Barrack Point, Livingston.
Our abode was on the Campo Santo Viejo, the burial-hill of former days, and right across our path lay the empty tomb of a son of Carrera, the former President of Guatemala; as we passed this we noted the admirable mortar with which its bricks were laid,—so strong that no brick can be cut out whole. On this resting-place of perished Caribs the foreign inhabitants of Livingston dwell. It is the west end of the town, and overlooks both the river and the native town, where are also the stores and the hotels.
All descriptions of a growing town must be unsatisfactory, so rapidly does the population and topography change; and a few words may convey all the geographical knowledge needed. Rolling ground, which might easily be drained, but is not; streets generally at right angles, none paved, and most of them exceedingly muddy in wet weather; fences of the rudest form, mostly sticks bound together with vines; houses with walls of adobe or of wattle, in both cases covered with mud plaster and whitewashed, none of them over one story, but with high roofs thatched with palm; yards, but no gardens; stores here and there built of boards from New Orleans, and occupied by foreigners,—French, Germans, Italians, Americans (del Norte); a dilapidated chapel on or among the neglected foundations of an intended church; beyond this the barracks on a beautiful point; children of all ages playing in the dirt and merrily greeting the passer-by with their black, shiny, healthy faces; palm-trees, mangoes, sapotes, bread-fruit, oranges, anonas, bananas, and coffee-trees scattered without order, and wholly uncultivated,—make the external features of this place. No vehicles are in the streets, though a few horses roam untethered through the town. Every burden is carried on the heads of men or women. The house-doors are all open; but the interior is generally too dark to disclose much of the inner mysteries to the stranger. Westward from the town lies the new Campo Santo, and beyond this the almost impenetrable forest.
A STREET IN LIVINGSTON.
The situation of Livingston is good,—at the mouth of one of the finest rivers of the Atlantic coast of Central America. The climate is very healthful and agreeable, and the frequent communication by two lines of steamers with New Orleans, one line with New York, and another with Liverpool, make it an important business-centre. All the fine coffee from Alta Verapaz and the fruit from the plantations on the Chocon and Polochic is shipped here; and the product might be indefinitely increased. The drawbacks are a bar with only a fathom of water at the mouth of a river navigable otherwise for many miles by the largest steamers, no wharves, little enterprise on the part of the native inhabitants, and a frequent sea-breeze in the afternoon, which sometimes makes landing through the rough water on the bar unpleasant. The population is about two thousand, chiefly Caribs; and long inaction and complete lack of enterprise have produced a people poor and careless of riches if obtained at the price of labor. As in all similar places, there is no lack of adventurers of the lowest character.
All this matter is not, however, learned at once, and observation must be depended on rather than report; for the merchants of Livingston see the prospects of their town in very different lights when talking with a mere visitor or with a possible rival in the small but very profitable business. As a stranger, I was told that the place was an el dorado; that limitless crops grew without urging from a soil of unequalled richness; that the climate was salubrious, and eternal summer reigned; that business was brisk, and constantly increasing under wise laws and a favoring government. As a settler, the song was sung to me in a minor key: labor was not to be had; no good lands could be obtained; the steamers were the tyrants of the place, and all earnings were eaten up by freights. Then there were the warning cries of those unfortunate men who wanted to make money in a newly opened country, but had not the necessary courage and endurance for a pioneer. They had not met success, and they had not grit enough to seek it. Micawbers far from home, they waited for something to turn up.
The process of finding out about the place was not an unpleasant one; it was what we had come for, and we began it the first day at breakfast. While we lodged in our house on the hill, we took our meals—with the exception of early coffee and rolls—in the town at the house of Señor Castellan; and they were in genuine Hispano-American style. Eleven o’clock is the hour for almuerzo, or breakfast, and thus the time for ceasing work and taking the needed midday rest. Late in the afternoon came the comida, or dinner,—differing from breakfast only in the occasional provision of dulces, or sweetmeats. The menu was constant; an oily soup, beans black or white, beef or chicken stew with chillis, fish, bread, and coffee, formed the almost unvarying round. Our waiters were two little boys,—one the son of our host, the other his ward. With our coffee we generally had fresh milk; but when the supply of this failed, a can of condensed milk took its place. Not infrequently the sugar also failed; and then one of the boys ran to the nearest store and bought half a pound of a coarse brown kind, and replenished the saucer that did duty as sugar-bowl. No supply of anything was ever kept in the house.
