2. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: El Jarral, Copán, Honduras

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916


I set a good pace along the flat, shaded, grassy lane beside the river,
promising myself a swim upon sighting my destination. But the tricky
trail suddenly and unexpectedly led me far up on a mountain flank and
down into Jarral without again catching sight or sound of the
stream. There were three or four palm-leaf huts and a large, long
hacienda building, unspeakably dirty and dilapidated. The estate
produced coffee, heaps of which in berry and kernel stood here and there
in the dusk. The owner lived elsewhere; for which no one could blame
him. I marched out along the great tile-floored veranda to mention to
the stupid _mayordomo_ the relationship of money and food. He
referred me to a filth-encrusted woman in the cavern-like kitchen, where
three soiled and bedraggled babies slept on a dirtier reed mat on the
filthy earth floor, another in a hammock made of a grain sack and two
pieces of rope, amid dogs, pigs, and chickens, not to mention other
unpleasantnesses, including a damp dungeon atmosphere that ought early
to have proved fatal to the infants. When she had sulkily agreed to
prepare me tortillas, I returned to ask the way to the river. The
mayordomo cried out in horror at the notion of bathing at night,
pointing out that there was not even a moon, and prophesying a fatal
outcome of such foolhardiness and gringo eccentricity. His appearance
suggested that he had also some strong superstition against bathing by
day.

I stumbled nearly a mile along to-morrow's road, stepping now and then
into ankle-deep mud puddles, before reaching the stream, but a plunge
into a stored-up pool of it was more than ample reward. "Supper" was
ready upon my return, and by asking the price of it at once and catching
the woman by surprise I was charged only a legitimate amount. When I
inquired where I might swing my hammock, the enemy of bathing pointed
silently upward at the rafters of the veranda. These were at least ten
feet above the tiled floor and I made several ineffectual efforts before
I could reach them at all, and then only succeeded in hanging my
sleeping-net so that it doubled me up like a jack-knife. Rearranging it
near the corner of the veranda, I managed with great effort to climb
into it, but to have fallen out would have been to drop either some
eight feet to the stone-flagged door or twenty into the cobbled and
filthy barnyard below. The chances of this outcome were much increased
by the necessity of using a piece of old rope belonging to the hacienda,
and a broken arm or leg would have been pleasant indeed here in the
squalid wilderness with at least a hundred miles of mule-trail to the
nearest doctor.

Luckily I only fell asleep. Several men and dirtier boys, all in what
had once been white garments, had curled up on bundles of dirty mats and
heaps of bags all over the place, and the night was a pandemonium of
their coughing, snoring, and night-maring, mingled with the hubbub of
dogs, roosters, turkeys, cattle, and a porcine multitude that snuggled
in among the human sleepers. The place was surrounded by wet, pine-clad
mountains, and the damp night air drifting in upon me soon grew cold and
penetrating.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916

Will be published soon!. :)