January, 1895.
[DEAR FAM:]
On board Breakwater at anchor. You will be
pleased to
hear that I am writing this in a fine state of perspiration in
spite of the fact that I have light weight flannels, no
underclothes and all the windows open. It is going to storm
and then it will be cooler. We have had a bully time so far
although the tough time is still to come, that will be going
from Puerto Cortez to Tegucigalpa. At Belize the Governor
treated us charmingly and gave us orderlies and launches and
lunches and advice and me a fine subject for a short story.
For nothing has struck me as so sad lately as did Sir Anthony
Moloney K. C. M. G. watching us go off laughing and joking in
his gilded barge to wherever we pleased and leaving him
standing alone
on his lawn with some papers to sign and then a dinner
tete-a-tete with his Secretary and so on to the end of his
life. It was pathetic to hear him listen to all the gossip
from the outside world and to see how we pleased him when we
told him we were getting more bald than he was and that he
would make a fine appearance in the Row at his present weight.
He had not heard of Trilby!!
We struck a beautiful place today called Livingston where
we went ashore and photographed the army in which there was no
boy older than eighteen and most of them under ten. It was
quite like Africa, the homes were all thatched and the
children all naked and the women mostly so. We took lots of
photographs and got on most excellently with the natives who
thought we were as funny as we thought them. Almost every
place we go word has been sent ahead and agents and consuls
and custom house chaps come out to meet me and ask what they
can do. This is very good and keeps Griscom and Somerset in a
proper frame of awe. But seriously I could not ask for better
companions, they are both enormously well informed and polite
and full of fun. The night the Governor asked Somers to
dinner and did not ask us we waited up for him and then hung
him out over the side of the boat above the sharks until he
swore he would never go away from us again. Griscom is more
aggravatingly leisurely but he has a most audacious humor and
talks to the natives in a way that fills them with pleasure
but which nearly makes Somers and I expose the whole party by
laughing. Today we lie here taking in banannas and tomorrow I
will see Conrad, Conrad, Conrad!! Send this to the Consul.
Lots of love.
DICK.
