The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860

HUNTING A PASS: A SKETCH OF TROPICAL ADVENTURE

PRELIMINARY

Reader, take down your map, and, starting at the now well-known Isthmus of Panama, run your finger northward along the coast of the Pacific, until, in latitude 13° north, it shall rest on a fine body of water, or rather the "counterfeit presentment" thereof, which projects far into the land, and is designated as the Bay of Fonseca. If your map be of sufficient scale and moderately exact, you will find represented there two gigantic volcanoes, standing like warders at the entrance of this magnificent bay. That on the south is called Coseguina, memorable for its fearful eruption in 1835; that on the north is named Conchagua or Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its top with verdure. It is remarkable for its regularity of outline and the narrowness of its apex. On this apex, a mere sugar-loaf crown, are a vigía or look-out station, and a signal-staff, whence the approach of vessels is telegraphed to the port of La Union, at the base of the volcano. A rude hut, half-buried in the earth, and loaded down with heavy stones, to prevent it from being blown clean away, or sent rattling down the slopes of the mountain, is occupied by the look-out man,—an old Indian muffled up to his nose; for it is often bitter cold at this elevation, and there is no wood wherewith to make a fire. Were it not for that jar or tinaja of aguardiente which the old man keeps so snugly in the corner of his burrow, he would have withered up long ago, like the mummies of the Great Saint Bernard.

But I am not going to work up the old man of the vigía; for he was of little consequence on the 10th day of April, 1853, except as a wondering spectator on the top of Conchagua, in a group consisting of an ex-minister of the United States, an officer of the American navy, and an artist from the good city of New York, to whose ready pencil a grateful country owes many of the illustrations of tropical scenery which have of late years lent their interest to popular periodicals and books of adventure. I might have added to this enumeration the tall, dark figure of Dolores, servant and guide; but Dolores, with a good sense which never deserted him, had no sooner disencumbered his shoulders of his load of provisions, than he bestowed himself in the burrow, out of the wind, and possibly not far from the aguardiente.

The utilitarian reader will ask, at once, the motive of this gathering on the top of the volcano of Conchagua, five thousand feet above the sea, wearily attained at no small expenditure of effort and perspiration. Was it love of adventure merely? ambition to do something whereof to brag about to admiring aunts or country cousins? Hardly. The beauty of the wonderful panorama which spreads before the group of strangers is too much neglected, their instruments are too carefully adjusted and noted, and their consultations are far too earnest and protracted, to admit of either supposition. The old man of the vigía, as I have said, was a wondering spectator. He wondered why the eyes of the strangers, glasses as well as eyes, and theodolites as well as glasses, should all be directed across the bay, across the level grounds beyond it, far away to the blue line of the Cordilleras, cutting the clear sky with their serrated outline. He does not observe that deep notch in the great backbone of the continent, as regular as the cleft which the pioneer makes in felling a forest-tree; nor does he observe that the breeze which ripples the waters at the foot of the volcano is the north wind sweeping all the way from the Bay of Honduras through that break in the mountain range, which everywhere else, as far as the eye can reach, presents a high, unbroken barrier to its passage to the Pacific. Yet it is simply to determine the bearings of that notch in the Cordilleras, to fix the positions of the leading features of the intervening country, and to verify the latitude and longitude of the old man's flag-staff itself, as a point of departure for future explorations, that the group of strangers is gathered on the top of Conchagua.

And now, O reader, run your finger due north from the Bay of Fonseca, straight to the Bay of Honduras, and it will pass, in a figurative way, through the notch I have described, and through the pass of which we were in search. You will see, if your map be accurate, that in or near that pass two large rivers have their rise; one, the Humuya, flows almost due north into the Atlantic, and the other, the Goascoran, nearly due south into the Pacific,—together constituting, with the plain of Comayagua, a great transverse valley extending across the continent from sea to sea. Through this valley, commencing at Port Cortés, on the north, and terminating on the Bay of Fonseca on the south, American enterprise and English capital have combined to construct a railway, designed to afford a new, if not a shorter and better route of transit across the continent, between New York and San Francisco, and between Great Britain and Australia.

But when we stood on the top of Conchagua, on the 10th day of April, 1853, the existence of a pass through the mountains, as well as of that great transverse valley of which I have spoken, was only inferentially known. In fact, the whole interior of Honduras was unexplored; its geography was not understood; its scenery had never been described; its towns and cities were scarcely known even by name; and its people lived in almost as profound a seclusion from the world at large as the dwellers on the banks of the Niger and the Zambezi. It is not, however, to bore you, O reader, with all the details of our surveys, nor to bother you with statistics, that I write; for, verily, are not these all set down in a book? But it is rather to amuse you with the incidents of our explorations, our quaint encounters with a quaint people of still quainter manners and habits and with ideas quainter than all, and to present you with a picture of a country and a society interesting equally in themselves and from their strong contrasts with our own,—I say, it is rather with these objects that I invite you, O reader, to join our little party, and participate in the manifold adventures of "HUNTING A PASS."

CHAPTER I

The port of La Union, our point of departure, is in the little Republic of San Salvador, which, in common with Nicaragua and Honduras, touches on the Bay of Fonseca. It is built near the head of a subordinate bay, of the same name with itself, at the foot of the volcano of Conchagua, which rises between it and the sea, cutting it off from the ocean-breezes, and rendering it, in consequence, comparatively hot and unhealthy. It is a small town, with a population scarcely exceeding fifteen hundred souls; but it is, nevertheless, the most important port of San Salvador. Here, during the season of the great fairs of San Miguel, may be seen vessels of nearly all the maritime nations, —broad-hulled and sleepy-looking ships from the German free-cities, taut American clippers, sturdy English brigs, and even Peruvian and Genoese nondescripts, with crews in red nightcaps.

At this time La Union holds high holiday; its Comandante, content at other times to lounge about in the luxury of a real undress uniform, now puts on his broadcloth and sash, and sustains a sweltering dignity; while all the brown girls of the place, arrayed in their gayest apparel, wage no timorous war on the hearts and pockets of too susceptible skippers. "Ah, me!" exclaimed our landlady, "is it not terrible? Excepting the Señora D. and myself, there is not a married woman in La Union!" "One wouldn't think so," soliloquized the Teniente, as he gazed reflectively into the street, where a dozen naked children, squatting in the sand, disputed the freedom of the highway with a score of lean dogs and bow-backed pigs of voracious appetites.

To me there was nothing specially new in La Union. The three years which had elapsed since my previous visit had not been marked by any great architectural achievement, and although the same effective chain-gang of two convicts seemed still to be occupied with the mole, the advance in that great public work was not perceptible to the eye. My old host and hostess were also the same,—a shade older in appearance, perhaps, but with hearts as warm and hospitalities as lavish as before. Only "La Gringita" had changed from the doe-eyed child of easy confidences into a quiet and somewhat distant girl, full in figure, and with a glance which sometimes betrayed the glow of latent, but as yet unconscious passion. In these sunny climes the bud blossoms and the young fruit ripens in a single day.

With my companions, however, the case was different. The Teniente could never cease being surprised that the commercial and naval facilities of the splendid bay before us had been so long overlooked. "What a place for a naval station, with its spacious and secure anchorages, abundant water, and facilities for making repairs and obtaining supplies! Why, all the fleets of the globe might assemble here, and never foul spars or come across each other's hawsers! What a site, just in that little bay, for a ship-yard! The bottom is pure sand, and there are full ten fathoms of water within a hundred yards of the shore! And then those high islands protecting the entrance! A fort on that point and a battery over yonder would close in the whole bay, with its five hundred square miles of area, against every invader, and make it as safe as Cronstadt!" But what astonished the Teniente more than anything else was, not that the English had seized the bay in 1849, but that they had ever given it up afterwards. "Bull should certainly abandon his filibustering habits, or else stick to his plunder; the example was a bad one for his offspring!"

And as for H., our artist, he, too, was surprised at all times and about everything. It surprised him "to hear mere children talk Spanish!" To be able to help himself to oranges from the tree without paying for them surprised him; so did the habit of sleeping in hammocks, and the practice of dressing children in the cheap and airy garb of a straw hat and cigar! He was surprised that he should come to see "a real volcano, like that of San Miguel, with real smoke rolling up from its mysterious depths; but what surprised him most was, that they should give him pieces of soap by way of making change in the market, and that he could buy a boat-load of oysters for a shilling!"

As for Don Henrique, who had resided twenty years in Nicaragua, he was only surprised at the surprise of others. He had a quiet, imperturbable contempt for the country and everything in it, was satisfied with a cool corridor and cigar, and had no ambition beyond that of some day returning to Paris. Above all, he was a foe to unnecessary exertion.

The ascent of Conchagua was the most important incident of our stay in La Union, both in the excitements of the scramble and in the satisfactory nature of our observations from its summit. We left the port in the afternoon, with the view of passing the night in the highest hut on the mountain-side, so as to reach the summit early in the morning, and thus secure time for our observations. Doña Maria had given us her own well-trained servant, Dolores, who afterwards became a most important member of our little party; and he was now loaded down with baskets and bottles, while the Teniente, H., and myself undertook the responsible charge of the instruments.

Our path was one seldom travelled, and was exceedingly rough and narrow. Here it would wind down into one of the deep ravines which seam the mountain near its base, and, after following the little stream which trickled at its bottom for a short distance, turn abruptly up the opposite side, and run for a while along a crest or ridge of scoriæ or disintegrated lava, only, however, to plunge into another ravine beyond. And thus alternately scrambling up and down, yet gradually ascending diagonally, we worked our way towards the hut where we were to pass the night. The slopes of the mountain were already in shadow, and the gloom of the dense forests and of the deep ravines was so profound, that we might have persuaded ourselves that night had fallen, had we not heard the cheerful notes of unseen birds that were nestling among the tree-tops. After two hours of ascent, the slope of the mountain became more abrupt and decided, the ravines shallower, and the intervening ridges less elevated. The forest, too, became more open, and the trees smaller and less encumbered with vines, and between them we could catch occasional glimpses of the bay, with its waters golden under the slant rays of the declining sun. Finally we came to a kind of terrace or shelf of the mountain, with here and there little patches of ground, newly cleared, and black from the recent burning of the undergrowth,—the only preparation made by the Indian cultivator for planting his annual maize-crop. He has never heard of a plough; a staff shod with iron, with which he pries a hole in the earth for the reception of the seed, is the only agricultural implement with which he is acquainted. When the young blade appears, he may possibly lop away the tree-sprouts and rank weeds with his machete: but all the rest he leaves to Nature, and the care of those unseen protectors of the harvest whom he propitiates in the little church of Conehagua by the offering of a candle, and in the depth of the forest, in some secluded spot of ancient sanctity, by libations of chicha, poured out, with strange dances, at the feet of some rudely sculptured idol which his fathers venerated before him, and which he inwardly believes will come out "all right" in the end, notwithstanding its present disgrace and the Padre's denunciations.

The mountain terrace which we had now reached is three thousand feet above the sea, half a mile long, of varying width, and seems to be the top of some great bed of scoriæ which long ago slipped down on an inclined plane of lava to its present level. Whatever its origin, it is certainly a beautiful spot, thinly covered with trees, and carpeted with grass, on which, at the time of our visit, a few cows were grazing, while half a dozen goats gazed at us in motionless surprise from the gray rocks to which they had retreated on our approach. We found the hut in which we were to rest for the night perched on the very edge of the terrace, where it overlooked the whole expanse of the bay, with its high islands and purple shores. At this airy height, and open to every breeze, its inhabitants enjoy a delicious temperature; and I could well understand how it was that Doña Maria, notwithstanding the difficulties of the ascent, often came up here to escape the debilitating heats of the port, and enjoy the magnificent prospect. The dwellers on this mountain-perch consisted of an old man with his two sons and their wives, and a consequent round dozen of children, all of whom gave Dolores the cordial welcome of an old friend, which was reflected on his companions with equal warmth. Our mules were quickly unsaddled and cared for, and our instruments carefully suspended beneath a rough shed of poles covered with branches of trees, which stood before the hut, and answered the purpose of a corridor in keeping off the sun. Here also we chose to swing our hammocks; for the hut itself was none of the largest, and, having but a single room, would require packing more closely than suited our tastes, in order to afford us the narrowest accommodation. It is true, the two Benedicts volunteered to sleep outside with Dolores, and resign the interior to the old man, the women, the children, and the strangers. But the Teniente thought there would be scant room, even if we had the whole to ourselves; while H. was overcome by "the indelicacy of the suggestion."

The sunset that evening was one of transcendent beauty, heightened by the thousand-hued reflections from the masses of clouds which had been piling up, all the afternoon, around the distant mountains of Honduras, and which Dolores told us betokened the approach of the rainy season. Bathed in crimson and gold, they shed a glowing haze over the intervening country, and were reproduced in the broad mirror of the bay below us, so that we seemed to be suspended and floating in an Iris-like sea of light and beauty. But night falls rapidly under the tropics; the sunsets are as brief as they are brilliant; and as soon as the sun had sunk below the horizon, the gorgeous colors rapidly faded away, leaving only leaden clouds on the horizon and a sullen body of water at our feet.

A love of music seems to be universal among all classes in Central America, especially among the Ladinos or mixed population. And it is scarcely possible to find a house, down to the meanest hut, that does not possess a violin or guitar, or, in default of these, a mandolin, on which one or more of its inmates are able to perform with considerable skill, and often with taste and feeling. The violin, however, is esteemed most highly, and its fortunate possessor cherishes it above wife or children, he keeps it with his white buckskin shoes, red sash, and only embroidered shirt, in the solitary trunk with cyclopean lock and antediluvian key, which goes so far, in Central American economy, to make up the scanty list of domestic furniture. The youngest of our hosts was the owner of one of these instruments, of European manufacture, which had cost him, I dare say, many a load of maize, wearily carried on his naked back down to the port. As the evening advanced, he produced it, with an air of satisfaction, from its secure depository, and, leaning against a friendly tree, gave us a specimen of his skill. It is true, we did not expect much from our swarthy friend, whose only garment was his trousers of cotton cloth, tucked up above his knees; and we were therefore all the more surprised, when, after some preliminary tuning of the instrument, he pressed the bow on its strings with a firm and practised hand, and led us, with masterly touch, through some of the finest melodies of our best operas. Very few amateurs of any country, with all their advantages of instruction, could equal the skill of that poor dweller on the flank of the volcano of Conchagua; none certainly could surpass him in the delicacy and feeling of his execution. H., on whom, as an artist, and himself no mean musician, we had already devolved the task of being enthusiastic and demonstrative over matters of this kind, applauded vehemently, and cried, "Bravo!" and "Encore!" and ended in convincing us of the reality of his delight, by pressing his brandy-flask into the hands of the performer, and urging him to "drink it all, every drop, and then give us another!" Our mountain Paganini, I fear, interpreted the behest too literally; or else H.'s enthusiasm never afterwards rose to so high a pitch; at any rate, he was never known to manifest it in so expansive a manner.

"And where did your friend learn his music?"

He had caught it up, he said, from time to time, as he had floated, with his canoe-load of plantains, chickens, and yucas, around the vessels-of-war that occasionally visit the port; neglecting his traffic, no doubt, in eagerly listening to the music of the bands or the individual performances of the officers. He had had no instructor, except "un pobre Italiano," who came to La Union with an exhibition of fantoccini, died there of fever, and was buried like a Christian in the Campo Santo adjoining the church: and Paganini removed his hat reverentially, and made the sign of the cross on his swarthy bosom. And now, most incredulous of readers, are you answered?

During the night we were visited by the first storm of the season, and it opened the flood-gates of the skies right grandly, with booming thunders and blinding lightning, and a dash of rain that came through our imperfect shelter as through a sieve. Driven inside the hut, where we contested the few square feet of bare earthen floor with the pigs and pups of the establishment, we passed a most miserable night, and were glad to rise with the earliest dawn,—ourselves to continue our ascent of the mountain, and our hosts to plant their mountain milpas, while the ground was yet moist from the midnight rain. They told us that the maize, if put into the earth immediately after the first rain of the season, was always more vigorous and productive than that planted afterwards; why they knew not; but "so it had been told them by their fathers."

The air was deliciously fresh and cool, and the foliage of the trees seemed almost pulsating with life and light under the morning sun, as we bade our hosts "Á Dios!" and resumed our course up the mountain. There was no longer any path, and we had to pick our way as we were able, among blocks of blistered rocks, over fallen trunks of trees, and among gnarled oaks, which soon began to replace the more luxuriant vegetation of the lower slopes. H., dragged from his mule by a scraggy limb, was shocked to find that the first inquiry of his companions was not about the safety of his neck, but of the barometer. At the end of an hour, the ascent becoming every moment more abrupt, we had passed the belt of trees and bushes, and reached the smooth and scoriaceous cone, which, during the rainy season, appears from the bay to be covered with a velvety mantle of green. It was now black and forbidding, from the recent burning of the dry grass or sacate, and so steep as to render direct ascent impossible. I proposed to leave the mules and proceed on foot, but the Teniente entered a solemn protest against anything of the sort:—"If the mules couldn't carry him up, he couldn't go; his family was affected with hereditary palpitation of the heart, and if any one of them suffered more from it than the others, he was the unfortunate victim! Climbing elevations of any kind, and mountains in particular, brought on severe attacks; and we might as well understand, at once, that, if in 'Hunting a Pass' there was any climbing to be done, some one else must do it!" And here I may mention a curious fact, probably hitherto unknown to the faculty, which was developed in our subsequent explorations, namely, that palpitation of the heart is contagious. H. was attacked with it on our third day out, and Don Henrique had formidable symptoms at sight of the merest hillock.

Under the lead of Dolores, by judicious zig-zagging, and by glow and painful advances, we finally reached the vigía,—the mules thoroughly blown, but the Teniente and the instruments safe. The latter were speedily set up, and the observations, which were to exercise so important an influence as a basis for our future operations, satisfactorily made. We found the mountain to be 4860 feet above the sea, barometrical admeasurement, and the flagstaff itself in latitude 13° 18' N. and longitude 87° 45' W. We obtained bearings on nearly all the volcanic cones on the plain of Leon, as also on many of the detached mountain-peaks of Honduras and San Salvador, as the commencement of a system of triangulations which subsequently enabled us to construct the first map of the country at all approximating to accuracy. At noon on the day of our visit, the thermometer marked a temperature of 16° of Fahrenheit below that of the port.

It is a singular circumstance, that Captain Sir Edward Belcher, who surveyed the Bay of Fonseca in 1838, speaks of Conchagua as a mountain exhibiting no evidences of volcanic origin. Apart from its form, which is itself conclusive on that point, its lower slopes are ridged all over with dikes of lava, some of which come down to the water's edge, in rugged, black escarpments. The mountain had two summits: one comparatively broad and rugged, with a huge crater, and a number of smaller vents; and a second and higher one, nearest the bay,—the ash-heap of the volcano proper, on which the vigía is erected, and whence our observations were made. This is a sugar-loaf in form, with steep sides, and at its summit scarcely affording standing-room for a dozen horsemen. It is connected with the main part of the mountain by a narrow ridge, barely broad enough for a mule-path, with treeless slopes on either hand, so steep, that, on our return, the Teniente preferred risking an attack of "palpitation" to riding along its crest.

After loosening several large stones from the side of the cone, and watching them bound down the steep declivity, dashing the scoriæ like spray before them, and bearing down the dwarf trees in their path like grass beneath the mower's scythe, until they rumbled away with many a crash in the depths of the forest at the base of the mountain, and after making over to the grateful old man of the vigía the remnants of Doña Maria's profusion in the shape of sandwiches and cold chicken, we commenced our descent, taking the shorter path by which I had descended three years before. It conducted us past the great spring of Yololtoca, to which the Indian girls of the pueblo of Conchagua, three miles distant, still come to get their water, and down the ancient path and over the rocks worn smooth by the naked feet of their mothers and their mothers' mothers, until, at six o'clock in the afternoon, we defiled, tired and hungry, into the sweltering streets of La Union. Oysters ad libitum, (which, being translated, means as fast as three men could open them,) one of Doña Maria's best dinners, and a bath in the bay at bedtime calmed our appetites and restored our energies, and we went to sleep with the gratified consciousness that we had successfully taken the first step in the prosecution of our great enterprise.