Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1913 — Up the Coast from Panama [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Up the Coast from Panama

TRAVELERS from this country cross continents and seas to find nothing more curious or picturesque than may be found on the west coasts of Central America and Mexico, comparatively close at hand. To be sure, accommodations for tourists are few. There is nothing luxurious about the hotels at all, but the traveler sees a land *of quaint customs and interesting people and sees it just as it is, writes G. R. King in Grit. Within the next few years there will certainly be a wonderful change in conditions along this coast. With the opening of the canal win come new steamship lines, lower freight rates and increased travel. Probably the cities along the coast will lose some of their picturesque characteristics.. Travelers sailing through the canal in the days to come will see but little of the real Panama. The trip across the isthmus by train allows opportunity for seeing the sights at each end. It is a surprise to most passengers who sail from Panama for California ports to find that the boat does not start west but south. It is commonly supposed that the isthmus has a western and an eastern coast. As ? matter of fact, it has a» northern and a southern coast. “Why, see that sun,” cried one of the passengers on iny boat, “it is coming up on the wrong side." It was difficult to realize that we were sailing due south to round a huge boot top. I had taken a slow boat instead of an express steamer, because I wanted to stop at the various ports along the coast. The republics, big and little, strung along In this order —Panama. Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico. Honduras has only a few miles on the Pacific shore, and Salvador no Atlantic coast line at all. Most of the republics have been torn by revolutions, beggared by graft and kept back by luck of education to an extent which can* scarcely be realized in this country, near neighbors of ours though they are. There ie a tribe of Indians in Panama which has never been conquered and which Is quite independent of the government, boasting that no woman in the tribe has ever borne a child to a white man, and obeying laws of their own making. Immense Tracts of Fertile Land.

Much of Honduras is a wilderness. In Nicaragua and Guatemala are immense tracts of land of the most fertile character and in the finest climates simply waiting the development which 6hall come with peace and prosperity. Slavery is an actual if not an admitted fact in many of these republics. The law says that a peon shall remain in the service of his master so long as he is in his debt, which is all the time. Further, the law says thnt the debt is inherited by the man’s descendants and kinsmen. Peonage is really slavery.. The fault of the system lies, however, in the fact that a few men own all the land and that the peon sees nothing ahead but a continual round of labor. When, as in Mexico, all the land is in the handß of 6,000 individuals, while the total population is 16,000,000, there is little future for a poor tnan. Costa Rica is the one country in Central America which seems to have solved the land problem. There the government is the supreme landlord and the land is parceled out in small lots to families who will actually work it. As a result Costa Rica is made up of small farmers and is prosperous and happy, the serenity of Its affairs being disturbed only by an occasional revolution engineered by an ambitious politician. (Conditions in Nicaragua, next door to Costa Rica, are about as different as can well be v imagined. Nicaragua is a land of revolutions, bloodshed and bad debts. Yet its natural resources are beyond estimate.' Its climate is delightful. It has a coast line on two oceans and good steamship connections. Some day it may prove an El Dorado. Already the need of progress is felt, and the government hns signed a contract with an American company for more than half a million dob

lars to pave the streetß of Managua, the capital city. Houses of Adobe. Managua is a typical city of Central America and is built aljnbst entirely of adobe, the native mud, similar toi that used all through Mexico and parts of the United States. The walls are, thick and keep out the heat. Roofed with tile, these houses are attractive to the eye, especially at a distance',, but cover them with corrugated iron! and they have little beauty. Nicaragua is a land of fruit and birds and flowers. Nature evidently meant it to be a paradise, but permitted it to fall into bad hands. Alligator pears, a costly luxury in New, York, are cheap enough for beggars in; Managua—and there are plenty of beggars to eat them. Oranges and pineapples are at their beet there, and very plentiful, and the natives make fjree use of what they term the chocolate tree, because a beverage made from the seeds of the flowers Is as delicate and palatable as chocolate. Salvador is an independent little country just above Nicaragua and overshadowed by Honduras and Guatemala, but next to Haiti it is the most densely populated of all the American republics. The steamers stop,.at La Unlon and La Libertad, both small places, where conditions are exceedingly primitive. At La Libertad I saw a woman grinding corn and she was doing it by means of two stones, the lower stone, which was somewhat hollowed, resting on the wide tongue of a huge oxcart. Always does Salvador keep a sharp eye on her northern neighbor, turbulent Guatemala, but of late years that country has been occupied with its own affairs. Nominally a republic, Guatemala is actually governed by a despot. Our stops at the towns of San Bias and Acapulco on the west ctast of Mexico were full of Interest. Acapulco has a natural harbor, said to be the best with one exception in the whole world, being surpassed only by that at Sidney, Auetralia. San Bias is very different in its characteristics, most of the houses being thatched. This is an important port and a favorable Ashing place. And a Mexican fisherman re an interesting individual tq look at On his head he wears a hat of gigantic proportions, but his feet are bare, except,, perhaps, for rough sandals. Their hats are the chief concern of the Mexicans, and they treasure them as carefully as an American woman her Easter bonnet. Western Mexico is filled with opportunities for development and with the opening of the canal tthere doubtless would dawn a new era were it not for the internal dissensions which keep out foreign capital, and stand as a constant bar to progress.