Tegucigalpa

“ So after that we gave up expecting anything pleasant, and were in consequence delightfully surprised when we came upon anything that savored of civilization.
Tegucigalpa has an annex which lies on the opposite side of the river, and which is to the capital what Brooklyn is to New York. The river is not very wide nor very deep, and its [131] course is impeded by broad, flat rocks. ”

“ The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting for the mule-back mail-train to arrive that they may lock up in preparation for beginning to look over the correspondence mañana. It is not the custom to make appointments in Tegucigalpa. If one resident desires the presence of another at dinner, or some less excusable function, he wanders out just before the hour set until he picks up his guest somewhere. ”

“ It is as difficult and almost as long a journey from New York to reach the capital of Honduras as the capital of Persia, which seems so far away, while Central America is so near. One must go by steamer to Colon, across the Isthmus of Panama by rail, then a several days’ journey on the Pacific to Amapala, and lastly a three or four days’ journey by mule to Tegucigalpa; or, he can take the steamer to Puerto Cortez, railroad to San Pedro Sula, and an eight or ten days’ journey over the mountains on the long-eared, but short-legged, nondescript quadrupeds above named. ”

“ The School of Arts and Crafts of Tegucigalpa concerns itself chiefly with products in wood and the metals and is steadily training artisans and mechanics. There likewise exists in this city the national automobile school managed by the Government. ”

“ And yet this was the highway of Honduras from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and the only road to Tegucigalpa, the objective point of our expedition. The capital lay only one hundred miles from Porto Cortez, but owing to the nature of this trail it could not be reached from the east coast, either on foot or by mule, in less than from six to nine days. No wheeled vehicle could have possibly attempted the trip without shaking to pieces, and it was only by dragging and lifting our Gatling guns by hand that we were able to bring them with us. ”

“ Most of the houses are of a single story, and built of sundried bricks. The former fine fountains, monuments, and public buildings have gone to decay. The only building still in good condition is the cathedral, which is a rather imposing edifice. [XXVII-33] Tegucigalpa enjoys a cool temperature, and has an excellent climate. The city is the largest and finest in the republic. It is built with regularity, and has six churches, the parochial edifice comparing favorably with the cathedral at Comayagua. ”

“ Honduras is a land of considerable area, but among the most backward portions of the region. The efforts of its Government to encourage economic and commercial development have not been very well sustained and successful, and there are only two towns in the Republic of any size, one of which is the ancient capital Tegucigalpa, picturesquely situated upon its river in an amphitheatre of the hills, for Honduras is essentially a land of mountains and depths, as its name signifies. ”

“ Here I obtained water, and new directions that led me off more toward the east and the heaped-up mountains that lay between me and Tegucigalpa. On all sides spread a dry, bushy land, aching for cultivation. I had the good fortune to fall in with a river so large I was able to swim three strokes in one of its pools, and strolled with dusk into the town of Flores on the edge of the first foothills of the ranges still to be surmounted. ”

“ We left five hundred of Garcia’s men to garrison the place and prevent the townspeople from again changing their sympathies, and continued on toward Tegucigalpa with Garcia and the remainder of his force as our main body, and with the Legion in the van. We were a week in reaching Comyagua, which was the only place that we expected would offer any resistance until we arrived outside of the capital. ”

“ From Tegucigalpa we will probably go directly to Venezuela across the Isthmus of Panama and not visit another Republic. We have all travelled too much to care to duplicate, and that is what we would be doing by remaining longer in Central America. A month of it will be enough of it and we will not get away from Amapala before the first of February. We are all well and happy and dirty and sing and laugh and tell stories and listen to Griscom's anecdotes of the aristocracy as we pick our way along. ”

“ As intendencias were first established in Mexico their functions are described in the history of that country.
[XXXVII‐50] Guat., Apunt., 106. According to Juarros, Guat., ii. 38-9, the districts of Realejo, Matagalpa, and Nicoya were united to the government of Nicaragua to form the intendencia of that name; the alcaldía mayor of Tegucigalpa was united to the government of Comayagua to form the intendencia of Honduras; and to the government of Soconusco were united the alcaldías mayores of Ciudad Real and Tuxtla to form the intendencia of Chiapas. The fourth intendencia was San Salvador. ”

“ Honduras broke away from Spain in 1821, and became an independent State in 1839; the Government is vested in a President and six ministers, and the legislative power in a Congress of 37 members; the population is, with the exception of a few thousands, composed of blacks; Tegucigalpa (12) is the capital.
Hone, William, miscellaneous writer and political satirist, born at Bath; threw up his position as a law clerk in London and started a print and book shop; became a busy contributor to newspapers, and involved himself in serious trouble by the freedom of his political parodies and satires ”

“ Comayagua, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Soconusco; Alcaldías Mayores, San Salvador, Ciudad Real, Tegucigalpa, Zonzonate, Verapaz, Suchiltepeques, Nicoya, Amatique, y las Minas de San Andrés de Zaragoza; Corregimientos, Totonicapán, Quezaltenango, Atitán, Tecpanatitán ó Sololá, Escuintla, Guazacapán, Chiquimula, Acasaguastlan, el Realejo, Matagalpa, Moninbo, Chontales, Quesalguaque, Tencoa, Quepo, Chirripo, Pacaca y Ujarraz, y el Valle de Guatemala.' The governors, and the alcaldes of the first six alcaldías mayores named, were appointed by the crown ”

“ At once they began preparations for building their city. Upon a slender foundation of reeds, rushes, and piles in the spongy marshes of Tezcuco the Aztecs built their huts, to be replaced in time by the solid structures which adorned the city at the coming of the Spaniards. This was the beginning of Tenochtitlan ("cactus on a stone") , named in honor of its supernatural origin—the capital of the most powerful empire of the Western world. To-day the hoary superstition is sacredly embodied as the national emblem on the escutcheon of Mexico. ”

“ At full gallop we rode into the town of Tequilla: considerably fatigued, for I had not slept in forty hours, excepting perhaps now and then a brief cat-nap in the saddle—of a second or two duration—wherein one may dream of years of adventure. However, I determined to hold on twelve leagues beyond, to Guadalajara. It was daylight, and I found Tequilla quite a large place: with picturesque church, clusters of fine trees, all snugly posed in a bowl-like valley—fertile and well watered, with extensive plantations of the argave extending far as the eye could compass, over the neighboring country. ”

“ Map of Lake Tezcoco. they marched forward with a buoyant step, as they felt they were treading the soil of Montezuma. They had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. It was that of the Valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as more commonly called by the natives; which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before them. ”

“ With such roundelays as these, echoed at a distance by the rowers in the fleet and by many barbarians from the buildings that projected into the lake, Techeechee urged the light canoe through a sluice in the northern dike, and approached that long neck or peninsula, once the island of Tlatelolco, but long since united to that of Tenochtitlan, which gave its name to the fifth quarter of the city, and, as it afterwards appeared, was the site of the noblest of the many palaces, built at different periods, by the kings of Mexico. ”

“ Somewhat farther to the south, the eye passes across the beautiful plains lying around the city of Puebla de los Angeles, founded by the old Spaniards, and still rivalling, in the splendor of its churches, the most brilliant capitals of Europe; and far in the west he may behold the Valley of Mexico, spread out like a map, with its diminished lakes, its princely capital rising in still greater glory from its ruins, and its rugged hills gathering darkly around it, as in the days of Montezuma. ”

“ Soon afterward the Spaniards destroyed Tenochtitlan, and built a capital of their own on the same site, which has since borne the name of Mexico. Cortes made a great mistake in founding the modern city on the site of the old one, which was situated on soft ground, and involved an expensive system of dikes and causeways. It would have been preferable to have selected an elevated spot in the vicinity, like Tacubaya, about six miles south of the capital. Scarcely a vestige remains of the ancient metropolis. ”

“ The road leads along the aqueduct by Chapultepec, and through Tacubaya, and is the high road that goes to Toluca. The first part, after passing Tacubaya, is steep, bleak, and uninteresting. Plantations of maguey and occasional clumps of Peruvian trees are the only vegetation, and Indian huts the only traces of human life. But after a tedious ascent, the view looking back upon Mexico, with all her churches, lakes and mountains, is truly magnificent. The road also begins to wind through a fertile and wooded country. ”

“ Subduing some and enrolling others under his banner, he advanced to the city of Mexico—Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztecâ—by far the most powerful people in the land, who lived in houses of stone or marble, clothing themselves in fine cotton dyed in many colours or in wonderful feather cloaks made from the plumage of brilliant-hued birds. This people possessed a religion as picturesque as it was terrible in rite and sacrifice, and legal and political systems which in most of their provisions were, perhaps, equal in enlightenment to those of seventeenth-century Europe. ”

“ The retreat of the salt waters of Tezcuco has left the present republican city of Mexico a full league west of the lake. In the days of Montezuma, it stood upon an island two miles removed from the western shore, with which it communicated by the dike or calzada of Tlacopan,—now called Tacuba. The causeway of Iztapalapan, coming from the South, seven miles in length, passed over the island and through the city, and was continued in a line three miles further to the northern shore, and to the city Tepejacac, where now stand the church and the miraculous picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe. ”

“ The first beginnings of Mexico, a cluster of huts built on wooden piles, must have borne some likeness to those curious settlements of early tribes in the shallow part of the lakes of Switzerland and the British Isles, of which numerous remains are still to be found. As the nation increased in numbers, Tenochtitlán, as the inhabitants called their city (they called themselves Tenochques) , came to be a great city of houses built on piles, with canals running through the straight streets, along which the natives poled their flat-bottomed canoes. ”

“ I was doing no good in Mexico, and I should also be able to see something of the Mexican Southern Railway, which ran about half the way to a place called Tehuacan. We proceeded by train to Puebla, where I left my daughter, and then down the long broad valley of Tehuacan. Every few miles we came to a magnificent church, which formerly had been the centre of a village or town, for during the Spanish occupation this valley contained a population of 1,000,000, and was very fertile and rich. ”

“ The lake of Texcuco lay in a large and beautiful valley, called the Vale of Mexico, in the central part of the country of Anahuac. From the shore, three great dykes or causeways, formed of stone and earth, led to the city, the appearance of which [Pg 98] must have been magnificent, even to men of enlightened Europe.
The houses of the common people were mostly low wooden buildings, arranged with the greatest regularity. But the dwellings of the nobility were of stone, and some of them spacious and magnificent. ”

“ One Spanish historian informs us that these innocent victims of this repulsive religion were generally bought by the priests from parents who were poor.
We may now resume the traditional settlement of the ancient Mexicans on the region called Anahuac, including all the fertile plateau and extending south to the lake of Nicaragua. The chief tribes of the race were said to have come from California, and after being subject to the Colhua people asserted their independence about A. D. 1325. Soon afterward, their first capital, Tenochtitlan, was built on the site of Mexico, their permanent center. ”

“ Tenochtitlan, later the city of Mexico, was founded by the primitive Mexicans (Aztecs) , early in the fourteenth century, about two hundred years prior to the advent of the Spaniards on the Anahuac. The city was situated, originally, on a group of small islands in the southwestern portion of lake Tezcuco, nearly one league from the shore, and was, for more than a century, a very frail and peculiarly constructed place. ”