Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 46

Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 46

The result of this visit was the next day visible in a nondescript

dish, consisting of junks of fresh pork stewed with corresponding

junks of dough, and a large quantity of potatoes; after which

favourable symptom there was a relapse of our old complaint.

 

Under these circumstances an invitation we received to dine with a

select party in the lower steerage was naturally accepted with the

same eagerness with which a starving author in those days when

starving was the fashion would have hurried to dine with a noble

lord. One of our entertainers had already made my mouth water by

the rapturous terms in which he described the approaching banquet,

and I waited impatiently for the appointed hour of four. He and his

companions had in some way propitiated the sooty functionaries of the

cabin, either by flattery or Panama brandy, and had thus succeeded

in accumulating the materials for a repast of the most elegant and

_recherche_ description. It would be in vain, however, to attempt

to give a full and particular account; it will be sufficient to

indicate to the reader a few of the principal dishes, leaving to his

imagination the same work that we left to our own, that of supplying

the various accessories.

 

The first course consisted of beef, pork, and chicken, roast, boiled,

and stewed, served up with a soup of the most varied and exquisite

flavour. There was a scanty allowance of soft bread, and a plentiful

supply of fresh biscuit six months old. There were potatoes in

abundance, onions enough to smell of, and if spice were wanting, salt

and pepper were to be had for the asking.

 

Having thus set out my first course, I fancy the reader picturing to

his mind's eye a large table groaning under the weight of a dozen

or twenty dishes, and all the useless additions of an unnatural and

sickly civilization. But this would be doing gross injustice to a

feast whose most striking characteristic was a grand and massive

simplicity. The whole of the luxuries I have enumerated were comprised

in a single dish--a round tin pan of moderate circumference, resting

on the middle of a sailor's chest belonging to our host. If any one

should cavil at this explanation as being altogether monstrous and

incredible, I would refer him for an illustration to the tent of the

fairy Peribanon, which a sea-pie as our dish was denominated, doth

most closely resemble: inasmuch as it may, and sometimes doth, consist

of but a few articles, and at others affords comfortable lodgings

to a mighty host. But certain it is that a naturalist, on examining

the various bones that were exhumed from the bowels of our pasty,

would have been sadly puzzled to determine the animal to which it

had belonged, and would probably have astonished the world with a

marvellous account of some prodigious monster belonging neither to the

Saurians nor Ophidians, but more strange than either, with the head of

a swine, the liver of an ox, and the legs and gizzard of a bird.

 

Our second course consisted of oranges; the third varied indefinitely

according to the imaginative powers of the guests. A coffee-pot

two-thirds full of brandy, sugar, and water, supplied the

never-failing accompaniment. As chairs were wanting, as well as a

place to put them, we sat on trunks and boxes, or insinuated as large

a portion of our persons as was convenient into the berths on either

side; a very favourable position for the eating of soup, as it brings

the head almost down to the knees, and thus prevents those slips

between the cup and the lip that are nowhere else so many as at sea.

On the strength of this dinner I went as far as Acapulco; when, like

that wary old campaigner, Sir Dugald Dalgetty, we laid in a store of

provant sufficient to last for several days. The various hotels at

this place, The United States, The American House, and others with

less hospitable names, were at once invaded by a hungry swarm, and

the eggs, the chickens, the bread and milk that had been accumulating

since the departure of the last steamer, were stowed away with a

celerity that excited the mingled delight and consternation of our

entertainers. But we must leave this place for another chapter.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXIII.

 

 

The little town and harbour of Acapulco resemble a wash bowl with

a cup full of water in the bottom. On rounding the promontory that

protected the entrance to the basin, we found ourselves in the arena

of a vast amphitheatre formed by a range of lofty hills that shut us

out on every side from the world we had left. At the foot of these

hills, opposite the entrance, was a narrow strip of level ground

affording room for a miniature city. Here are the coal depots of the

Pacific Company, and here, on the arrival of every steamer, a brisk

trade is carried on in eggs and poultry, bananas, oranges, and limes.

I have already referred to the feats of gastronomy performed at our

first landing. Though it was yet early in the morning, our first

impulse, after a warm greeting between us and our mother earth, was

to seek a convenient house of entertainment, where for the moderate

charge of fifty cents we might eat an unlimited quantity of eggs and

chicken.

 

As the American House seemed already full, we bent our steps towards

the United States, where we were fortunate enough to secure a seat at

the first table. For a few minutes nothing was heard but the cracking

of eggshells, the mumbling of chicken bones, the sipping of coffee,

interrupted by various inexpressible ejaculations of delight; but as

one dish was emptied after another there arose a strange Babel of

full-grown English and baby Spanish.

 

"Here muchacho!--muchacho! eggs--wavers--mas wavers--mas

chickeen--cafe--mas milk--darn your eyes, don't you know your own

language, see here;" and thus, words failing, they had recourse to

signs. But after we had eaten a couple of chickens and nearly a dozen

eggs apiece, with a corresponding supply of bread and coffee, neither

words nor signs were any longer intelligible, and all our eloquence

produced no other reply than the simple monosyllables, "no mas," or

the more mysterious "poco tiempo." "Poker temper," cried a hungry

voyager, "I've had poker temper long enough, I tell you, now I want

some chicken." "Poco tiempo," returned the imperturbable host, and

finishing our dinner with a hearty laugh, we sallied forth into the

street.

 

Acapulco, in spite of its picturesque location, presents little that

is attractive. The houses, though built of stone, appear mean and

dilapidated, half way between a stable and a jail. To my eye, at

least, the tangled, unbroken foliage of the tropics is slovenly and

monotonous compared with the shaven fields and trim forests of New

England. I missed that pleasant green that carpets all but our most

barren hills. Nothing else, not even the architectural beauty of the

cocoa palm with the tinkling music that the softest breeze steals from

its ivory leaves, can compensate for the nakedness of the soil. It

reminds one of an Indian chief, terrible in his war paint and graceful

with his nodding plumes, but otherwise as naked as the day he was born.

 

But my curiosity was abundantly gratified in studying the manners

and habits of the people. They are so backward in all the arts of

civilization that one cannot escape the impression that they are a

degenerate race. It seems impossible that they should have built the

houses they now occupy, and indeed, in all the towns through which we

passed inhabited by a race of Spanish origin, I do not remember to

have seen a single building in progress of erection or which did not

seem to have been standing at least half a century. Every day a market

was held in the open air on one side of the plaza, where, besides the

articles already mentioned, there were exposed for sale fresh beef

cut up into long strips, or rather rags, several kinds of vegetables,

cheese, and tortillas.

 

Most of the trafficking was here done by women--they sat squat on the

ground with thin rude baskets beside them--they used cakes of soap for

the smaller currency, and fragments of stones for weights, breaking

them in pieces till they balanced the article they were selling, and

then, by some process of arithmetic I could not comprehend, arriving

at the correct amount.

 

Near the sea-shore there was a fruit market held under the shade

of some lofty trees. Here women and boys seated behind rude tables

kept up an incessant cry to attract the attention of some loitering

Californian, "Comprar oránges? comprar lemona? picayune a glass."

 

"Me no comprar--me no quiere," returns the other, taking it for

granted, with delightful absurdity, that Mexicans as well as babies

can understand bad English more readily than good, "me no comprar

mas; me havvy all me wishy, here," stroking his stomach with most

expressive complacency.

 

While we thus sauntered through the streets engaged in the innocent

and laudable occupation of sucking oranges and eating what seemed to

be withered slices of brown bread, but was really cocoanut and sugar,

another part of our fellow-passengers were much more gravely employed.

A meeting was held on the plaza, sundry speeches were made full of the

most scorching sarcasm, and resolutions passed denouncing the conduct

of the Company in the strongest terms. A collection was taken up for

the purpose of instituting legal proceedings against the Carolina, and

having her condemned as unseaworthy. Dark hints were given of burning

her before she could leave the port. We were to get home from Acapulco

the best way we could, and afterwards hold the Company responsible for

all loss incurred by our detention.

 

It seemed for a time as if these agitators would succeed in

accomplishing their purpose. A broken-down steamship belonging to

the American consul was lying in the harbour, and it was natural to

suppose that he would do all in his power to detain the Carolina, in

order to obtain passengers for his own vessel. The first step was to

order a survey to be made of the ship. The survey was made as a mere

matter of form by three dignified officials within the steamer, and by

as many naked Indians without. The divers, who seemed to understand

their business much better than their superiors, reported that two

strips of copper had been detached from the ship's bottom, and the

seams were also open, thus causing the leak which had occasioned us

so much uneasiness. On making this discovery the authorities delayed

giving us a permit to go to sea, and the commandant of the fort above

the town received orders to blow us out of water if we attempted to

force a passage. Our captain declared he would go to sea in spite of

them. The passengers entered into the dispute with ardour, and began

to furbish up their revolvers and argue the feasibility of carrying

the citadel by a coup-de-main.

 

In this state of affairs, when the doughty little town of Acapulco

and the spiteful little steamer Carolina seemed about to come to

loggerheads with each other, a compromise was proposed that satisfied

the dignity of both the contending parties, and prevented that

dreadful bloodshed that must otherwise have inevitably followed. The

Indians, who had discovered the leak, were commissioned to stop it.

For this purpose two strips of copper were provided to take the place

of those that were lost, and lowered down to the divers, who instantly

sunk with them beneath the surface, the white soles of their feet

glancing curiously amid the dark water. What they did with the copper

afterwards I cannot say. It did not rise again to the surface. But

whether they really succeeded in nailing it on to its proper place, or

whether it is now quietly reposing in the soft mud at the bottom of

the little harbour, is a question about which I must decline giving an opinion.