Soldiers of Santa Rosa eating in the market-place.
Christmas dinner on the road in Honduras.
Several times I met the families of soldiers tramping northward with all their possessions.
A fellow-roadster behind one of my cigars.
An arriero carrying a bundle of Santa Rosa cigars on his own back as he drives his similarly laden animals.
The great military force of Esperanza compelled to draw up and face my camera.
The prisoners in their chains form an interested audience across the street.
The "West Pointers" of Honduras in their barracks, a part of the national palace.
View of Tegucigalpa from the top of Picacho.
Repairing the highway from Tegucigalpa to the Coast.
Approaching Sabana Grande, the first night's stop on the tramp to the coast.
A beef just butchered and hung out in the sun.
A dwelling on the hot lands of the Coast, and its scantily clad inhabitants.
The mozo pauses for a drink on the trail.
One way of transporting merchandise from the coast to Tegucigalpa.
The other way of bringing goods up to the capital.
Marooned "gringoes" waiting with what patience possible at the "Hotel Morazán," Amapala.
Unloading cattle in the harbor of Amapala.
The steamer arrives at last that is to carry us south to Panama.
We lose no time in being rowed out to her.
You are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is a purely--though not pure--Mexican town with a slight American tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sell sticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. There are not a dozen shops where the clerks speak even good pidgin English, most signs are in Spanish, the lists of voters on the walls are chiefly of Iberian origin, the very county officers from sheriff down--or up--are names the average American could not pronounce, and the saunterer in the streets may pass hours without hearing a word of English. Even the post-office employees speak Spanish by preference and I could not do the simplest business without resorting to that tongue. I am fond of Spanish, but I do not relish being forced to use it in my own country.
On Laredo's rare breeze rides enough dust to build a new world. Every street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat--"Cincinnati Slim" put it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full this'll do fine for an annex."