Our ideas as to the characteristics of Honduras were very vague, and it is possible that we might never have seen Tegucigalpa had it not been for Colonel Charles Jeffs, whom we found apparently waiting for us at Puerto Cortez, and who, we still believe, had been stationed there by some guardian spirit to guide us in safety across the continent. Colonel Jeffs is a young American mining engineer from Minneapolis, and has lived in Honduras for the past eleven years. Some time ago he assisted Bogran, when that general was president, in one of the revolutions against him, and was made a colonel in consequence. So we called him our military attaché, and Griscom our naval attaché, because he was an officer of the Naval Brigade of Pennsylvania. Jeffs we found at Puerto Cortez. It was there that he first made himself known to us by telling our porters they had no right to rob us merely because we were gringos, and so saved us some dollars. He made us understand at the same time that it was as gringos, or foreigners, we were thereafter to be designated and disliked. We had no agreement with Jeffs, nor even what might be called an understanding. He had, as I have said, been intended by Providence to convey us across Honduras, and every one concerned in the outfit seemed to accept that act of kindly fate without question. We told him we were going to the capital, and were on pleasure bent, and he said he had business at the capital himself, and would like a few days’ shooting on the way, so we asked him to come with us and act as guide, philosopher, and friend, and he said, “The train starts at eight to-morrow morning for San Pedro Sula, where I will hire the mules.” And so it was settled, and we went off to get our things out of the custom-house with a sense of perfect confidence in our new acquaintance and of delightful freedom from all responsibility. And though, perhaps, it is not always best to put the entire charge of an excursion through an unknown country into the hands of the first kindly stranger whom you see sitting on a hotel porch on landing, we found that it worked admirably, and we depended on our military attaché so completely that we never pulled a cinch-strap or interviewed an ex-president without first asking his permission. I wish every traveller as kindly a guide and as good a friend.
OUR MILITARY ATTACHÉ
The train to San Pedro Sula was made up of a rusty engine and three little cars, with no glass in the windows, and with seats too wide for one person, and not at all large enough for two. The natives made a great expedition of this journey, and piled the cramped seats with bananas and tortillas and old bottles filled with drinking-water. We carried no luncheons ourselves, but we had the greater advantage of them in that we were enjoying for the first time the most beautiful stretch of tropical swamp-land and jungle that we came across during our entire trip through Honduras. Sometimes the train moved through tunnels of palms as straight and as regular as the elms leading to an English country-house, and again through jungles where they grew in the most wonderful riot and disorder, so that their branches swept in through the car-windows and brushed the cinders from the roof. The jungle spread out within a few feet of the track on either side, and we peered into an impenetrable net-work of vines and creepers and mammoth ferns and cacti and giant trees covered with orchids, and so tall that one could only see their tops by looking up at them from the rear platform.
The railroad journey from Puerto Cortez to San Pedro Sula lasts four hours, but the distance is only thirty-seven miles. This was, until a short time ago, when the line was extended by a New York company, the only thirty-seven miles of railroad track in Honduras, and as it has given to the country a foreign debt of $27,992,850, the interest on which has not been paid since 1872, it would seem to be quite enough. About thirty years ago an interoceanic railroad was projected from Puerto Cortez to the Pacific coast, a distance of one hundred and forty-eight miles, but the railroad turned out to be a colossal swindle, and the government was left with this debt on its hands, an army of despoiled stockholders to satisfy, and only thirty-seven miles of bad road for itself. The road was to have been paid for at a certain rate per mile, and the men who mapped it out made it in consequence twice as long as it need to have been, and its curves and grades and turns would cause an honest engineer to weep with disapproval.
A STRETCH OF CENTRAL-AMERICAN RAILWAY
The grades are in some places very steep, and as the engine was not as young as it had been, two negro boys and a box of sand were placed on the cow-catcher, and whenever the necessity of stopping the train was immediate, or when it was going downhill too quickly, they would lean forward and pour this sand on the rails. As soon as Griscom and Somerset discovered these assistant engineers they bribed them to give up their places to them, and after the first station we all sat for the remainder of the journey on the cow-catcher. It was a beautiful and exhilarating ride, and suggested tobogganing, or those thrilling little railroads on trestles at Coney Island and at the fêtes around Paris. It was even more interesting, because we could see each rusty rail rise as the wheel touched its nearer end as though it meant to fly up in our faces, and when the wheel was too quick for it and forced it down again, it contented itself by spreading out half a foot or so to one side, which was most alarming. And the interest rose even higher at times when a stray steer would appear on the rails at the end of the tunnel of palms, as at the end of a telescope, and we saw it growing rapidly larger and larger as the train swept down upon it. It always lurched off to one side before any one was killed, but not until there had been much ringing of bells and blowing of whistles, and, on our part, some inward debate as to whether we had better jump and abandon the train to its fate, or die at our post with our hands full of sand.
We lay idly at San Pedro Sula for four days, while Jeffs hurried about collecting mules and provisions. When we arrived we insisted on setting forth that same evening, but the place put its spell upon us gently but firmly, and when we awoke on the third day and found we were no nearer to starting than at the moment of our arrival, Jeffs’s perplexities began to be something of a bore, and we told him to put things off to the morrow, as did every one else.
