Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 51

Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities 51

But our hombre now returned, and put to flight my agreeable fancies.

Like Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, his appearance on the scene at once

dispelled the delightful illusion--there was another man in the world,

and if one, why not a thousand? He carried on his shoulder a rough

stick some six feet long, which we at once conjectured to be designed

for an axle. Our fears were now excited lest he intended to finish

it before proceeding any farther, but he speedily put an end to our

apprehensions by stowing it in the cart; and, then, reyoking his oxen,

we once more found ourselves in motion.

 

The road, since leaving Realejo, had been remarkably level. We had

not met with a single hill worthy of the name, and were not a little

surprised, on leaving the forest, to find ourselves on the very edge

of a lofty and precipitous elevation and overlooking an immense

extent of country. As far as we could see, the surface of the ground

was broken into black irregular ridges, as if it had been occupied,

for ages, by successive generations of charcoal burners, or had been

turned up into huge furrows by the careless ploughing of some clumsy

Brobdingnagian boor. The road under our feet was almost as hard as

iron, and seemed macadamized with scoria from a blacksmith's forge.

At a little distance on the left we discovered what seemed, at first

sight, the ruins of an oven or forge. The arch yet remained nearly

entire, resting on a pile of fragments; and it required no great

effort of the imagination to suppose that I was surveying the ruins

of a vast and magnificent city, that, by some fearful convulsion of

nature, had been reduced to this state of utter desolation. This

fancy was partly true. At some period, apparently not very remote,

the volcanoes that stood around the horizon had combined to lay

waste the beautiful plain at their feet. In place of the cool green

forest, a mass of black, naked lava now presented itself, that seemed

hardly to want the touch of the match to burst again into a mighty

conflagration. The arch that we had seen, was formed by the lava

cooling round the prostrate trunk of a huge tree, that had perished in

its embrace like Semele in the arms of Jove.

 

The road now suddenly descended by a long irregular flight of stairs

worn in the crumbling stone. There was no possibility of riding even

if we had been willing to lose the strange novelty of the scenery--the

wheels fell with the regularity, and almost with the force, of

trip-hammers, and with a decided, uncompromising jolt that threatened

the immediate dislocation of the axle. Near the bottom, the path had

been worn, as if by a winter torrent, into a deep and narrow channel,

just wide enough for a single cart;--caves had been hollowed in the

sides, and we involuntarily quickened our pace, lest we should be

crushed beneath the overhanging banks. Having thus reached the foot

of the lofty table land on which we had been travelling, we found

ourselves on the edge of a wide valley that held the lakes Leon

and Nicaragua in its lap, and stretched one arm, by the San Juan

river, away to the Atlantic. Little of the country, however, was now

visible, for in addition to the thickening twilight, a thunder cloud

was coming rapidly up from the horizon, and soon filled the whole

heavens. The first big drops began to fall. Ohio, Texas, and New

York hastily scrambled into the cart and, as Si and myself followed,

a flash of lightning gave the signal for the contest to commence,

and was instantly extinguished in the flood itself had created. The

rain, the thunder, and the lightning that now followed hard after us,

were such as are met with only in the tropics;--the road soon became

a river in earnest, and as the lightning flashed on the swollen and

turbid waters, and the cart rocked and pitched with even more than

its usual violence, it required but a slight exercise of imagination

to feel that we were in a storm at sea. But the cloud having given us

this taste of its quality, swept away, and the stars came out, old

and young, in their pleasant family circles. There was yet no sign of

human habitation. "Quantos ligos a Managua?" we had demanded twenty

times, of a few chance travellers, and of our own invaluable hombre.

One replied that Managua was four leagues off; and, after travelling

steadily for half an hour, we met another who told us it was six.

 

At length we discovered the lights of a village, and Ohio, in his

eagerness, walked on before. But our hombre, instead of stopping,

as we expected, held straight on his course, and to our impatient

inquiries, "What place is this? Where is Managua?" as curtly answered,

"Marteiris,--Managua,--quatro ligos." Another hour we dragged on, and

finally crossed the plaza at Managua just as the moon had climbed to

the topmost tower of the cathedral.

 

Managua is a pleasant city of ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants. The

great cathedral is situated, like that at Leon, on one side of the

plaza, but is far inferior in extent and magnificence. Our hotel also

stood on the plaza; but lest the reader should form from this a too

exalted notion of its appearance, I would add that it contained but

two apartments, of moderate dimensions, one of which was occupied by

the family, while the other served as a store-room and poultry house.

There was, however, in the rear, a broad and spacious verandah where

we ate our supper--after which we spread our blankets in a corner of

the poultry house with a hen and brood of chickens in my right ear,

and a duck quacking softly in my left.

 

At this place a part of our fellow-passengers becoming impatient of

the slow rate at which we travelled, and fearful lest they should

not reach San Juan in season, hired horses for the remainder of

the journey--New York and Texas were among the number; but we were

encumbered with too much baggage to follow their example, and Ohio

had bought a whole regiment of parrots and paroquets that required

his constant supervision, besides costing him a fortune in cages and

bananas, which they ate with apparently equal relish.

 

Our hombre was occupied several hours the next morning in making a new

axle. For want of an auger, the use of which simple instrument seemed

unknown to him, he was obliged to cut the holes for the linchpins with

a chisel; and this, in his hands, was a long and tedious operation.

It was some satisfaction, however, to reflect that the work would not

require to be done over again until he reached Granada, and might even

last through the whole of his homeward journey.

 

Our road led to-day for several miles along the shore of Lake Leon.

This is a large body of water resembling an inland sea; and some of

our party, deceived by its extent, supposed it, at first, to be an arm

of the ocean. A general halt was here ordered, and our hombres and

muchachos, throwing off their light garments, were soon disporting

themselves in the shallow water. They enjoyed this exercise so keenly,

that it was with great difficulty we persuaded them to resume their

march.

 

We stopped this night at Marsawa, a city of about the same size as

Managua; and the next afternoon made our entry into Granada. It was

Sunday, and the inhabitants, dressed in their best, were sitting in

the open doors of their houses, exhibiting marks of greater opulence

and refinement than we had yet witnessed. The grace and beauty of the

women especially attracted our attention,--we seemed suddenly brought

near to home, and to have been, all at once, set down in the midst of

the nineteenth century, after so long travelling in mediæval darkness.

 

Granada, as already stated, is situated on Lake Nicaragua, and

connected by the San Juan river with the Atlantic. It has thus become

the great inland market for that part of Central America. The various

goods imported into the country are brought up the river and across

the lake in huge canoes, or in boats of the heaviest and most awkward

construction. There were also three small schooners on the lake about

the size of a common pleasure-boat, and capable of carrying thirty men

apiece; but not one of these was at that time at Granada, though they

had been sent for at the first intimation of our approach, and were

expected to arrive in one or two days.

 

In the mean time a number of our companions, impatient of the delay,

and deceived by the statements of interested parties, who assured

them that that mode of conveyance was much to be preferred, embarked

in one of the canoes for a voyage of ninety miles across a body of

water famed for its sudden and capricious temper. We were strongly

tempted to follow their example, but finally concluded to remain at

Granada until the arrival of the schooners, which were now expected

to arrive every hour. The hotel where we had taken lodgings was very

spacious and commodious. It would not indeed equal the St. Nicholas

in either of these particulars, but may well deserve that distinction

when compared with the others we had visited during our route. There

was not only a dining-room capable of accommodating one hundred

guests, but there were several sleeping apartments of like generous

proportions, and furnished with cot bedsteads, a luxury to which we

had been lately wholly unaccustomed. Except at the little village of

Nigarote, we had slept on nothing softer than the floor for weeks,

and we at first felt some alarm at the thought of such an unnatural

elevation. All these apartments were on the ground floor, and, with

the kitchen and outhouses, entirely surrounded an open court about a

hundred feet square.

 

The price of board at this hotel was one dollar a day, and for this

we had an abundance of tough beef cooked with garlic, beans, French

rolls, coffee and milk. We had also, by way of variety, a few eggs and

chickens, and a very limited supply of butter.

 

Granada presents little attraction to the stranger--on one side was

the deep forest through which we had travelled--on the other a burning

plain, with a few scattered houses, stretching two miles away to the

lake. Owing to the intense heat, we remained most of the time at our

hotel, lounging in the hammocks slung under the veranda, or watching

from the steps of the dining-room the lazy groups of the natives, or

our own more fiery Saxons, as they hurried hither and thither on some

important trifle.

 

No exhibition of passion is perhaps more amusing than that of a

dispute between two Spaniards. Such volubility of utterance, such

nervous flexibility of feature, such jerking spitefulness of emphasis,

can nowhere find a parallel, except in the nocturnal colloquy of

half a dozen enamoured grimalkins. A quarrel, the merits of which we

could not determine, arose one day between our landlord and another

of the same gunpowder fraternity. One of Hoe's eight-cylinder

printing presses could hardly have kept pace with the impetuous

torrent of words that streamed quivering from their lips--our sluggish

consonants, compared with their nimble vowels, are like the mailed

crusader opposed to the lithe and supple Saracen, when the greatest

danger arises from the rapidity of the onset. After keeping up a

continuous fire of words, like a rolling discharge of musketry or a

redhot poker sizzling in a pail of water, for some ten minutes, our

landlord suddenly seized a gun that stood in one corner of the bar,

and levelled it with an __EXPRESSION__ of most determined ferocity at his

vapouring antagonist. The admiring Californians, instantly opening

to right and left, displayed a narrow lane, at the end of which was

discovered the cunning Spaniard prostrate on all fours, and warily

exposing to the fire of the enemy that part of his person which

instinct, or perhaps experience, had taught him was best calculated

to meet the assault. The next moment, by a skilful side movement, he

precipitated himself down the steps into the street.--Our landlord,

with a grim smile of satisfaction, restored the gun to its place, and

the storm cleared away as rapidly as it commenced.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXVI.

 

 

Tuesday, one of the schooners arrived, and sailed again, the same

evening, with a full complement of passengers. Another arrived the

next day, and all of our party succeeded, with some difficulty, in

obtaining tickets. After crossing the lake to the village of San

Carlos, situated at the head of the San Juan river, we were to be

transferred to canoes which would take us to San Juan, where we hoped

to obtain a passage home in one of Vanderbilt's steamers. The fare

for the whole voyage was sixteen dollars apiece, and we were obliged

to furnish our own provisions. As under unfavourable circumstances

the trip might occupy a week, we laid in a store of bread and cheese,

sugar, and cocoanuts, sufficient to guard against all danger of

starvation, and Wednesday evening, followed by several natives, carrying our luggage, we walked down to the lake.