The southland of North America, rambles and observations in Central America during the year 1912

Front matter

i i

George PaliT|er Putqarn k i

Suspended in a cage affair one is lowered to the lighter

Preface

O equip a modest volume of travel sketches with a preface is, perhaps, a sin against proportion. **But a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labors. When the foimdation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. So with the writer of this preface ; he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanor. "

Such is the quaint prefatory paragraph to Stevenson's delightful Inland Voyage.

For this little book of voyages, which are both inland and maritime, there is small need of more that a formal bow to the public, made with the fond hope that there actually may be found an audience to which to make greeting. Such as it is, then, let this preface be a hearty invitation to vi PREFACE

proceed further. Should the succeeding pages arouse an added interest in the territory they concern, and something more of an understanding of it, and, above all, a realization of the fact that at our very door lies an almost untouched treasureland of fascinating possibility, they will have served their purpose.

G. P. P.

Bend, Oregon,

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Panama, the Gateway to Central America

II. Introducing Costa Rica

CHAPTER I Panama* Gate-way to Central A.xnerica

^^^^^ANAMA is the key to Central America. It is that not only in a geographic sense; the construction of the Panama Canal is doing more than has been done in four centuries to awaken that dormant territory and untangle its political and economic snarls. So far as the United States is concerned, the Canal practically means the rediscovery of Central America; it has focussed national attention southward, arousing a sudden surprised realisation that between us and our new transcontinental waterway lies a little-known land of glowing possibilities, tmique problems, and grave responsibilities.

Central America is all that, and more. It is, especially, a delightful pasture new, wherein the traveller, who is equipped with a moderately healthy liver, a passable temper, and an inquisitive disposition, may browse with peculiar satisfaction. For those blessed with these triple characteristics, the experience is recommended, while it may safely be indulged in even should two of the three be lacking, for after all, a superabundance of the last named, combined generously with enthusiasm, will offset other shortcomings.

While Panama is the gateway to Central America to-day, and has been for centuries, to-morrow its Canal will more than ever be the "Open Sesame" of the west coast, both north and south. There is no doubt that after 19 15, a great tourist travel will filter through the Isthmus, as hitherto passers have made their way across it, in one manner and another, since Balboa first discovered to what a puny neck of land the great western continents here narrow, a discovery made almost exactly four hundred years before the official opening of the big ditch that will transform this historic isthmus into an equally historic strait.

From the Canal, these sight seekers of to-morrow will scatter to the four comers of the earth. Many

PANAMA— THE GATEWAY will descend upon South America, at last opened up to easy access; others will take advantage of the new trans-Pacific routes; and still others will flock northward to our own Pacific States.

Sixty years ago the "Panama route" was an accepted fact in transcontinental travel. Built in the fifties, the railroad across the Isthmus carried thousands of Easterners from one ocean to the other during the half-dozen years of gold-mad scramble to the Californian El Doradoes. Since then, broadly speaking, the "Panama route," has been almost a negligible quantity, so far as North American transcontinental travel is concerned, thanks to the construction of the railroads and the comparative delays and inconveniences of the Isthmian journey.

But upon the completion of the Canal the "Panama route" from the Eastern States, and from Europe, to the North Pacific slope, will come into its own again and come to stay. It will open the way for a new transcontinental trip, and an amazingly delightful one it will be. Even to-day, with no canal, and crude transportation methods, it is that. And to-day and to-morrow the chief delight of it lies, and will remain, in the fact that it opens the way to an acquaintance Vv^ith the Central American Republics. To see something of these, and of this new transcontinental trip, was the reason, then, that in November of 191 1 we came one night to the Tivoli Hotel at Ancon, on the Canal Zone, headed for Central America, like the bear that w^ent over the mountain, "to see what we could see. "

There could be no better prelude to Central America than a month on the Isthmus. Indeed, a Panamanian month weU spent — and ''seeing Panama" is so absurdly easy that it would be hard to spend it otherwise — can in itself include enough and to spare to equip the m.ost avaricious writer with amm.unition for a book. However, Panama is a story in itself, and one whose variegated chapters are told in so many volumes that to add further information and misinformation to the vast amount already in print would seem like overburdening an amply afflicted public. So, with 3^0 ur permission, we shall linger on the Isthmus only long enough to get acclimated.

If you ever follow in our footsteps, as I hope you may, take a word of advice: Don't for a miinute imagine that the Canal, with its arm}', its steam

PANAMA—THE GATEWAY shovels, locks, cuts, yardage statistics, and sanitation marvels is the beginning and the end of Panama. It is n't. It 's a world in itself, but it is n't all of Panama.

''They don't know a thing about the country — not an idea that there 's a particle worth seeing outside of the- blooming Canal, " was the way one bronze-faced white-clad fellow put it. He knew his Panama pretty thoroughly, and entertained a supreme contempt for his fellows in the Canal army who never looked for interest beyond their work. ''It 's as if you went to New York and took in Broadway and the Brooklyn bridge, and then quit," he added.

Of course, in a month you can't begin to see all there is of Panama worth seeing and studying, nor in that time can you become even tolerably intimate with the details of the big job, which is undoubtedly the most fascinating bit of colossal human accomplishment ever crowded into a small scope — of square miles and of years.

The family of one high official we met on the Zone had never been to the ruins of Old Panama. They lived six miles from them!

Likewise, they had never seen Puerto Bello, the burial-place of Drake, saturated with historic interest and present-day picturesqueness ; they had never climbed Ancon Hill and viewed the Isthmian world's highway almost from ocean to ocean ; they had never ventured through the gory, smelly, utterly characteristic market of Panama City, or bargained for fish and fruit on the beach beside the sea-wall, when the ragged little boats crowd in from the infinitely blue bay of an early morning and the strand becomes a rich replica, in colour, action, and babelous tongues, of the famed barter places of the Eastern world ; they had never gained admission to Chiriqui prison, and gazed upon the face of a murderer, pressed through the ground-level opening of his filthy, dripping dungeon, w^herein he is to live until a kindly death releases him; they had never staked a dollar for a ticket in the national lottery, the paltry price of a delicious thrill when the drawings are made in the Bishop's Palace near church time; they had never walked of an evening about the plaza, where the band played, rubbing shoulders with the gallantry and the worthlessness of five continents; and — save the mark! — they had never desecrated the Sabbath by going to a cock-fight, where native

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PANAMA— THE GATEWAY life is seen with the lid of polite restraint completely off, and wicked little birds whirl furiously at each other in an utterly depraved and cruel game of life and death.

Not they! As nearly as possible they live as they might have lived in Hoboken.

The moral is that when you go to Panama, try not to see the Canal alone, and its kindred monuments of American accomplishment, but also something of the rest of Panama, be it ever so little. For a healthy scramble of tropical impressions will be a far pleasanter souvenir of an Isthmian excursion than any chill statistical mental picture of the Canal could be. The latter you can get from guide- and other books. The former you must absorb for yourself.

After a month or more of Panama, we boarded, one evening, the City of Sydney, a Pacific mailer of eminently respectable age, which, just at sunset time, slipped away from the swelter of the inner harbour of Balboa northward through the quiet waters of Panama Bay

A sunset on Panama Bay is always an artistic event. Our particular one was a natural triumph that beggars description. Far inshore, above the white roofs of the city, vagrant showers chased each other across the sky, cHnging close to the emerald hills. In the very west, slanting rays of sun filtered from beneath a cloud bank, above whose ragged outlines, themselves tinted with gorgeous golds and pinks and opalescent tints, the palest of fieckless blue extended to the zenith. The shore hills, where visible through the mists, were darkly green, and in the foreground of the broad picture the waters of the bay were painted in with as ample a variety of tone and shade as characterised the sky effects; nearby the sea was calm and infinitely blue, merging shoreward into greens, and here and there darkened with rich ultramarine patches, branded by haphazard breezes. Finally, the afterglow faded and night's purple cloak fell upon the waters, broken by the pin-point illuminations of the city and the overhead brilliants of the tropical sky, dazzlingly bright as only near equatorial stars can be.

The mental aftermath of the sunset was interrupted by a chance hotel acquaintance, now become a fellow-traveller.

"Central America for a pleasure trip?'' said he.

We pled guilty, and drew him out, which was

In the shadow of the Cathedral, Panama

PANAMA— THE GATEWAY not difficult, for a pessimist always revels in his work. This one was supercilious in tone and dejected in appearance. He was a commercial traveller, a mixture of Jew and German and, presumably, several other things. His dejection, he implied, was because he had been ''covering" Central America for seven seasons.

''For pleasure, eh?" he continued. "Why, man, there 's no such thing down here. It 's all a damned sweaty grind or an everlasting loaf. The climate 's a fright. It makes your blood like water, a bit muddied with the quinine and dope pumped in to keep your spirits up. There 's nothing at all to see, and as for the people" — here a happy Americanism tided over his conversational difficulty — "why, they are the limit!''

And having ridded his dejected system of that cheering message he went elsewhere through the scented tropical twilight to spread the gospel of Central American melancholia.

That was the beginning of a remarkably delightful journey. My adviser was simply one of the army of the blind who annually trot about the face of the good green earth, seeing nothing worth seeing, and appreciating nothing at all.

Chapter II

UNTARENAS. or Sandy Point, is the Pacific sea entrance to Costa Rica, the southernmost of the Central American RepubHcs. As northand-south inland travel, at least across the borders of any of the countries, is practically a negligible quantity, thanks to the lack of roads, Costa Rica's two ports, Puntarenas on the west and Limon on the east, offer the only gateways to the interior highlands. And it is in this high hinterland that the true beauty of the truly beautiful land lies, as cool and healthful as the coastal plains are torrid and fever-irLfested.

Two hot days of lazy sailing northward from Panama, often in sight of the verdant, low-lying shores, brought the Sydney to the port, which is nothing more than a roadstead. The ship anchored about a mile from the surf line.

It was shortly after noon, which means two lo

INTRODUCING COSTA RICA ii

things, on an average tropical day; the first, that the breeze was a much missed minus quantity; and the second, that Puntarenas was enjoying the early afternoon siesta, from which your Central Americano is not easily disttirbed, even by the arrival of the Pacific mail packet, an irregular occurrence of supreme importance at most of the ports. So we waited, while the oily swell advanced upon the beach, there indolently curling over in a line of white foam beyond which the heat waves flickered up from the iron roofing of the pier and customs buildings with a discomforting promise of even greater breathlessness ashore. In the course of time, there was a stir at the end of the spindle-shanked wharf, and a very official boat, with official flags and an officially leisurely crew put off to us. It was the port officers, the unescapable introduction to every southern seaboard country. Mind you, in dwelling upon the "officialness" of our Costa Rican introduction, in reality an apology is due the country. There is far less fuss and feathers, gold braid, and red tape, connected with a disembarkation in Costa Rica than in any of its sister lands, and far more of practical methods.

The important member of the boarding party was the port doctor. Port doctors as a rule are the prime factors at a southern landing, but this one proved himself a doctor par excellence, and a hospitable host and a rarely interesting man to boot. Which opens the way for a word descriptive of Puntarenas, in toto.

There are three notable things about the little port. The doctor, as may be suspected, is one of them. The other two are a saint and a consular agent; as almost any one knows, there are many dead saints and scores of dead-and-alive consular agents, but this refers to a live saint and a live agent, a double and notable phenomenon. The doctor is a Yankee of the straight New England cut, the saint a little Spanish lady who does a world of unheralded good, and the consular agent a racial blend peculiarly his own. His past is worthy of a Dumas, and his present often unworthy of any one, but invariably witty and kindhearted beyond belief.

True, there are other appurtenances to Puntarenas, ranging from numberless naked babies to an extraordinarily out-of -place stone church, which looks for all the world as if it might have

Landing in a lighter in Central America

Puntarenas has "an extraordinary out-of-place church which looks as if it might have been plucked from some country parish in Old England "

been plucked from a country parish in old England and unthinkingly dropped in this out-of-the-way port. Also, there is an attractive plaza place with gnarled trees, some of whose branches have actually grafted themselves upon the branches of neighbours. The bright flowers of the tiny park do much to redeem the otherwise sordidly fiat little town. But the truly important features of Puntarenas are included in the triple digest offered above.

To return to the landing, and the port doctor, one- third of the social valuation of the port, as we assessed it. Before he left the small boat, we thought him a Spaniard, for his keen bronzed face would have graced any Castilian gathering, while the ease with which he handled the conversational repartee that interchanged between his craft and the Sydney amply exercised his conversational abilities in the language of the country. But once he came up the ladder, with quick, crisp movement, none but the most unobserving could set him down for anything but a transplanted son of cooler climes.

"Well, this is good luck!" was our hearty greeting as we were examined for all the ills which flesh may be heir to, by the doctor, whose name was Spencer Franklin, and whose New England birthplace, it developed, was separated from our own by a matter of but a few miles. So, of course, after preliminary greetings were over, we found a vast deal in common, and our own news budget of home events, though months old, was timely enough to one who had not seen the rocks and trees of Connecticut for five years. We were rowed ashore in a heavy long boat, our trunks piled pell-mell around us. The rowers were darkskinned Spaniards, barefoot, and clad in cotton trousers and shirt; altogether, the landing might have been in a Mediterranean port. Reaching the spindle-shanked wharf that extends some two hundred feet beyond the surf line, we clambered up the slimy steps, our trunks, like the tail of Mary's lamb, trailing along behind us.

At the wharf and elsewhere there was far less of militarism than we had expected. Indeed, aside from a handful of uniformed — scantily — custom-house officials, gold braid and buttons were notable for their absence.

At the custom-house was faced the fundamental lesson of Central American travel: a superabundance, or even an abundance of baggage is to be avoided. Many trunks, or even few trunks, are a nuisance and an extravagance. If possible, fight shy of trunks altogether, on inland trips, and confine your wardrobe to large and portable bags, a good travel rule an3rwhere, and a particularly good one south of Mexico.

At Punt arenas, ^there is a tariff governing the transportation of baggage from the steamers, on the wharf, and about the town. Wonderful to relate, its provisions are actually followed. However, that it is not the ''best tariff ever made" is indicated by the fact that when we were in Pimtarenas the boatmen were petitioning the government for a "raise" in the particular schedule governing their activities ; which goes to show that we North Americans are not the only people with tariff troubles!

The boatmen get one cent a kilo for bringing the baggage in from the ship, a hard row of half a mile or more. The landlubbers who tnmdle the trunks along the wharf have the better of it; their fee is two cents a kilo. Then there are further charges from the custom-house to the depot, all govemmentally regulated. Aside from the fact that they are artists at the time-honoured short-change game, payment is simple. Our total disembarking charge, including custom-house fee, amounted to $8.io. If we had been baggage wise, which means baggage shy, it would have been half that amount. As it was, we left all luggage except an insignificant little steamer trunk in the care of the customs officials, and even that solitary piece proved excess baggage, as the railroad allows but forty kilos free. The average Central American has no baggage himself, and so sees no reason why foreigners should get free transportation for theirs. Which is reasonable enough, if inconvenient.

Geographically, Puntarenas is a sandspit, with the town strung along it, parallel to the beach, with its several broad streets some quarter of a mile back from the ocean. Within the sandpoint is a wide shallow inlet, with mud flats unattractive to sight and smell, at low water, and a muddy yellow current when the tide is in. Much of the town juts out over these flats, while at one end are the piers from which is carried on the considerable traffic with the country at the upper, or northern, end of the Gulf of Nicoya, for Pim-

A slight southern exposure. Talamanca Indians, Costa Rica tarenas is the only gateway for the receipt of supplies and the exportation of ore for an active mining district, operated by Americans.

Nearly every building in the town is of one story. A very attractive plaza, or park place, is the sole item of beauty, excepting only the picturesque play a, or sea-wall, which straggles along the ocean front. And that is really no wall at all, but a rather dilapidated board-walk, with pretentious but somewhat battered concrete seats lining it, and an irregular row of gnarled uruca trees casting their shade for the most part where the benches are not, while the latter simmer endlessly in the sun. Back of the play a is the custom-house, and out from that runs a narrow gauge man-power railroad that extends to the end of the stubby wharf. Everything that is landed at Puntarenas passes over this tiny bit of track, loaded on diminutive flat cars pushed by natives.

For us, Puntarenas resolved itself chiefly into Dr. Franklin. The doctor is lean, thin cheeked, and clean shaven, tall, straight, and spotlessly clean in person and raiment, the last characteristic alone being enough to make him notable in a latitude where cleanliness, if it truly ranks close to godliness, speaks poorly for the popularity of the latter. His interests cover a broad field; primarily, he is a physician, and an enthusiastic one; next he seems to be a rover and something of an adventurer ; thirdly, he is a devotee of archaeology. Incidentally, he is boss of Puntarenas — and it may be remarked that it takes an all-round man to boss a west coast port successftilly.

The natives call him Doctor Arremangado, or "the doctor with his sleeves rolled up," and well he seemed to deserve the title, for the time of our brief visit was a succession of activities for him. Patients galore came and were treated, and a little work room was the scene of several operations, while no walk we took was free from interruption by some one who wished medical advice.

Mrs. Franklin is a pleasant American lady, vitally interested in the success her husband is making. Their seven-year-old daughter is being brought up in Puntarenas, and whatever she may lose in the advantages that might be hers in northern schools she certainly is acquiring a delightful facility with the Spanish tongue. The rest of the shifting, household, when we arrived, was composed of a young Englishman, his wife and a recently arrived baby, all infinitely British. The family had been stranded at Puntarenas for a month. They were on their way to a brother in Nicaragua and had been delayed, as all things on the west coast are, by the vagaries of the Pacific mail schedule, when the tiny Miss W. threatened to arrive on the scene entirely without regard to the convenience of her parents. So the Waters were compelled to leave the steamer on which they were going northward, inasmuch as there was no pretence of proper medical attention on board — a quite customary characteristic, apparently, for the ships' doctors on the little liners are apt to be either totally inexperienced or so old that they have neither desire nor ability to attempt anything out of routine work. So the couple landed hastily at Puntarenas, and fortunately falling into the hands of the Franklins, were taken in and cared for by a host, as well as a physician.

A more extraordinary pair of babes in the wood it would be difficult to encounter at any out-ofthe-way place in the world. Both were scarcely in their twenties. Neither knew anything of the country to which they were going, and to both a baby was a quite incomprehensible creature. They had no money, few ideas, and a wonderful British complacency, that chiefly resolved itself into a sublime belief that ''everything would turn out all right, " which was positively discouraging.

''You know," said Waters, in his foggy accent, *'we have 2000 pounds of baggage on the way, and the beastly stuff has cost us more than $125 already. Really, it 's positively atrocious, you know! Just to think of paying three cents a pound for getting it across Panama!"

That three cent tariff he holds as an international grudge against Uncle Sam and his isthmian railway.

We sympathised as best we could, and as the stranded pair were headed for the interior wilds of Nicaragua, with a railroad journey from Corinto inland as the first stage of the journey, with a baggage tariff beyond belief, we were glad for the sake of his exchequer and his already wounded feelings that the young father had abandoned his original intention of bringing with him from England, as personal baggage, a "piano, a case of books, and a beastly 'eavy crate of crockery, you know." It is to be hoped that he, his pretty little wife, and the tropical born "Brooklet" arrived safely at their destination, and are living happily ever after.

All of which reminds one that no matter where you go you find Britishers, not only the first-class travellers, the globe-trotters of book and of actual fame, and the business men pursuing the trade of the four corners of the world, but also such inconsequential youngsters as these. They start out for Timbuctoo or Borneo with as much abandon and care-freeness as they would apply to a journey across the Channel.

Next to Doctor Franklin, Senor Marquez was our guide, philosopher, and friend in Puntarenas. He was, and no doubt still is, the American consular agent.

"The worst that could happen to Marquez," says Franklin, "would be for his liver to catch fire; there 's enough alcohol in it to bum for a week!"

The Senor 's history — at least, such of it as he vouchsafed to us — is delightful in its queer gyrations. Born in Venezuela, he received his education in a monastic school on the island of Trinidad.

I asked him if his early rehgious training stands him in good stead in Puntarenas, where there seems to be something of a shortage in such a commodity.

"Indeed yes," replied the good-natured diplomat, with a twinkle in his dark eye. "Religion is admirable. It helps one keep a balance. If it were not for my training I could n't stay in Puntarenas and keep sober as much as I do. "

Observation, alas, rather leads one to believe that reckoning the advantageous results of his monastic training on such a basis, a miore complete course would have done no serious harm. But be that as it may, a kinder, wittier, and altogether more courteous gentleman than the Senor is not to be found in all Central America. The American coat of anns hangs over his front door; on the reverse, inside, the wall is adorned with a cheerfully flamboyant beer seal proclaiming the gastronomic delights of a beverage that is purported to have made a middle western city famous. Which of the two insignia is the more revered by the Puntarenan populace it would be difficult to say.

His position as consular agent is merely an avocation for Senor Alarquez, his chief interest

On an intimate footing with, a cocoanut palm being the conduct of a general trading and commission business, which apparently embraces about everything from hides and lumber to the bartering of liquors and groceries. As his income from official duties for the month preceding our arrival had reached the munificent total of seventeen colones, or. about eight dollars, it will be apparent that other sources of revenue were requisite.

''But think of the honour of being a diplomat!" says the Senor, with a magnificent wave of his hand, and an always ready smile.

This man speaks French, English, and Spanish fluently, and possesses an excellent knowledge of Greek and Latin. He has seen life — tropical life — from top to bottom, which means that he has about run the gamut of human possibilities. He is clever, shrewd, witty, and when he chooses, his manners and conversation would grace any company. Marquez lives in Puntarenas, and lives there contentedly, with no apparent desire to go elsewhere. He makes a little money, drinks a little, gambles a little; every day he has a siesta; altogether, he is typical enough of scores of tropical dwellers with a minimum of initiative and vitality, and a maximum of desire for the dolce far niente existence.

Dona Amelia Santos and the little hospital of San Rafael comprise an integral and important part of Ptmt arenas. Both are retiring and difficult to find. Dona Amelia is the saint.

I met Dona Amelia in the tiny whitewashed office of the hospital, which stands near the beach in a remote corner of the straggling town. There is a high wall about the shady grounds, a cluster of cool-leaved palms, and an air of seclusion. Doiia Amelia is a Httle lady, Spanish, and dark. She speaks slowly and in a low voice — speaks English, for she received her nursing education at an American training school. She is a little grey, and more than a little sad, and frail, even though her movements are quick and decided.

We met and talked, chiefly of her work, there in the poverty-stricken hospital — a poverty that came to be inspiring, as I learned its story, and the story of its guiding angel.

''How is the hospital supported?" I had asked the Doctor. For answer he had nodded at Dona Amelia. The government sometimes is slow about supplying money for the institution, and then the kind-eyed, grey-haired woman who rules it somehow scrapes up a little money, the gap is bridged over, and the hospital's doors remain open for the poor.