in his Cuentos Ticos, “used to confess and make their wills when they went to Matina, to the famous Matina which inspires fear in men and madness in mules,[8] as they used to say in those days when men were braver and mules better.”—

Cartago—how often this Carthaginian name recurs in this part of the world!—is a delightful place nearly a mile above sea level, with a population of about seven thousand souls. It was founded in 1562 by Juan Vazquez de Coronado, the real conqueror of Costa Rica. It has a very salubrious climate with a mean annual temperature of 66° F. In 1841 it was almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake caused by a violent eruption of the volcano of Irazu, at the foot of which the town is situated. It is noted as the seat of the Central American Court of Justice, which was inaugurated here as one of the results of the Peace Congress held in Washington in 1907. In consequence of the establishment of this tribunal here, the town has been called the “Hague of the New World.” Mr. Andrew Carnegie has contributed $100,000 for the erection of a suitable edifice in which to hold the sessions of the court. The site selected for it is the most beautiful in the city, and the structure, on which work was begun without delay, promises to be the most attractive feature of Cartago.

Costa Rica is justly celebrated for its coffee. In the London market it has long been a favorite brand and always commands a high price. It has a delicious aroma scarcely inferior to that of the best Java or Mocha berries. We preferred it to any we had found elsewhere in our tropical wanderings. The haciendas devoted to the cultivation of coffee—especially those in the vicinity of Cartago and San José—are kept in splendid condition, and the trees are of exceptional vigor and productiveness.

Next to bananas, coffee constitutes the most important export of the republic. It was introduced from Havana about a century ago, and one may yet see in Cartago the centenarian trees that supplied the seeds for the plantations of Costa Rica and other parts of Central America. The value of the coffee and bananas annually exported from the republic is much greater than that of all the other commodities combined. Indeed, these two staples are to the commerce of Costa Rica what tobacco and sugar are to Cuba. Columbus and his followers searched these countries for gold and spices, but they found but little of either. If they could return now to these favored lands they would discover that their real treasures, more precious far than gold mines and groves of spice trees, lay in the indigenous banana and tobacco plants, and in the two exotic growths, coffee and sugar cane.