[DEAR FAM: SANTA BARBARA — January 25,
1895.]
We are not at Tegucigalpa as you observe but travelling
in this country. "As you see it on Broadway " and as you see
it here are two different things. We have had five days of it
so far and rested here today
in order to pay our respects to General Bogran the
ex-president of the Republic. It is still six days to
Tegucigalpa. The trip across Central America will certainly
be one of the most interesting experiences of my life. It is
the most beautiful country I have seen and the most barbarous.
It is also the hottest and the most insect-ious and the
dirtiest. This latter seems a little view to take of it but
it means a great deal as the insects prevent your doing
anything in a natural way; as for instance sitting on the
grass or sleeping on the ground or hunting through the bushes.
It is pretty much as you imagine it is from what you have
read, that covers it, and I have discovered nothing new by
coming to see it. I only verify what others have seen. The
people are most uninteresting chiefly because they are surly
to Americans and do not make you feel welcome. I do not mean
that I did not do well to come for I am more glad that I did
than I can say only I have not, as I have been able to do
before, found something that others have not seen. I never
expect to see such a country again unless in Africa. If you
leave the path for ten yards you would never get back to it
except by accident and you could not get that far away unless
you cut yourself a trail. In some places the mail route which
we follow and over which the mail is carried on the backs of
runners is cut in the rock and we go down steps as even as
those of the City Hall and for hours we travel over rough
rocks and stones and a path so narrow that your knees catch in
the vines at the side. The mules are wonderfully sure footed
and never slip although they are very little, and I am pretty
heavy. The heat is something awful. It bakes you and will
dry your pith helmet in ten minutes after you have soaked it
in water. But the scenery
is magnificent, sometimes we ride above the clouds and look
down into valleys stretching fifty miles away and see the
buzzards half a mile below us. Then we go through forests of
manaca palms that spread out on a single stem sideways and
form arches over our heads with the leaves hanging in front of
us like portiers or we cross great plains of grass and cactus
and rock. The best fun is the baths we take in the mountain
streams. They are almost as cool as one could wish and we
shoot the rapids and lie under the waterfalls and come out
with all the soreness rubbed out of us as though we had been
massaged. We went shooting for two days but as they had no
dogs we did not do much. I got the best shot of the trip and
missed it. It was a large wild cat and he turned his side full
on but I fired over him. Somers and I spent most of the time
firing chance shots at alligators, but they never gave us a
good chance as the birds warn them when they are in danger.
One old fellow fifteen feet long beat us for some time and
then Somers and I started across the river to catch him
asleep. It was like the taking of Lungtepen. We had our
money belts around our necks and our shoes in one hand and
rifles in the other. The rapids ran very fast and the last I
saw of Somerset he was sitting on the bank he had started from
counting out wet bank notes and blowing the water out of his
gun barrel. I got across all right by sticking my feet
between rocks and put on my shoes and crawled up on the old
Johnnie. He smelt of musk so strong that you could have found
him in the dark. I had, a beautiful shot at him at fifty
yards but I was too greedy and ran around some rocks to get
nearer and he heard me and dived. I shot a macaw, one of
those overgrown parrots with tail feathers three feet from tip
to tip. I got him with a
rifle and as Griscom had got his with a shotgun I came out all
right as a marksman although I was very sore at missing the
wild cat. We sleep in hats and we sleep precious little for
the dogs and pigs and insects all help to keep us awake and I
cannot get used to a hammock. The native beds are made of
matting such as they put over tea chests, or bull's hide
stretched. Last night I slept in a hut with a woman and her
three daughters all over fifteen and they sat up and watched
me prepare for bed with great interest. I would not have
missed this trip for any other I know. I wanted to rough it
and we've roughed it and we will have another week of it too.
We have some remarkable photographs and the article ought to
be most interesting. Bogran proved to be a very handsome and
remarkable man and we had a very interesting talk with him.
>From Tegucigalpa we will probably go directly to Venezuela
across the Isthmus of Panama and not visit another Republic.
We have all travelled too much to care to duplicate, and that
is what we would be doing by remaining longer in Central
America. A month of it will be enough of it and we will not
get away from Amapala before the first of February. We are
all well and happy and dirty and sing and laugh and tell
stories and listen to Griscom's anecdotes of the aristocracy
as we pick our way along. So goodbye and God bless you all.
DICK.
