Whilst gazing in silent rapture at the incomparable beauty of the scene before us, and carried away by the matchless exhibitions of Flora and Pomona, we were suddenly transported on the wings of memory back to the beautiful plaza of Ciudad Bolivar, where, some months before, we had heard a happy, enthusiastic fiancée declare that she considered the lower Orinoco, aboard a yacht or a steamer, an ideal place to spend one’s honeymoon. With no claim to the power of mind-reading, or to the spirit of prophecy, we assert, without fear of erring, that if she had the opportunity of choosing between the Orinoco valley and this beauty spot near San José, as a place to spend her honeymoon—her luna de miel, as the Spaniards phrase it—it would not be to the Orinoco that Don Esteban would take his bride, but to this Edenic spot on the charming Costa Rican plateau.
Costa Rica, despite what has often been said to the contrary, has, for the past half century, been practically free from those fratricidal revolutions that have so characterized the other Central American republics. There have, it is true, been occasional pronunciamientos and periods of excitement about the time of some of the presidential elections, but none of those devastating insurrections that have so long been the curse of her less-fortunate neighbors.
Costa Rica points with pride, and well she may, to the fact that she has more school teachers than soldiers. Everywhere one finds schools for both sexes, admirably appointed and conducted, and constant efforts are being made to have them compare favorably with similar institutions in other parts of the world.
The original Spanish inhabitants of the central plateau were of sturdy Galician stock, and their descendants still exhibit the thrift, industry and enterprise of their ancestors. One meets many families of pure Spanish blood, but the majority are evidently mestizos—the result of the intermarriage of Spaniards with the aborigines. The number of pure-blooded Indians is comparatively small—only about three thousand out of a total population of a third of a million. There are few negroes seen outside of the low coast lands, where they constitute the majority of the inhabitants. We were, indeed, greatly impressed to note the sudden transition from the black to the white race as we ascended the Cordillera. In San José the number of negroes is astonishingly small, while the complexions of the whites, compared with that of the majority of the people living in the Andean lands we had recently visited, is unusually clear and ruddy.
“How fair and delicate are the features of the Josefinas!”[13] exclaimed C., as we took our first promenade in the broad and well-kept streets of San José. And with the eye of a connoisseur, he continued, “How tastefully dressed they are!”
He was right. The number of beautiful, Madonna-like types one meets with is surprising. This impression is probably enhanced in some degree by the beautifully embroidered pañolones—large Chinese silk shawls—which they know so well how to display to the best advantage. When to the tasteful costume and delicate features one adds the culture and refinement that often distinguish the Josefina, one can easily realize that she but continues the best traditions for beauty and grace of mind and heart that have so long distinguished her sisters in the land of Isabella of Castile.
After a delightful week spent in San José we prepared to return to Limon. We then experienced, probably more than at any other place in our long journey,—what all travelers more or less dread in their peregrinations—the pang of leaving places that have especially appealed to one and of saying farewell to newly-formed friends almost as soon as one has learned to know their goodness of heart and nobility of character. To me, I confess, this has always been the greatest drawback of traveling and is something I have never been able to outgrow.
Armed with a certificate from our consul stating that we had spent in San José the time required of passengers coming from quarantined ports, by the health regulations of Panama, we took our place in a comfortable parlor car, and were soon on our way towards the Caribbean coast, but not before we had taken “a last, long, lingering look,” at beautiful, hospitable, fascinating San José.
As the train slowly moved eastwards towards Cartago, our attention was directed for the hundredth time to the rich cafetales—coffee plantations—that covered the fertile acres on both sides of the road. Here and there we noted one of those cumbersome ox-carts with solid wooden wheels drawn by a yoke of oxen in charge of an odd-looking boyero. These are rapidly giving way to more modern means of transportation, but the lover of the bizarre and the picturesque will regret their disappearance.
“Observe,” said a Josefino, having some pretensions to physiognomy, “the peculiar features of that boyero on his way to the market. I will wager anything that that man is a firm believer in ceguas and cadejos and lloronas; that he dreams of botijas, even in the daytime, and that he has greater fear of hermanos than any of your countrymen have of ghosts.” He then proceeded to explain the meaning of these terms.