Part 10 (1/2)

Just around the corner--as everything is in this miniature capital--the American Legation delivered the acc.u.mulated mail of a month, and the pair of real shoes I had had the happy thought of sending to myself here months before. This bit of foresight saved me from hobbling on to the coast barefoot. I had arrived just in time to attend one of Tegucigalpa's gala events, the inspection of her newly reformed police force. ”It is set for three,” said the legation secretary, ”so come around about three-thirty.” Just around another corner we entered toward four the large dusty patio of a one-story building of mud blocks, against the adobe wall of which were lined up something over a hundred half-frightened, half-proud Honduranean Indians in brand new, dark-blue uniforms and caps, made in Germany, and armed with black night-sticks and large revolvers half-hidden in immense holsters. We took the places of honor reserved for us at a bench and table under the patio veranda beside the chief of police, an American soldier of fortune named Lee Christmas. He was a man nearing fifty, totally devoid of all the embroidery of life, golden toothed and graying at the temples, but still hardy and of youthful vigor, of the dress and manner of a well-paid American mechanic, who sat chewing his black cigar as complacently as if he were still at his throttle on the railroad of Guatemala. Following the latest revolution he had reorganized what, to use his own words, had been ”a bunch of barefooted apes in faded-blue cotton rags” into the solemn military company that was now to suffer its first formal inspection. The native secretary, standing a bit tremulously in the edge of the shade, called from the list in his hand first the name of Christmas himself, then that of the first a.s.sistant, and his own, he himself answering ”present” for each of these. Next were the commanders, clerks, under-secretaries, and the like in civilian garb, each, as his name was p.r.o.nounced, marching past us hat in hand and bowing profoundly. Last came the policemen in uniform. As the secretary read his t.i.tle and first name, each self-conscious Indian stepped stiffly forth from the ranks, throwing a foot, heavy with the unaccustomed shoe, high in the air and pounding the earth in the new military style taught him by a willowy young native in civilian dress who leaned haughtily on his cane watching every movement, made a sharp-cornered journey about the sun-flooded yard and bringing up more or less in front of his dreaded chief, gave a half turn, raised the right leg to the horizontal with the grace of an aged ballet dancer long since the victim of rheumatism, brought it down against the left like the closing of a heavy trapdoor, saluted with his night-stick and huskily called out his own last name, which Christmas checked off on the list before him without breaking the thread of the particular anecdote with which he chanced at that moment to be entertaining us.

”I tried to get 'em to cut out this ---- ---- German monkey business of throwing their feet around,” confided the chief sadly, ”but it's no use, for it's in the ---- ---- military manual.”

Judged by Central American standards the force was well trained. But the poor Indians and half-breeds that made up its bulk were so overwhelmed with the solemnity of the extraordinary occasion that they were even more ox-like in their clumsiness and nearer frightened apes in demeanor than in their native jungles. The quaking fear of making a mis-step caused them to keep their eyes riveted on the lips of our compatriot, from which, instead of the words of wrath they no doubt often imagined, issued some such remark as:

”Why ---- ---- it, W----, one of the b.u.ms I picked up along the line one day in Guatemala told me the best ---- ---- yarn that--”

Nor could they guess that the final verdict on the great ceremony that rang forth on the awe-struck silence as the chief rose to his feet was:

”Well, drop around to my room in the hotel when you want to hear the rest of it. But if you see the sign on my door,' Ladies Only To-day,'

don't knock. The chambermaid may not have finished her official visit.”

The climate of Tegucigalpa leaves little to be desired. Otherwise it is merely a large Central American village of a few thousand inhabitants, with much of the indifference, uncleanliness, and ignorance of the rest of the republic. Priests are numerous, wandering about smoking their cigarettes and protected from the not particularly hot sun by broad hats and umbrellas. One lonely little native sheet masquerades as a newspaper, the languid little shops, often owned by foreigners, offer a meager and ancient stock chiefly imported and all high in price; for it takes great inducement to make the natives produce anything beyond the corn and beans for their own requirements. The ”national palace” is a green, clap-boarded building, housing not only the president and his little reception-room solemn with a dozen chairs in cotton shrouds, but congress, the ministry, and the ”West Point of Honduras,” the superintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or two at Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic ”soldiers” in misfit overalls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting for the mule-back mail-train to arrive that they may lock up in preparation for beginning to look over the correspondence manana. It is not the custom to make appointments in Tegucigalpa. If one resident desires the presence of another at dinner, or some less excusable function, he wanders out just before the hour set until he picks up his guest somewhere. By night the town is doubly dead. The shops put up their wooden shutters at dusk, the more energetic inhabitants wander a while about the cobbled streets, dim-lighted here and there by arc-lights, the cathedral bells jangle at intervals like suspended pieces of sc.r.a.p-iron, arousing a chorus of barking dogs, and a night in which two blankets are comfortable settles down over all the mountainous, moon-flooded region.

There is not even the imitation of a theater, the plaza concert on Sunday evenings, in which the two s.e.xes wander past each other in opposite directions for an hour or two, being the only fixed recreation. A man of infinite patience, or who had grown old and weary of doing, might find Tegucigalpa agreeable; but it would soon pall on the man still imbued with living desires.

The fitting s.h.i.+eld of Honduras would be one bearing as motto that monotonous phrase which greets the traveler most frequently along her trails, ”No hay.” The country is noted chiefly for what ”there is not.”

Everywhere one has the impression of watching peculiarly stupid children playing at being a republic. The nation is a large farm in size and a poorly run one in condition. The wave of ”liberty” that swept over a large part of the world after the French Revolution left these wayward and not over-bright inhabitants of what might be a rich and fertile land to play at governing themselves, to ape the forms of real republics, and mix them with such childish clauses as come into their infantile minds. The chief newspaper of the republic resembles a high-school periodical, concocted by particularly thick-headed students without faculty a.s.sistance or editing. A history of their childish governmental activities would fill volumes. In 1910 all the copper one-centavo coins were called in and crudely changed to two-centavo pieces by surcharging the figure 2 and adding an s, a much smaller one-centavo coin being issued. The ”government” may have made as much as $50 by the transaction. Not long before my arrival, the current postage-stamps, large quant.i.ties of which had been bought by foreign firms within the country, were suddenly declared worthless, and the entire acc.u.mulated correspondence for the next steamer returned to the senders, instead of at least being forwarded to destination under excess charges.

Foreigners established the first factory Tegucigalpa had ever known, which was already employing a half-hundred of the pauperous inhabitants in the making of candles, when the ”government” suddenly not only put a heavy duty on stearine but required the payment of back duty on all that had already been imported. An Englishman came down from the mines of San Juancito embued with the desire to start a manual-training school in the capital. He called on the mulatto president and offered his services free for a year, if the government would invest $5000 in equipment. The president told him to come back manana. On that elusive day he was informed that the government had no such sum at its disposal,