Pacific Shores From Panama/From the Isthmus to the Golden Gate

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THE sun was setting behind the palm-fringed hills. The fairway of the canal, reflecting the rosy tints of the sky, stretched placid and opalescent off into the Gulf of Panama. The noisy cranes had ceased their creaking; the passengers were all aboard. Slowly we backed from Balboa's dock, swung about, and took our course down the bay. As we passed Taboga Island the short twilight of the tropics deepened, and before we knew it the shades of night had shut us in.

So here we were well started upon our twenty-three days' voyage to San Francisco. Now twenty-​three days at sea at best is not a pleasant prospect, twenty-three days of "wet-ploughing," with nothing to vary the tedium of the long, inactive hours; twenty-three days perhaps of wind and rain and heavy weather. But upon this occasion no thoughts like these dismayed us, for were we not to put into about a dozen different ports, to enjoy long shore excursions, and perhaps, best of all, to be sure of a calm sea with a bright sky, for the beginning of the rainy season was still a month away?

We started upon a Saturday night. All day Sunday we were in the gulf coasting by low, wooded shores to Cape Mala, and that evening the sun set apparently upon the wrong side of the ship, owing to our continued southerly course.

On Monday we passed the Island of Monterosa lifting high its wooded peak; then the Ladrones, but not those so important in the old navigation of the Pacific, the half-way house so to speak between Mexico and the Orient; then at Burica Point we had our first glimpse of the Golfo Dulce.

In the Pacific south of Panama we had thought the sea was calm, for its surface was only now and then slightly ruffled by the cool breeze that blows up ​the coast. But here in these Central American latitudes it lay motionless, oily, lazy, its only show of life being the long heaves that slowly passed over it as if to mark its breathing. I watched a sailor take the temperature of the water, and his thermometer registered eighty degrees.

Between Matapalo Head and Sal si Puedes Point the coast rose to ranges perhaps two thousand feet in height. Deep fringes of cocoanut-palms skirted the shore, backed by lovely hills covered with dense wood, among whose trees, the captain assured us, fine mahogany, rosewood, and cedars are still to be found in large quantities. Toward sundown we sighted Caño Island, a veritable Robinson Crusoe's isle, quite alone upon the deep, yet wooded and apparently provided with all the necessities of human existence.

All day Tuesday we were off the coast of Nicaragua, in a fine clipping breeze, and at night crossed the mouth of the Bay of Fonseca, important commercially, as Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador all have frontages upon it.

On Wednesday morning the land was again very near, so close indeed that we could plainly see the ​long sandy beaches, the rich foliage of the hills, and the lazy breakers of the Pacific swell rolling in the logs and driftwood. These were the coves that Gil

Gonzales explored, as virgin to-day as when he, the first white man to behold these

saw them from the deck of his high-pooped galleon.

Suddenly, as we watched, among the inland mists that rose in the warm, moist air, a blue silhouette appeared, so faint that we could scarcely distinguish its ​outline, so high that we could hardly believe our eyes—the conical peak of Vicente rising more than seven thousand feet above the sea, one of the long successions of volcanoes that bristle along this Central American sea. Soon we passed the mouth of the Rio Jiboa, that empties into Lake Ilo Pango; then the long sierra that separates San Salvador from the coast came into view.

Scarcely a sign of human life had enlivened these three days' travel, but now ahead a mole protruded into the sea with a white warehouse upon its end. This was all that at first sight marked La Libertad, at one time Salvador's main port, but now, since the opening of the railroad at Acajutla, somewhat abandoned. We went ashore, however, in the agent's boat, were hoisted in a chair from it to the dock, and spent the afternoon wandering about the village, drinking cocoanut milk and nibbling tamarinds in a shop; seeing the old church, a wofully poor affair; and enjoying the tropical trees and plants. We returned to the ship in a big lighter laden with coffee, were duly hoisted aboard again in a sort of car like those used in roller-coasters, and soon were off to sea again.

​Not for very long, however, for upon the following morning we cast anchor off Acajutla. As upon the west coast of South America, these Pacific ports are, with one or two exceptions, merely open roadsteads

where the steamers lie within a mile or so of shore. Passengers, baggage, and freight alike are transferred in lighters, the experiences attending embarkation and debarkation being sometimes quite thrilling.

A number of passengers were leaving our steamer ​at Acajutla, among them the family of a president of Ecuador who had just been ruthlessly murdered in a revolution, and whose relatives were seeking asylum in Salvador. These people, as well as the secretary of the American legation at San Salvador, who was also in their party, proposed that we should accompany them inland as far as Sonsonate, where they were to spend the night, proceeding to San Salvador upon the morrow. Our captain assured us that we could do this, provided we returned by the early train next morning.

So after lunch, four at a time, the whole party—stout Spanish ladies all in deepest black, Indian servants, attentive and watchful, carrying bandboxes, handbags, parrots, and lap-dogs, as well as ourselves—all were lowered into a lighter and hoisted ashore again at the bodega perched on the end of the mole. We found we had time before the train's departure to look about the village and its great coffee warehouses. Then we all enjoyed refreshing beverages upon the balcony of the port-agent's house overlooking the palm-sheltered village, with its bamboo huts and its women peddling fruits, frijoles, and starchy-looking puddings.

​A little train finally came crawling in, and soon we were off upon our trip inland. At first we passed through a rich grazing country. The name of the second station, Moisant, recalled the intrepid aviator who was the first to fly the English Channel. And rightly, for here is situated the great beneficio, or plantation, operated by his brother, and from which he too went forth to lead his adventurous career. Adventurous, indeed, is the word, for all the country remembers him as a dare-devil, ever in hot water, manning a Gatling gun in the square at Sonsonate, holding it alone against the revolutionists, or swimming to sea to plant the Stars and Stripes upon a French ship that had gone ashore near Acajutla, thus bringing our government into international complications.

He was finally exiled from Salvador, but returned in disguise, going directly to see the President. When he was admitted, he tore off his false beard and said: "Well, here I am back again; what are you going to do with me?" To which the President, quite taken aback and lost in admiration at his daring, replied: "Why, nothing at all, Tom. Come and have a drink."

The world knows of his career as an aviator—his ​spectacular apparition from nowhere, his heroic crossing of the Channel to the amazement and discomfiture of England, and of his sad, untimely death. This, his old home, an American-looking house, peaceful, comfortable, always open to the breeze, is set under waving cocoanut-palms in the midst of fields of sugar-cane.

The foliage hereabout was particularly handsome. Palms and conicaste, with their soaring trunks and umbrella-like burst of leafage at the top, mingled with superb madre de cacao giants of the forest both in height and spread, so called because the cocoa plant is sheltered from the ardent sun beneath their spreading branches, as broad as those of the greatest oaks. Cattle grazed in the lowlands and the corn was ripening to perfection, irrigated by little ditches.

In less than an hour we reached Sonsonate. The quaint hotel, primitive but decent, called the Blanco y Negro, is but a step from the station. They showed us a large room opening directly upon the street by means of a shuttered door, and upon the patio by a similar entrance. There were no windows, but we slept in the draught between the doors. The spacious dining-room in the court was also open on ​every hand to the winds of heaven by reason of large unglazed air-spaces that in rainy weather could be closed by movable shutters. Upon each table, among the usual articles, stood an olive-oil bottle, filled with a thick, black mixture, which, on closer acquaintance, proved to be the richest extract of coffee, a few drops of which at breakfast in a cup of milk made strong café au lait.

Sonsonate has but one street of importance. Only a few paces from the hotel it crosses a high bridge that commands a fine view up and down a deep gorge, luxuriantly tropical, where the women stand knee-deep in the pools washing their vari-coloured garments, and of the handsome blue distant mountains that shut off the town to the eastward.

Upon this bridge there is always a strange concourse of people and animals: women, straight and erect, balancing baskets of fruit, ollas of water, and brown earthen bowls of frijoles upon their heads; ox-carts rumbling along upon their solid wooden wheels and covered with great dried cowhides, and once in a while a little tram-car, mule-drawn, that seems to meander off to nowhere at all. The pavement of the street rises and falls in a thousand ruts

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​and gullies, heaving itself as if a long series of earthquakes had utterly shattered its cobbled surfaces.

The little shops are kept for the most part by Chinamen or Armenians, and one of the latter, when I asked for souvenir postal cards to send to friends, could only produce views of Jerusalem! In the Chinese shops you can find the pretty silken scarfs that the women wear, made in China especially for this Central American trade, and most becoming they are, framing the dark oval faces in their soft silky folds.

It was at vespers that, toward twilight that afternoon, we saw them to their best advantage. The church interior, spacious and airy, is painted pink and pale water-green, and against this background, like bouquets of soft flowers, nodded these scarf-covered heads, coral and violet, lavender and pale-blue, heliotrope and white. As night came on, the women trooped away out under the golden bamboo arch that shades the transept door and through the plaza, stopping perhaps to buy some bits of food from the venders who squatted on the curbstones before the great columns of the portico, their earthen bowls cooking with a spluttering of oil over open fires kindled in the gutter.

​There was a concert in the plaza that evening. A military band discoursed excellent music from the band-stand, while under the lovely flowering trees that stained the pavement with their falling blooms, the townspeople sat upon blue benches or walked around the leafy avenues. Girls, four abreast, arm in arm, pale as moonflowers, with their hair, silky and well cared for, hanging loosely down their backs, swished their starched skirts as they passed; negro women, black as night, in scarlet dresses with long golden ear-rings dangling about their necks, walked quietly behind their mistresses; the blue Prefectura gleamed ghostly in the moonlight, and even the cold, white, classic church, whose great columns swell like those of Egypt into lotus-flower capitals, took on the warmth and glamour of this southern night, making a picture like the scenic setting of some grand opera.

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WE awoke at dawn, took the early train, and by ten o'clock were once more aboard the ship. That night we crossed the boundary to Guatemala and anchored in the early morning at its chief Pacific seaport, San José. Our steamer carried a consignment of steel rails destined for a link in the Pan-American Railway. These were to be put off at Champerico, the next port, a lengthy and tedious operation that, in the ground swell, would usually require about two days. So we planned to utilise this time in making a trip up to Guatemala City.

This was a Saturday, and according to all calculations our steamer could not leave Champerico before the following Tuesday morning at the earliest. In order to facilitate our departure our captain, who ​was kindness and thoughtfulness itself during all this cruise, sent us quickly ashore in his gig. We found the Pacific Mail agent upon the dock, and he too assured us, after some demur, that the trip, as we planned it, was feasible. So presently we were seated in the train again ascending the hills toward the interior of Guatemala. The air was moist and big vaporous clouds hung about the distant mountains. The country through which we passed at first resembled the ride to Sonsonate, being chiefly through grazing-lands interspersed at times with large plantations of sugar-cane or bananas. Natives in gay costume leaned from the doorways of palm-leaf huts.

Beyond Escuintla the air grew cooler; the clouds lifted to some extent and disclosed richly wooded hillsides, well-tilled fields, and beneficios with pink, box-like houses surrounded by long white arcades. Clear little streams fringed with willows ran merrily down to the sea. The views toward the coast were lovely as the train rounded curve after curve, always mounting to cooler heights. But the great volcano, Agua, stubbornly refused to show itself on this our upward journey.

​At the stations the Indian women met the train to peddle their fruits: mangoes and pineapples, chirimoyas,

alligator pears, and loquats. And a gay picture they made with their thick black hair bound tight about their heads to form braided crowns, plaited with broad ribbons of lilac and green. Their ​strong yet delicately moulded arms emerged from white chemisettes, enriched with embroidery, and so short that when they raised their hands to steady the baskets upon their heads, the bare bronze skin of their lithe, graceful bodies was revealed to the waist-line. For skirts they only wear hand-woven cloths, gay with patterns, wrapped closely round their hips—so tightly, indeed, that every movement of their shapely limbs is disclosed as they walk along.

The gorges grew deeper as we ascended, and in their glens, half hidden in a tangle of creepers, vines, and flowering yucca, we could see great tree-ferns spreading their tops like giant umbrellas. The volcanic mountains took on strange shapes, and presently we found ourselves upon the reedy banks of the broad lake, Amatitlan, along which the train now ran for many miles, crossing it at one point upon a long low bridge. We were by this time nearly four thousand feet above the sea, and the air was deliciously cool and refreshing after the humid atmosphere of the coast.

At Moran, whose ruined church by the track stood a silent witness to the devastation of an earthquake, we knew we were approaching the capital, ​for women hurried along toward the city with their market produce balanced upon their heads and gaudy new villas came into view from time to time. We crossed the viaduct that spans the broad Reforma, and entered the station.

Upon emerging the first object that confronts you is the bull-ring made of adobe, washed with their favourite pale-blue water-colour. Opposite it, convicts were at work grading a hill under the surveillance of some slovenly, barefoot soldiers. Beyond we passed a pilgrim church situated at the head of a great flight of steps, at whose base cows were being milked, while the crenellated walls of an old fortress rose up behind, blue and unreal against the sky-line like some piece of stage scenery.

The streets down which we drove were wide and straight and paved with square blocks of stone like the old Roman thoroughfares; the houses but one story in height for the most part; the churches baroque, pretentious, and uninteresting.

When I asked the cabman upon reaching the hotel how much I owed him, he calmly replied: "Eighteen dollars." I fairly gasped, feeling that I was being robbed. Then I remembered that in Guatemala ​eighteen dollars of their money equals just one American dollar! You can imagine the condition of one's pockets in a country with such a currency—constantly cluttered with rolls of dirty paper pesos, tattered and often worn to shreds. You buy a few postage stamps and you pay eight dollars for them; your simple dinner amounts to forty dollars, your room to fifty dollars a day. Yet living in Guatemala is cheap—when you make due allowance for exchange.

Under the old Spanish dominion, all that we now call Central America, that is from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Panama, was known as the Captain-Generalcy, or Kingdom of Guatemala. Cortez, after his conquest of Mexico, sent his daring lieutenant, Don Pedro de Alvarado, one of the most brilliant figures of that turbulent epoch, to subjugate this country, and his name has become linked with it like that of Cortez with Mexico and Pizarro with Peru. He found the country peopled with fairly civilised natives, having their industries and arts, their picture-writings and a primitive language of symbols. Like the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru, they dwelt upon the cool ethereal heights of the ​tierra templada, where they first woke to civilisation under the stimulus of the exhilarating air raised high above the miasmas of the coast—the torrid tierra caliente.

When Alvarado had brought these natives to submission, he planned to make his capital the finest in the new world. To attain this end, he brought artisans from Spain, and under their guidance, the Mayas, who had erected the temples of Yucatan and Honduras, now built his viceregal palace, the great cathedral where his bones afterward reposed, and the other edifices of his capital, Antigua, situated almost at the base of Agua. In 1776, however, a terrific earthquake shook the city to its foundations, destroying it so utterly that by order of the government the capital was transferred to Guatemala City, and Antigua remains to this day a city of ruins. It is comparatively easy of access, and I should have liked to visit it, but the shortness of our stay would not permit the journey.

Thus, as Spanish-American capitals go, Guatemala City is of comparatively recent origin, whence its baroque architecture, its tawdry palaces and churches. But it makes amends for these. The surrounding ​country is wholly delightful, and has always been fittingly known as the "Paradise of the New World." Its elevation above the sea gives it a delicious climate, and its picturesque, if somewhat slovenly, inhabitants afford no end of variety.

The Plaza de Armas, differing in this respect from those we had seen in South America, is ill kept, its pavement cracked and dirty, its trees dusty and neglected. Two sides are bordered by portales sheltering the principal shops under their arcades. To the east rise the great cathedral and the bishop's palace, while to the west stands the Palace, the official residence of President Cabrera, who holds the country under his iron thumb.

In an automobile we toured the city and its environs, first visiting, at the end of a broad avenue, flanked by villas and foreign legations, the Hipódromo, or Temple of Minerva, a modern edifice of the Greek type, used for scholastic or athletic exercises and public gatherings of all sorts, overlooking a beautiful ravine and a richly wooded country—a perfect tangle of tropic growth.

In the opposite direction we returned to the Calvario, or Pilgrim Church, that I have mentioned, ​passed the pale-blue Fortezza, and then followed the Avenida de la Reforma, a splendid boulevard shaded by quadruple rows of trees, mostly pines, that fill the air with their aromatic perfume.

At its far extremity, we enjoyed a superb view of

Agua topping the rich fields, and then we inspected the Museo. This contains a well-ordered if rather scant collection of plaster casts of the Maya bas-reliefs and monoliths from Quirigua, Péten, and the hidden jungles of Yucatan; modern historic souvenirs of the various revolutions; examples of native in​dustries and some fine specimens of animals and birds, among the latter the quetzal, the national bird of freedom, larger than a parrot and like it contrasting a bright-red breast and a long green tail.

The market that morning and the band concert that afternoon afforded an excellent opportunity to study the women and their gay attire. There were Guatemaltecans of Spanish origin in their prettiest Sunday raiment, mestizas in soft, pale-tinted scarfs, and, most ​interesting of all perhaps, Indian women, especially those from Quezaltenango and its vicinity, many of

whom are employed as nurse-maids in the capital. They are small but well formed and erect from their ​habit of balancing loads upon their head; their clothes are hand-woven and enriched with lively and
Indian Women varied patterns; their hair is plaited with flowers, and their faces are often distinctly comely.

Among these women the slouchy soldiers wandered; a malimbero lugged his heavy instrument, a sort of xylophone, upon his back, and boys peddled native sweetmeats stuck upon a stick, and candies fashioned in the semblance of men and animals. As the twilight deepened, the cathedral doors swung open and a crowd with lighted candles issued from the main portal, accompanying a Purísima or small, doll-like Virgin, such as one commonly sees in Mex​ico, overdressed in brocades and laces, and so decked with jewels and ornaments that nothing but its diminutive waxen face was visible.

We took the early train for the lowlands, planning to spend the entire day en route, reaching Retalhuleu at six to spend the night, and the following morning we were to proceed to Champerico to meet our steamer. Though the distance from Retalhuleu to the coast is but twenty-five miles, only three trains a week make the connection.

The trip through the jungle I shall not soon forget, both for the beauty of the long ride and for the adventure that closed it.

The road from Guatemala City as far as Escuintla was a repetition of our ascent from the coast, but for the fact that, upon the downward journey, Agua stood revealed in all its majesty, rearing its perfect cone, sharp and regular, more than twelve thousand feet above the sea. Behind it towered its two neighbours, even greater in height though more distant, Fuego and Acatenango, volcanoes also, cutting their sharp silhouettes against a cloudless sky—forming the great trinity that decorates the country's coat-of-arms.

​We had an early luncheon in the station at Escuintla, luckily, from what followed, an excellent repast graced with the finest avocado pears I have ever tasted.

At Santa Maria Junction the train left the road to the coast, turning aside upon what will some day be the main line of the Pan-American Railway that eventually will connect the cities of the United States with Panama by rail—a dream that fascinated the mind of James G. Blaine, who was one of its strongest early advocates. At the present day such large portions of it already exist that its realisation no longer seems a dream but a reality of the not very distant future.

The piece we were now traversing has been open but a year or two and passes through a virgin jungle, affording a ride of rare novelty and charm. You plunge almost instantly into a tropical forest whose moist, heavy atmosphere is as steamy as that of a hothouse. Its giant trees are hung with vines and snake-like creepers and bound about by the iron thongs of the lignum-vitæ. Orchids balance themselves upon the twisted limbs, and royal palms rear their column-like trunks among the thick underbrush.

​At each station rough-looking peons left the second-class coaches to work on the fincas, or plantations, all their worldly possessions in packs upon their backs. Their foremen and their employers, the haciendados, go about armed to the teeth, looking like walking arsenals, with their cartridge-belts, their pistols, and their long, ugly knives.

Our train conductor was an American, whose wonderful gold teeth proclaimed that fact to all the world. He had lived, I think he said, for twenty years along this Guatemala Central Railroad, and he retailed to us all the gossip of the road, pointing out the big sugar estates, the mahogany logs at Buena Vista, the rubber-trees, and, later on, the coffee plantations sheltered from the sun by the leafage of the jungle. He told us, too, where to get the best pineapples (most refreshing upon a journey like this), and we bought, by his advice, nine of them for twenty-seven reales, or seven cents gold, and cocoanuts at about a cent and a half apiece.

The native villages were a source of constant interest, with their bamboo huts thatched with palm leaves, their primitive outdoor kitchens, where we saw armadillos roasted whole like Chinese sucking ​pigs. Children played about as nature made them; the men, especially toward Patulul, were clad only in richly coloured breech-cloths that harmonised perfectly

with their warm brown skins, and the women were washing half nude in the streams.

River after river, rippling over pebbly beds, ran from the mountains to the sea, and one after another we crossed them: the various branches of the Coyolata, the two main forks of the Madre Viejo, the Nahualate, the Nimá, and the Ican. Their presence explained the fertility of the region and the rich ​verdure of the country, despite the fact that we were at the end of the long dry season, when one would naturally expect to see the land seared and scorched by the sun, ardently awaiting the rain.

At Mazatenango we lost a passenger who had greatly interested us—a beautiful mestiza, upon whose shoulders two green parakeets had perched all day. It was now nearly five o'clock, and only an hour's ride separated us from our destination for the night. During this last portion of the trip we passed through extensive coffee fincas that form the principal source of wealth of the region, arriving at Retalhuleu just on time.

Lucky for us that we did so.

I have spoken of Guatemala's despotic president, Cabrera. We had had instances before of the close watch that is kept by his officials on every stranger and every citizen, for our names had been taken each time we passed in or out of a railroad station or entered a hotel. Here, at Retalhuleu, the officials advanced again for these formalities, and when I had signed my name I was surprised to see them exchange a look, and one of them handed me two telegrams. Both were from the captain of our ship, urging us to ​hire a special train and get to Champerico at once, as he sailed at eight o'clock that evening.

What visions his telegram evoked! In fancy I saw us stranded for ten days in this desolate port with nothing but our hand-luggage; I saw our tickets for the voyage reposing, with our other possessions, in the purser's safe; I saw us following forlornly by the next steamer, which was the worst boat on the line.

So, without losing a single moment, I interviewed the station-master, he called up the central office in Guatemala City, catching the officials just before they left for the night, and I watched the reply slowly tick from the telegraphic instrument—the order for a special at what looked like a ruinous figure until it was divided into American dollars. The only car that they could find available was a second-class coach, and in twenty minutes after our arrival an engine was attached to it, a dim, smoky lamp was lighted in one of its corners, and we started off, dinnerless, in the night.

What a wild ride it was! The locomotive snorted like a raging monster at the very door of our coach, that rocked from side to side like an unballasted ship upon the shaky rails; the lamp spluttered and smoked ​and threatened every instant to fall from its fixture and smash upon the floor.

The lights of native huts (for it was still early in the evening) flashed by in the darkness. Anxious faces peered through the windows as we slowed down at the few stations. Such a thing as a train at night was unknown upon this road, that, as I have said, operates but three trains a week in each direction, and these only in broad daylight. Our whistle shrieked as we sped along, and at last, in record time, we pulled into the station at Champerico.

I think the whole town was there to meet us. I know the entire garrison was, barefooted doubtless, but with fixed bayonets, prepared to quell any revolution that might emerge from this lone coach. Their anxiety faded, but their curiosity was evidently increased, when they beheld only two mild-mannered persons step out. Guessing our object, they called repeatedly: "You cannot embark; you cannot embark." However, the port agent met us, some natives took up our luggage, and we stumbled along over the railroad tracks and switches in the direction of the mole.

The captain of the port had been forewarned, for ​nothing short of the President's permission had been necessary to enable us to leave the country after nightfall. So, as he expressed it, "in honour of the lady," he came himself with his small court, all dressed in white, to take us to the bodega on the end of the mole. Four boatmen, also in white, were waiting there, and the captain's big chaloupa was in readiness to be swung out and down into the long Pacific rollers which fortunately were exceptionally quiet that evening. The boat was duly launched, my wife was put into a sort of barrel-chair, and at the end of a crane was swung out into the darkness and carefully lowered into the waiting boat, then I was sent down in the same manner.

The ship's lights twinkled in the distance, shut out at times by a long black wave-wall that disappeared as quickly as it came. We seemed to float upon a moving black void with silvery phosphorescence all about and dripping from the oars. Once out of the ground-swell, however, we glided peacefully along toward the ship's golden lamps that beckoned us like the hospitable lights of some large hotel.

We met the purser's boat coming ashore to see how we were faring, and then we knew, what we ​had already guessed, the reason for the change of plans that had necessitated this brusque departure—namely, that in this calm weather the steel rails for Champerico had rained into the lighters in double-quick time, and the ship was ready for departure Monday night instead of Tuesday morning.

On awaking next day we found ourselves anchored off Ocos, the last port of call in Guatemala. Only a mile or two to the north lay the Mexican border. Nothing tempted us to go ashore at this forlorn port, and indeed we were quite well pleased, after the past three days' activities, to sit quietly in our steamer-chairs upon the open deck and watch the lighters filled with sacks of coffee come one after the other out through the surf, whose breakers they breasted by an ingenious system of cables attached to buoys, giving their signals to the men in charge of the donkey-engine ashore by means of black and white flags.

Toward night great clouds gathered about the mountains inland and the lightning flashed dull silver in the deepening gloom. The stars disappeared one by one; a high wind arose; big warm splashes of rain pattered on the deck, and before we knew it a chuvasco—one of those great tropical storms that ​come so quickly in these latitudes—was let loose about us. In a moment floods of water swept the ship from stem to stern. But all was over as quickly as it came, and in a few hours the stars twinkled again overhead.

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AT eleven o'clock next morning the two thousand sacks of coffee were all aboard and we said good-bye to Guatemala.

A little later we passed the first port in Mexico, San Benito, marked by a warehouse or two upon the shore. The long, low thread of coast continued to unroll itself all the afternoon, with now and then a faint, blue mountain form dimly seen hiding its head in thunder-clouds. We passed two steamers—a rare event upon this silent sea.

Before dawn next day we heard the high wind whistling about our cabin, the trades that always blow in the Gulf of Tehuantepec. After breakfast ​we anchored in the outer bay of Salina Cruz, and came up to the dock soon after, watching with interest, as we did so, the crowd of Mexican cargadores, in white jeans and the national peaked hats, preparing to unload our cargo. This was the first time we had been alongside a dock since we left Balboa, and was to be the last until we arrived in San Francisco.

Each town along this coast seems to have a physiognomy all its own. Some are but a collection of tropical shacks shaded by cocoanut palms; others have a prosperous air displayed in their mountains of coffee-sacks and bags of sugar; others again wear an ugly face devoid even of the interest of character. Salina Cruz is certainly one of these, for no element of beauty can be found in its windy, sand-swept streets. But she has dressed her unattractive face in very neat and business-like clothes—her excellent wharves and docks, built by a great English corporation, equipped with all the modern machinery and appliances that are lacking even in some of our most up-to-date American ports. Electric cranes, running easily on tracks, swing their giant arms in air, lifting from the ships' holds great handfuls of bales and ​boxes and emptying them directly, as the case may be, either into freight cars standing ready to take them across the Isthmus to the Gulf or into solid warehouses ranged along the quay. Salina Cruz

was the proposed western terminus of the famous ship railway so much discussed some years ago as the only possible solution of the canal problem.

Whether this Tehuantepec Railway, with its trans-shipments, will be able to compete with the direct ​route of the Panama Canal is the question one naturally asks one's self. The town of Tehuantepec, which gives its name to the Isthmus, lies about twenty miles inland, and is famous for the beauty and the curious national dress of its women. To judge from those we saw in Salina Cruz, I should say they justify their reputation.

We sailed early Friday morning and headed up the Mexican coast. The sea was alive with turtles, gleaming like great topazes upon the calm blue waters.

What a change in the shore-line from the softly wooded hills of Guatemala! All was bleak and arid, rugged and firmly modelled. Low headlands thrust themselves into the sea, girt with jagged rocks and clothed with dry underbrush, and great clusters of the organ cactus reared their bright-green fingers straight toward heaven. At other times long white lines of sand skirted with foliage connected these headlands, and once in a while a broad verdant valley opened and a wreath of blue smoke proclaimed a human presence. One of these valleys stretched its mouth so wide that we coasted for about half an hour along its unbroken beach, walled with cocoanut ​palms and backed by densely wooded hills, rising one behind another, fold after fold, peering over each other, as it were, to catch a glimpse of the sea, while the mother range—the Sierra Madre—looked calmly down upon her children from her cool ethereal heights.

Then the coast receded until it almost disappeared from view, then protruded again far out into the sea until we seemed to be heading directly for its yellow cliffs. No opening appeared until we came quite close, when, of a sudden, a narrow passage split the cliffs and we entered a landlocked harbor, the loveliest on all this coast.

What memories cling about this bay of Acapulco, as perfect in form as any saucer, with but a single chip in all its rim, that of the narrow boca that admits ships from the sea! Purple hills enclose it; groves of cocoanut palms skirt its shores; native huts lie cool in the shadows of the woods, and over to the northward the old town of Acapulco spreads itself upon a hill-slope behind its ancient Spanish fortress.

What pictures it has beheld! The dromonds and the galliases from Panama, with the merchants of Spain and the traders from the vice-royalty of Peru, ​assembled to buy the silks and porcelains from China and the spices from the Indies; the nobles and their caravans from Mexico City just across the mountains, even at times the viceroy himself, come to welcome the King's ship—the great galleon that once a year arrived from Manila freighted with the treasures of the Orient, its sails gay with painted images, its waist bristling with cannon, its rigging hung with ollas, earthen jars, to catch and cool the rain-water upon its lengthy voyage.

During the old régime Acapulco was the chief port upon the Pacific for the East-Indian trade, and this great galleon, commanded by a general who flew the royal standard at his masthead, left each year for the Philippines in March, returning the following December or January.

Bret Harte has founded one of his most important poems upon this event, a curious legend beginning thus:

​This "Lost Galleon" never arrived for a very peculiar reason, and he concludes his account of its ill-fated voyage with the following prophecy of the Holy Brotherhood: that in 1939, just three hundred years from the date it was due,

If this prophecy is fulfilled, her captain-general, upon his return, will not find the old town greatly changed, for to-day its buildings still echo the Hispanic taste of the seventeenth century. Its old fortress of San Diego still bristles with antiquated artillery, the old craft of its harbour are primitive, and its shiftless people, cut off from all communication with the outside world, fill in the foreground of the picture in quite an appropriate manner. But he will rub his eyes in bewilderment when he reads the name, to him meaningless, of the boats that come to ferry one ashore: the New York, the Maryland, the George Washington, and the Flying-Fish.

​We chose the first named, and soon were landing at the custom-house, which you literally "pass through" to leave the landing-stage, and found ourselves in the main plaza, set out with fine mango-trees. The afternoon

was all too short for this picturesque old town, with its streets and dazzling colonnades, its cool porticos, its markets and shops filled with a bright jumble of pottery and ponchos, woven baskets and tropical fruits.

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​We sketched and visited the agency and the consulate, occupying two of the most pretentious houses in the town, both typically Spanish, with patios and

great airy chambers whose windows are barred with solid rejas strong enough for a prison.

At sundown we were towed in the agent's boat to our ship, which had meanwhile gone across the bay ​to coal. The evening was delightful, the air balmy yet refreshing, and the calm bay, landlocked, with but its single exit to the sea, spread its opalescent waters to catch the sky reflections—pink, green, lavender, and mauve. The American consul had come out with us—a distinguished-looking man with a young face and snow-white hair—and he and the agent dined at the captain's table, and we all spent the evening together up under the bridge by the captain's cabin.

The coal-barges lay alongside, and in the fitful light of electric reflectors we could see the passers, a motley crew, half naked, grimy, black by nature or by dust, one could not tell which, shovelling the coal like demons, in the weird night light.

Our next Mexican port was Manzanillo, whose lighthouse, perched upon a bluff, was the first that we had remarked on all the coast. We ran in close under it, swung into a wide and beautiful gulf, and anchored behind a fine, new breakwater, where lies the little town, the western terminal of one of the Mexican railways, straggling along a sand-bar. We went ashore on principle, but found little to interest us except some pretty juegos, or sets of Guadalajara ​pottery—bottle, plate, and drinking-cup, made to match. The town is dirty and unattractive, the country dry and desolate.

There remained but one more port of call, San Blas, and a tiny pearl of the tropics it is, set in shores

of vivid green and groves of palm-trees. We cast anchor a mile or two offshore, near a British gunboat, and immediately a boat put off from her and one of her officers came to call upon our captain. What a trim boat's crew it was—how spick and span their uniforms, how well fed, how ruddy their complexions ​under their cork helmets after the sallow skins of the Central Americans we had been seeing!

Our steamer had two thousand bunches of bananas to take aboard, so we went ashore for the afternoon

in a big surf-boat, riding the breakers to shelter behind a primitive breakwater. Here we found ourselves in a calm lagoon, broken by numerous sand-spits and stretching off into bayous of rich tropical vegetation. ​Sturdy cargadores were loading big lighters with bananas and dried fish, and beyond we could see the first bamboo huts of the village roofed with palm-leaves.

A few Mexican buildings were mingled with them, but they recalled the Moor, rather than the Spaniard, with their blank walls, their roof terraces, and pink ​arcades. There was little to do but peep into the native huts like those of South Sea Islanders, drink cocoanut milk, visit the market, where we were offered a whole bunch of bananas for fifteen cents gold, and then wander down to the beach, where the natives were swimming, riding the surf on boards like Kanakas and having a splendid time. This quiet afternoon was altogether a charming farewell to the tropics. Even the sunset, as we returned to the ship, was sufficiently lurid and full of colour to meet the requirements of the occasion, and as we stood out for the open sea it was with deep regret that we said good-bye to the heat and discomfort, the glamour and charm, of the southern seas.

Never shall I forget the romance of those nights at sea—the long talks with our captain up under the bridge, his lines from Kipling's "Seven Seas," the stars that twinkled their thousand eyes overhead, and the great calm Pacific that stretched to infinity, its broad bosom faintly heaving in its slumberous breathing.

After leaving San Blas we cut across the mouth of the Gulf of California, and toward sundown rounded the southern extremity of Cape St. Lucas. That ​night we crossed the tropic of Cancer. The Southern Cross, that had so long guided us, disappeared from the firmament, the North Star stood high in the heavens, and in the morning when we arose a bracing north wind greeted us.

The officers appeared dressed in navy blue instead of the white of the tropics. Activity and energy developed in the crew. Even the passengers awoke from their drowsiness, threw off the lethargy of the steamer-chairs, and took long walks forward and aft. Lower California unrolled its naked headlands, the great bluffs of Magdalena Bay arose along the sea. Sometimes the coast was low and sandy; sometimes ​table-lands stretched flat for miles, as if their tops had been lopped off by giant machetes; sometimes high and wicked cliffs lifted their walls along the shore, scarred and seamed, with the surf pounding along their feet. Many a good ship has foundered on this wild coast, with no lights, even to-day, to guide them in the night, with no siren to warn them in the fog, their ribs mouldering along the treacherous rock-bound shore.

Beyond Cape San Rocco and Cedro Island we passed the deep curve of Viscaino's Bay, and followed the course of that intrepid navigator, until one morning—the fourth, I think, from San Blas—the peak of Catalina Island rose above our port bow. Shoals of flying-fish frolicked in the water and, as the land drew nearer, fishing-smacks skimmed over the dancing waves, their sails bellying in the fresh westerly trades.

After the inhospitable coast of Lower California, our own shores looked verdant and animated. At night an unbroken chain of lighthouses guided our course. By day the great cliffs that skirt the sea frowned down upon us.

And then one morning, with the earliest dawn, the ​twinkling beam of San Benito's lighthouse lured us on, and the faint silhouette of the Farallones rose to the westward. We changed our course, coasting close in under the cliffs, and as the sun rose behind the Contra Costa hills, flooding the headlands with the glory of its effulgence, we entered the Golden Gate, and the broad waters of the bay of San Francisco opened their arms to us.

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