Copyright, 1907, by Judge Company, New York.
JOURNEYING ACROSS COUNTRY BY MULE.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon when we reached the crest of the mountain. One of my companions pointed out a village in the distance. “That,” he said, “is Sanarate, where we will stop to-night.” It seemed to me that we ought to reach it in about an hour. Our little party started to descend and we were an hour and half in reaching a level surface. Then we crossed a stream, went up a hill and still on, and always on, until darkness had fallen. Had I been alone I should have dropped off under a tree, or at a hut alongside the road, or done anything but go on. And yet I could not be blind to the magnificence of the night, for the skies were brilliant with thousands of stars unseen in these northern latitudes. At times I could forget my troubles and see only the blazing, radiant firmament. Thus it was that I followed the leaders, and finally, weary and aching, we entered the courtyard of a cheery-looking, comfortable hotel where the jolly German host made us welcome to the best his house afforded. Never did the smell of supper seem more refreshing, and never did palatable food taste better than it did that night to me in the fonda of Sanarate.
Here I experienced a sample of a native bed, if such an arrangement of folding sticks and tight-stretched canvas can be called a bed. It is a simple cot of canvas without a mattress, a microscopic pillow, and a few covers. One writer graphically describes his experience with such a cot: “I have tossed on this cot racked with fever, listening day and night to the discords of a neighbouring graphophone hoarsely venting grand opera and negro minstrelsy, my temperature at one hundred and seven, and with two hundred grains of quinine scattered through my anatomy. I wish my worst enemy a no more hideous experience.” I was, however, weary enough to sleep on a stone floor and never slept sounder than I did that night on that hard, unyielding cot, and awakened in the morning refreshed and ready for the remaining twenty-four miles of the journey.
Bright and early the next morning our little cavalcade left this cheerful hostelry and wended its way on toward the Gulf. We were thankful indeed that our lot had been cast in such a pleasant place. This hotel was made possible by the number of foreigners engaged in surveying and grading the new railroad which passed through this village. Few towns of this size in Guatemala can boast of a hotel, and, in the absence of such accommodations, the traveller is either obliged to take refuge at a native hut or in the cabildo, the public hall, which is always free and open to the traveller and is generally anything but an attractive place, for cleanliness is not one of its attributes, as it seems to be no one’s particular duty to look after it.
There were no such steep ascents or descents this day as we had on the first day’s journey through the mountainous region, although we were constantly going down into a lower altitude. Scarcely had we left the village until our path was sheltered from the sun by a wonderful curtain of vegetation that seemed to belong to fairy land. Woven into it were fantastic ferns, lianes that swung from the tops of lofty trees, splendid orchids and bromeliads, and the rustling, waving fronds of many palms. It was such a road as I had never seen before. Reaching the end of this enchanted road I saw my companions disappear down a densely-wooded ravine, for my mule was lagging behind as usual. I did not see them for more than an hour, as the ravine twisted and turned so much that one’s range of vision was very small, although the scenery was beautiful. The path crossed and re-crossed the little stream many times. I grew rather alarmed when the paths forked, but trusted to my nondescript steed rather from necessity than confidence. We finally left the ravine and came out upon the first level road we had travelled since leaving Guatemala City, and there were my companions at just about the regulation distance in advance.
The number of natives travelling on foot the same way we were going was unusually large and kept increasing each mile. All the by-paths contained their quota, who joined those on the main road, like the little rivulets which made up the great stream. All were dressed in their best, for that is usually about all they possess; at least their clothes were freshly washed and looked unusually well. Men, women and children, all in family groups, moved along at a rapid pace as if drawn by a powerful magnet.
The number of Indians kept increasing more and more for the next few miles, each carrying their baskets of food and many stopping along the road to eat. At last we reached a town where a fiesta was in progress, and this seemed to be their Mecca. All along the road from the capital we had noticed decorated arches erected over the road every few miles. A bishop had come to this village and these arches had been erected in his honour. It was the first time for nine years that a clergyman had been in that village. It was the duty of a priest living about thirty miles away to come here at least once each year to perform marriage ceremonies, baptisms, and other religious ceremonies. He started each year, but failed to come because he always got thoroughly saturated with liquor each time before he had travelled this far.
One incident happened here which rather discomfited an American liquor salesman whom I met. He had sent several mule cargoes of liquor over for the train that we were attempting to make in order to ship it to Honduras. It is necessary for each driver in charge of such merchandise to have a “guia” showing that all government fees had been paid. The driver did not have his in proper shape, so the commandante arrested the whole outfit, mules, driver, and whisky. They extracted a few gallons of the liquid cheer to aid in the proper celebration of the priest’s coming, and then let the driver proceed unmolested.
A journey of a few more hours brought us to Rancho San Agustin, or, as it is generally called, El Rancho, the end of our mule journey, for a train at that time ran once a week to Puerto Barrios. This train left El Rancho on Sunday morning at 6.30, taking two days for the one hundred and twenty-nine miles to the Gulf, and just making connection with the weekly mail steamer for New Orleans. Although we had travelled forty-eight miles the first day and twenty-four miles the second day by one o’clock in the afternoon, our boy mozo, who took a different route, and walked all the way, driving the cargo mule loaded with our baggage before him, arrived just about one hour later than we did. Several other passengers for the weekly train were already there, having started a day earlier than ourselves. Our hotel was a big two-story frame building—the first frame building that I had seen in the country. It looked almost colossal by the side of a little thatch cottage in an adjoining enclosure, and had been built by the railroad company for its employees and patrons. It cost only twenty dollars a day at this hostelry in the stage money of the country.