Somerset passed the first sentry with safety, and we sat down on the grass by the side of the road opposite to await developments, and were distressed to observe him make directly for the kitchen, with the ambassador’s letter held firmly in his hand. So we stood up and shouted to him to go the other way, and he became embarrassed, and continued to march up and down the gravel walk with much indecision, and as if he could not make up his mind where he wanted to go, like the grenadiers in front of St. James’s Palace. It happened that his excellency was out, so Somerset left our cards and his letter, and we walked off through the green, well-kept streets and wondered at the parrots and the chained monkeys and the Anglicized little negro girls in white cotton stockings and with Sunday-school books under their arms. All the show-places of interest were closed on that day, so, after an ineffectual attempt to force our way into the jail, which we mistook for a monastery, we walked back through an avenue of cocoanut-palms to the International Hotel for dinner.
NATIVE CONSTABULARY, BELIZE
We had agreed that as it was our first dinner on shore, it should be a long and excellent one, with several kinds of wine. The International Hotel is a large one, with four stories, and a balcony on each floor; and after wandering over the first three of these in the dark we came upon a lonely woman with three crying children, who told us with reproving firmness that in Belize the dinner-hour is at four in the afternoon, and that no one should expect a dinner at seven. We were naturally cast down at this rebuff, and even more so when her husband appeared out of the night and informed us that keeping a hotel did not pay—at least, that it did not pay him—and that he could not give us anything to drink because he had not renewed his license, and even if he had a license he would not sell us anything on Sunday. He had a touch of malaria, he said, and took a gloomy view of life in consequence, and our anxiety to dine well seemed, in contrast, unfeeling and impertinent. But we praised the beauty of the three children, and did not set him right when he mistook us for officers from the English gunboats in the harbor, and for one of these reasons he finally gave us a cold dinner by the light of a smoking lamp, and made us a present of a bottle of stout, for which he later refused any money. We would have enjoyed our dinner at Belize in spite of our disappointment had not an orderly arrived in hot search after Somerset, and borne him away to dine at Government House, where Griscom and I pictured him, as we continued eating our cold chicken and beans, dining at her majesty’s expense, with fine linen and champagne, and probably ice. Lightfoot took us back to the boat in mournful silence, and we spent the rest of the evening on the quarter-deck telling each other of the most important people with whom we had ever dined, and had nearly succeeded in re-establishing our self-esteem, when Somerset dashed up in a man-of-war’s launch glittering with brass and union-jacks, and left it with much ringing of electric bells and saluting and genial farewells from admirals and midshipmen in gold-lace, with whom he seemed to be on a most familiar and friendly footing. This was the final straw, and we held him struggling over the ship’s side, and threatened to drop him to the sharks unless he promised never to so desert us again. And discipline was only restored when he assured us that he was the bearer of an invitation from the governor to both breakfast and luncheon the following morning. The governor apologized the next day for the informality of the manner in which he had sent us the invitation, so I thought it best not to tell him that it had been delivered by a young man while dangling by his ankles from the side of the ship, with one hand holding his helmet and the other clutching at the rail of the gangway.
There is much to be said of Belize, for in its way it was one of the prettiest ports at which we touched, and its cleanliness and order, while they were not picturesque or foreign to us then, were in so great contrast to the ports we visited later as to make them most remarkable. It was interesting to see the responsibilities and the labor of government apportioned out so carefully and discreetly, and to find commissioners of roads, and then district commissioners, and under them inspectors, and to hear of boards of education and boards of justice, each doing its appointed work in this miniature government, and all responsible to the representative of the big government across the sea. And it was reassuring to read in the blue-books of the colony that the health of the port has improved enormously during the last three years.
MAIN STREET, BELIZE
Monday showed an almost entirely different Belize from the one we had seen on the day before. Shops were open and busy, and the markets were piled high with yellow oranges and bananas and strange fruits, presided over by negresses in rich-colored robes and turbans, and smoking fat cigars. There was a show of justice also in a parade of prisoners, who, in spite of their handcuffs, were very anxious to halt long enough to be photographed, and there was a great bustle along the wharves, where huge rafts of logwood and mahogany floated far into the water. The governor showed us through his botanical station, in which he has collected food-giving products from over all the world, and plants that absorb the malaria in the air, and he hinted at the social life of Belize as well, tempting us with a ball and dinners to the officers of the men-of-war; but the Breakwater would not wait for such frivolities, so we said farewell to Belize and her kindly governor, and thereafter walked under strange flags, and were met at every step with the despotic little rules and safeguards which mark unstable governments.
Livingston was like a village on the coast of East Africa in comparison with Belize. It is the chief seaport of Guatemala on the Atlantic side, and Guatemala is the furthest advanced of all the Central-American republics; but her civilization lies on the Pacific side, and does not extend so far as her eastern boundary.
