All travellers when entering unknown towns for the first time have felt that intense interest on the subject of hotel accommodation which pervaded our hearts as we followed our guide through the streets. We had been told that there were two inns in the town, and that we were to go to the Hotel San José. And accordingly we went to it.
It was quite evident that the landlord at first had some little doubt as to the propriety of admitting us; and but for our guide, whom he knew, we should have had to explain at some length who we were. But under his auspices we were taken in without much question.
The Spaniards themselves are not in their own country at all famous for their inns. No European nation has probably advanced so slowly towards civilization in this respect as Spain has done. And therefore, as these Costa Ricans are Spanish by descent and language, and as the country itself is so far removed from European civilization, we did not expect much. Had we fallen into the hands of Spaniards we should probably have received less even than we expected. But as it was we found ourselves in a comfortable second-class little German inn. It was German in everything; its light-haired landlord, frequently to be seen with a beer tankard in hand; its tidy landlady, tidy at any rate in the evening, if not always so in the morning; its early hours, its cookery, its drink, and I think I may fairly add, its prices.
On entering the first town I had visited in Central America, I had of course looked about me for strange sights. That men should be found with their heads under their shoulders, or even living in holes burrowed in the ground, I had not ventured to hope. But when a man has travelled all the way to Costa Rica, he does expect something strange. He does not look to find everything as tame and flat and uninteresting as though he were riding into a sleepy little borough town in Wiltshire.
We cannot cross from Dover to Ostend without finding at once that we are among a set of people foreign to ourselves. The first glance of the eye shows this in the architecture of the houses, and the costume of the people. We find the same cause for excitement in France, Switzerland, and Italy; and when we get as far as the Tyrol, we come upon a genus of mankind so essentially differing from our own as to make us feel that we have travelled indeed.
But there is little more interest to be found in entering San José than in driving through the little Wiltshire town above alluded to. The houses are comfortable enough. They are built with very ordinary doors and windows, of one or two stories according to the wealth of the owners, and are decently clean outside, though apparently rather dirty within. The streets are broad and straight, being all at right angles to each other, and though not very well paved, are not rough enough to elicit admiration. There is a square, the pláza, in which stands the cathedral, the barracks, and a few of the best houses in the town. There is a large and tolerably well-arranged market-place. There is a really handsome set of public buildings, and there are two moderately good hotels. What more can a man rationally want if he travel for business? And if he travel for pleasure how can he possibly find less?
It so happened that at the time of my visit to Costa Rica Sir William Ouseley was staying at San José with his family. He had been sent, as all the world that knows anything doubtless knows very well, as minister extraordinary from our Court to the governments of Central America, with the view of settling some of those tough diplomatic questions as to the rights of transit and occupation of territory, respecting which such world-famous Clayton-Bulwer treaties and Cass-Yrrisari treaties have been made and talked of. He had been in Nicaragua, making no doubt an equally famous Ouseley-something treaty, and was now engaged on similar business in the capital of Costa Rica.
Of the nature of this August work,—for such work must be very august,—I know nothing. I only hope that he may have at least as much success as those who went before him. But to me it was a great stroke of luck to find so pleasant and hospitable a family in so outlandish a place as San José. And indeed, though I have given praise to the hotel, I have given it with very little personal warrant as regards my knowledge either of the kitchen or cellar. My kitchen and cellar were beneath the British flag at the corner of the pláza, and I had reason to be satisfied with them in every respect.
And I had abundant reason to be greatly gratified. For not only was there at San José a minister extraordinary, but also, attached to the mission, there was an extra-ordinary secretary of legation, a very prince of good fellows. At home he would be a denizen of the Foreign Office, and denizens of the Foreign Office are swells at home. But at San José, where he rode on a mule, and wore a straw hat, and slept in a linendraper\'s shop, he was as pleasant a companion as a man would wish to meet on the western, or indeed on any other side of the Atlantic.
I shall never forget the hours I spent in that linendraper\'s shop. The rooms over the shop, over that shop and over two or three others, were occupied by Sir W. Ouseley and his family. There was a chemist\'s establishment there, and another in the possession, I think, of a hatter. They had been left to pursue their business in peace; but my friend the secretary, finding no rooms sufficiently secluded for himself in the upper mansion, had managed to expel the haberdasher, and had located himself not altogether uncomfortably, among the counters.
Those who have spent two or three weeks in some foreign town in which they have no ordinary pursuits, know what it is to have—or perhaps, more unlucky, know what it is to be without—some pleasant accustomed haunt, in which they can pretend to read, while in truth the hours are passed in talking, with some few short intervals devoted to contemplation and tobacco. Such to me was the shop of the expelled linendraper at San José. In it, judiciously suspended among the counters, hung a Panamá grass hammock, in which it was the custom of my diplomatic friend to lie at length and meditate his despatches. Such at least had been his custom before my arrival. What became of his despatches during the period of my stay, it pains me to think; for in that hammock I had soon located myself, and I fear that my presence was not found to be a salutary incentive to composition.
The scenery round San José is certainly striking, but not sufficiently so to enable one to rave about it. I cannot justly go into an ecstasy and sing of Pelion or Ossa; nor can I talk of deep ravines to which the Via Mala is as nothing. There is a range of hills, respectably broken into prettinesses, running nearly round the town, though much closer to it on the southern than on the other sides. Two little rivers run by it, which here and there fall into romantic pools, or pools which would be romantic if they were not so very distant from home; if having travelled so far, one did not expect so very much. There are nice walks too, and pretty rides; only the mules do not like fast trotting when the weight upon them is heavy. About a mile and a half from the town, there is a Savanah, so-called, or large square park, the Hyde Park of San José; and it would be difficult to imagine a more pleasant place for a gallop. It is quite large enough for a race-course, and is open to everybody. Some part of the mountain range as seen from here is really beautiful.
The valley of San José, as it is called, is four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; and consequently, though within the tropics, and only ten degrees north of the line, the climate is good, and the heat, I believe, never excessive. I was there in April, and at that time, except for a few hours in the middle of the day, and that only on some days, there was nothing like tropical heat. Within ten days of my leaving San José I heard natives at Panamá complaining of the heat as being altogether unendurable. But up there, on that high plateau, the sun had no strength that was inconvenient even to an Englishman.
Indeed, no climate can, I imagine, be more favourable to fertility and to man\'s comfort at the same time than that of the interior of Costa Rica. The sugar-cane comes to maturity much quicker than in Demerara or Cuba. There it should be cut in about thirteen or fourteen months from the time it is planted; in Nicaragua and Costa Rica it comes to perfection in nine or ten. The ground without manure will afford two crops of corn in a year. Coffee grows in great perfection, and gives a very heavy crop. The soil is all volcanic, or, I should perhaps more properly say, has been the produce of volcanoes, and is indescribably fertile. And all this has been given without that intensity of heat which in those southern regions generally accompanies tropical fertility, and which makes hard work fatal to a white man; while it creates lethargy and idleness, and neutralizes gifts which would otherwise be regarded as the fairest which God has bestowed on his creatures. In speaking thus, I refer to the central parts of Costa Rica only, to those which lie some thousand feet above the level of the sea. Along the sea-shores, both of the Atlantic and Pacific, the heat is as great, and the climate as unwholesome as in New Granada or the West Indies. It would be difficult to find a place worse circumstanced in this respect than Punta-arenas.
But though the valley or plateau of San José, and the interior of the country generally is thus favourably situated, I cannot say that the nation is prosperous. It seems to be God\'s will that highly-fertile countries should not really prosper. Man\'s energy is brought to its highest point by the presence of obstacles to be overcome, by the existence of difficulties which are all but insuperable. And therefore a Scotch farm will give a greater value in produce than an equal amount of land in Costa Rica. When nature does so much, man will do next to nothing!
Those who seem to do best in this country, both in trade and agriculture, are Germans. Most of those who are carrying on business on a large scale are foreigners,—that is, not Spanish by descent. There are English here, and Americans, and French, but I think the Germans are the most wedded to the country. The finest coffee properties are in the hands of foreigners, as also are the plantations of canes, and saw-mills for the preparation of timber. But they have a very uphill task. Labour is extremely scarce, and very dear. The people are not idle as the negroes are, and they love to earn and put by money; but they are very few in number; they have land of their own, and are materially well off. In the neighbourhood of San José, a man\'s labour is worth a dollar a day, and even at that price it is not always to be had.
It seems to be the fact that in all countries in which slavery has existed and has been abolished, this subject of labour offers the great difficulty in the way of improvement. Labour becomes unpopular, and is regarded as being in some sort degrading. Men will not reconcile it with their idea of freedom. They wish to work on their own land, if they work at all; and to be their own masters; to grow their own crops, be they ever so small; and to sit beneath their own vine, be the shade ever so limited. There are those who will delight to think that such has been the effect of emancipation; who will argue,—and they have strong arguments on their side,—that God\'s will with reference to his creatures is best carried out by such an order of things. I can only say that the material result has not hitherto been good. As far as we at present see, the struggle has produced idleness and sensuality, rather than prosperity and civilization.
It is hardly fair to preach this doctrine, especially with regard to Costa Rica, for the people are not idle. That, at least, is not specially their character. They are a humdrum, contented, quiet, orderly race of men; fond of money, but by no means fond of risking it; living well as regards sufficiency of food and raiment, but still living very close; anxious to effect small savings, and politically contented if the security of those savings can be insured to them. They seem to be little desirous, even among the upper classes, or what we would call the tradespeople, of education, either religious or profane; they have no enthusiasm, no ardent desires, no aspirations. If only they could be allowed to sell their dulce to the maker of aguardiente,—if they might be permitted to get their little profit out of the manufacture of gin! That, at present, is the one grievance that affects them, but even that they bear easily.
It will perhaps be considered my duty to express an opinion whether or no they are an honest people. In one respect, certainly. They steal nothing; at any rate, make no great thefts. No one is attacked on the roads; no life is in danger from violence; houses are not broken open. Nay, a traveller\'s purse left upon a table is, I believe, safe; nor will his open portmanteau be rifled. But when you come to deal with them, the matter is different. Then their conscience becomes elastic; and as the trial is a fair one between man and man, they will do their best to cheat you. If they lie to you, cannot you lie to them? And is it not reasonable to suppose that you do do so? If they, by the aid of law, can get to the windy side of you, is not that merely their success in opposition to your attempt—for of course you do attempt—to get to the windy side of them? And then bribes are in great vogue. Justice is generally to be bought; and when that is in the market, trade in other respects is not generally conducted in the most honest manner.
Thus, on the whole, I cannot take upon myself to say that they are altogether an honest people. But they have that kind of honesty which is most essential to the man who travels in a wild country. They do not knock out the traveller\'s brains, or cut his throat for the sake of what he has in his pocket.
Generally speaking, the inhabitants of Costa Rica are of course Spanish by descent, but here, as in all these countries, the blood is very much mixed: pure Spanish blood is now, I take it, quite an exception. This is seen more in the physiognomy than in the colour, and is specially to be noticed in the hair. There is a mixture of three races, the Spanish, the native Indian, and the Negro; but the traces of the latter are comparatively light and few. Negroes, men and women, absolutely black, and of African birth or descent, are very rare; and though traces of the thick lip and the woolly hair are to be seen—to be seen in the streets and market-places—they do not by any means form a staple of the existing race.
The mixture is of Spanish and of Indian blood, in which the Spanish no doubt much preponderates. The general colour is that of a white man, but of one who is very swarthy. Occasionally this becomes so marked that the observer at once pronounces the man or woman to be coloured. But it is the colouring of the Indian, and not of the negro; the hue is rich, and to a certain extent bright, and the lines of the face are not flattened and blunted. The hair also is altogether human, and in no wise sheepish.
I do not think that the inhabitants of Costa Rica have much to boast of in the way of personal beauty. Indeed, the descendant of the Spaniard, out of his own co............