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Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:
An hour's walk next morning brought me to Gracias, a slovenly,
nothing-to-do-but-stare hamlet of a few hundred inhabitants. After I had
eaten all the chief hut could supply, I set about looking for the
shoemaker my already aged Guatemalan Oxfords needed so badly. I found
the huts where several of them lived, but not where any of them
worked. The first replied from his hammock that he was sick, the second
had gone to Tegucigalpa, the third was "somewhere about town if you have
the patience to wait." Which I did for an hour or more, and was rewarded
with his turning up to inform me that he was not planning to begin his
labors again so soon, for only yesterday had been Christmas.
Over the first hill and river beyond, I fell in with a woman who carried
on an unbroken conversation as well as a load on her head, from the time
she accepted the first cigar until we had waded the thigh-deep "rio
grande" and climbed the rocky bank to her hut and garden. At first she
had baldly refused to allow her picture to be taken. But so weak-willed
are these people of Honduras that a white man of patience can in time
force them to do his bidding by sheer force of will, by merely looking
long and fixedly at them. Many the "gringo" who has misused this power
in Central America. Before we reached her home she had not only posed
but insisted on my stopping to photograph her with her children "dressed
up" as befitted so extraordinary an occasion. Her garden was unusually
well supplied with fruit and vegetables, and the rice boiled in milk she
served was the most savory dish I had tasted in Honduras. She refused
payment, but insisted on my waiting until the muleteers she had charged
for their less sumptuous dinner were gone, so they should not discover
her unpatriotic favoritism.
During the afternoon there was for a time almost level going, grassy and
soft, across gently dipping meadows on which I left both mule-trains and
pedestrians behind. Houses were rare, and the fall of night threatened
to leave me alone among vast whining pine forests where the air was
already chill. In the dusk, however, I came upon the hut of Pablo
Morales and bespoke posada. He growled a surly permission and addressed
hardly a word to me for hours thereafter. The place was the most filthy,
quarrelsome, pig and chicken overrun stop on the trip, and when at last
I prepared to swing my hammock inside the hut the sulky host informed me
that he only permitted travelers the _corredor_. Two other
guests--ragged, soil-encrusted arrieros--were already housed within, but
there were at least some advantages in swinging my own net outside from
the rafters of the eaves. Pigs jolted against me now and then and before
I had entirely fallen asleep I was disturbed by a procession of dirty
urchins, each carrying a blazing pine stick, who came one by one to look
me over. I was just settling down again when Pablo himself appeared, an
uncanny figure in the dancing light of his flaming torch. He had heard
that I could "put people on paper," and would I put his wife on paper in
return for his kindness in giving me posada? Yes, in the morning. Why
couldn't I do it now? He seemed strangely eager, for a man accustomed to
set mañana as his own time of action. His surly indifference had
changed to an annoying solicitude, and he forced upon me first a
steaming tortilla, then a native beverage, and finally came with a large
cloth hammock in which I passed the night more comfortably than in my
own open-work net.
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 every day!
Ver mapa más grande
Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:
An hour's walk next morning brought me to Gracias, a slovenly,
nothing-to-do-but-stare hamlet of a few hundred inhabitants. After I had
eaten all the chief hut could supply, I set about looking for the
shoemaker my already aged Guatemalan Oxfords needed so badly. I found
the huts where several of them lived, but not where any of them
worked. The first replied from his hammock that he was sick, the second
had gone to Tegucigalpa, the third was "somewhere about town if you have
the patience to wait." Which I did for an hour or more, and was rewarded
with his turning up to inform me that he was not planning to begin his
labors again so soon, for only yesterday had been Christmas.
Over the first hill and river beyond, I fell in with a woman who carried
on an unbroken conversation as well as a load on her head, from the time
she accepted the first cigar until we had waded the thigh-deep "rio
grande" and climbed the rocky bank to her hut and garden. At first she
had baldly refused to allow her picture to be taken. But so weak-willed
are these people of Honduras that a white man of patience can in time
force them to do his bidding by sheer force of will, by merely looking
long and fixedly at them. Many the "gringo" who has misused this power
in Central America. Before we reached her home she had not only posed
but insisted on my stopping to photograph her with her children "dressed
up" as befitted so extraordinary an occasion. Her garden was unusually
well supplied with fruit and vegetables, and the rice boiled in milk she
served was the most savory dish I had tasted in Honduras. She refused
payment, but insisted on my waiting until the muleteers she had charged
for their less sumptuous dinner were gone, so they should not discover
her unpatriotic favoritism.
During the afternoon there was for a time almost level going, grassy and
soft, across gently dipping meadows on which I left both mule-trains and
pedestrians behind. Houses were rare, and the fall of night threatened
to leave me alone among vast whining pine forests where the air was
already chill. In the dusk, however, I came upon the hut of Pablo
Morales and bespoke posada. He growled a surly permission and addressed
hardly a word to me for hours thereafter. The place was the most filthy,
quarrelsome, pig and chicken overrun stop on the trip, and when at last
I prepared to swing my hammock inside the hut the sulky host informed me
that he only permitted travelers the _corredor_. Two other
guests--ragged, soil-encrusted arrieros--were already housed within, but
there were at least some advantages in swinging my own net outside from
the rafters of the eaves. Pigs jolted against me now and then and before
I had entirely fallen asleep I was disturbed by a procession of dirty
urchins, each carrying a blazing pine stick, who came one by one to look
me over. I was just settling down again when Pablo himself appeared, an
uncanny figure in the dancing light of his flaming torch. He had heard
that I could "put people on paper," and would I put his wife on paper in
return for his kindness in giving me posada? Yes, in the morning. Why
couldn't I do it now? He seemed strangely eager, for a man accustomed to
set mañana as his own time of action. His surly indifference had
changed to an annoying solicitude, and he forced upon me first a
steaming tortilla, then a native beverage, and finally came with a large
cloth hammock in which I passed the night more comfortably than in my
own open-work net.
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 every day!
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