392 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 27, 1913. 
ment and its people in a state of chronic bank¬ 
ruptcy. With so wide a road, each ox team 
takes its own course, that which instinct im¬ 
pels it to adopt as the easiest in the toil of 
hauling an awkward, solid-wheeled cart and 800 
pounds of freight thirteen miles in twenty-four 
hours of sweat, back-sliding, skidding and gen¬ 
eral torture. 
As the heavy rains had wrecked the rail¬ 
way, washed away important bridges, produced 
great landslides and flooded the banana planta¬ 
tions along the Caribbean coast, I made my way 
from east to the Pacific on the staggering sub¬ 
limated little mule I have so sympathetically 
described. Despite the dolorous, the dejected 
look and spirit of the roan mulobile which 
sometimes carried me, my quinine pouch and 
pistoled saddle bags, the journey through this 
country in this way was intensely interesting. 
The little Costa Rican mule typifies the re¬ 
gion of his lethargic existence. He is far from 
the swifter civilization of the automobile and 
the airship. Everything around him moves upon 
a plane, and at a pace characteristic of his own 
dolce far niente philosophy. The north gallops; 
the south strolls. By and by the influences of 
one region will operate upon the other, and the 
mule and his sluggish life will be relegated to 
the rear of the inevitable march of the north¬ 
ern, their fierce, aggressive reach for all ma¬ 
terial goals. 
The white, or Castilian people, native of 
Costa Rica, are always hospitable and gracious 
to the appreciative traveler in their midst. One 
easily finds a town each night where lodging 
and indigenous food stuffs can be had at slight 
cost. As for room-mates and bed-fellows, they 
are always present in the wayside Costa Rican 
paeon village. A bed chamber sola—alone—is a 
rarity, except in cities like the capital, San Jose, 
or in Cartago, Limon and Punta Arenas. These 
cities are, of course, provided with many of the 
equipments of civilization to which villages along 
a mule ride in the mountains dare not aspire. 
Hence, we have the nimble little flea feasting 
upon the salinated blood and more pervious skin 
of the northern visitor, the nigua biting him 
joyously in the toes and hiding under his cuticle, 
the flipping coloradoa making pink blotches on 
his sun-burned, rain-soaked back. And all this 
on a canvas cot, standing in a bare, unswept 
floor, beside the snoring, gutteralizing senors 
Caballeros also on their way through the 
country. Saddle bags strew the floor, like¬ 
wise fermenting socks and boots. A single 
tin basin and a pitcher of brown water 
promise them all, or at least the North Ameri¬ 
can, a miserable ablutionary disappointment in 
the early morning, for the day begins at dawn. 
As there are no glass windows in the villages, 
and as the doors are always open, poultry and 
gaunt porkers invade the room just before day¬ 
light, mess up what attracts them, and cackle 
and grunt with self-satisfaction or chagrin. I 
have often awakened to find the family boar, 
his friend and consort, the sow, and their en¬ 
tire brood rooting for a corn in my riding boots, 
poking their soiled snouts into my saddle bags, 
and envying a hen which, having perched on 
the rim of the pitcher, was drinking the holy 
water under the image of the Saviour crucified. 
Bats, mosquitoes and snakes complete the ter¬ 
restrial infestations of a night in a Costa Rican 
pieon’s inn. 
But what does it matter when, for at least 
eight hours during daylight, the eye and ear 
are .enchanted with the views, and with the 
sounds of bird life along the way. From Limon 
at sea level to Cartago, in the mountains, the 
trail attains an altitude of 5,000 feet, and from 
there the traveler may scale the volcano Irazu, 
11,200 feet. Thence down toward San Jose 
3,868 feet, and on toward the Aguacate Moun¬ 
tains 3,200 feet, and then swiftly down to the 
plains of the Pacific. Fruit, flowers, monkeys, 
finches, macaws, parrots, game birds and all 
sorts and colors of tropical animals play and 
chatter, drone, hum and fluter in the yellow sun 
and violet shadows in this enchanting little land 
where a man may live without work, pluck his 
meals from tree and vine, drink the sweet milk 
of green cocoanuts, and smile disdainfully at the 
worried lord of a superior civilization. In the 
paeon’s bamboo hut one room is devoted to a 
raised mud fire bed to cooking, eating and drink¬ 
ing, the gaunt pigs, poultry, mangy dogs and 
ungenerously-uddered cow participating on a 
plane of perfect family equality. The other, 
equipped with uncushioned wood benches, some 
sixteen inches wide, and rawhide cot five feet 
wide, is the sleeping den of all the members 
of the household of both sexes, of visitors, of 
pigs and poultry, and of the entomological dog. 
In some parts of Central America the passing 
traveler rests upon this bed, which is merely a 
frame across which an ox skin has been 
stretched. He must not lack good fellowship 
if he wishes to please his host, for when he re¬ 
clines, his hostess and host get aboard with him 
upon the same cot. The proprieties are gen¬ 
erally observed, however, by the unique custom 
of placing the mistress’ head beside your feet 
and her pedals beside your cheek; her husband's 
position being again reversed, and so on to in¬ 
clude all who occupy this hard, uncomfortable 
couch. It is the simple life, but with degrading 
complications. Light and the gaze of the passer¬ 
by is admitted between the bamboo poles of 
which the hut is built. The roof is thatched 
with banana leaves and tall grass. The door 
does not exist; you are as welcome as the pig, 
but an inopportune intrusion may meet with 
violent rebuff. Politeness and a firm exaction 
of the same from the paeon is a foreigner's most 
effective coin in a land where Latin instinct 
and Latin distemper still runs in the paeon blood. 
My little roan mulobile suffered me to the 
very end of a month of wandering over the 
trails and through the purple mists of this quaint 
and placid jumble of mount and verdure, swift¬ 
flowing rivers and gorgeous skies. When I re¬ 
turned him to the mozo, who was his tyrannical 
master, he weighed a hundred pounds more than 
when I hired him. 
"See here. Senor,” I said, drawing some 
filthy paper colones from my breeches, ‘‘for how 
much plata will you give that little mule a fort¬ 
night’s rest with real corn at least once a day?” 
The villain’s black eyes glittered with greed 
“Con mucho gusto, ocho colone, Senor!” “Eight 
colones, four dollars gold, eh. Well, here is 
your plata; now feed him real corn while I 
gaze into his lachrymose eye and tell him he’s 
pensioned and will lie pampered for a fortnight.” 
With a last sad, sweaty, swat I saw my 
smelly little mulobile led away to the pradera, 
where I would presently sneak after him to see 
if he was really munching corn or taking in his 
usual ration of sweet air and wet water. Alas, 
for my four dollars and that little mule! When 
I called upon the latter in the twilight and the 
rain, I could see even at a distance by the limp 
hang of his sore tail that he hadn't smelled 
corn. When I reached the manger trough, I 
found a scant ration of the sugar cane dope 
these lazy drones find it so much easier and 
cheaper to feed than corn, which costs money. 
So, failing to find the mozo, I foraged on my 
own account, bought a peck, a whole peck of 
corn, and fed it into that grateful little beast. 
I then discovered that my mulobile needed 
about everything that equine machinery can 
need after uncertain years upon the trails of 
Ticoland. First he needed a dentist before he 
could eat corn off the cob. So I shelled it for 
him. Then he needed a new set of internal 
plumbing, or he would surely blow up with gas¬ 
tritis, and finally he needed some cement plaster¬ 
ing, where my spurs had opened port holes in 
his corrugated sides. I gave first aid to these 
latter bloody lacerations by pasting two of the 
United Fruit Co.’s gummed steamer trunk labels 
over them in a proper surgical manner. Pour¬ 
ing a little of my carbolized mosquito dope on 
the spot where his tail had been nailed to the 
crupper, I noticed an expression of resentment 
all over his now steaming bulk. The corn was 
warming him up inside and surprising his en¬ 
tire physiology. At dusk I really believed the 
little fellow was enjoying himself for the first 
time in his ignominious life. 
That night I overheard two of the natives 
roosting in my room speak of a stabbing affray 
at the quaro shop. In the morning I investi¬ 
gated the report and learned that the mozo— 
monstrous master of my little mulobile—having- 
ascended into a transport of joy over the ease 
with which he had swindled an Americano out 
of eight colones, got drunk at the tavern, in¬ 
sisted on marrying the proprietress, had his head 
cracked by her fiance, and upon a continuation 
of the festivities had his liver punctured by a 
bowie knife—all to my delight and the satis¬ 
fying comfort of my galled and spavined mulo¬ 
bile. 
North Americans, English and German in¬ 
vestors have a financial stake in Costa Rica of 
over $40,000,000. They largely own its railroads, 
shipping, fruit, cocoa, coffee and gold mines. 
Costa Rica will eventually be our policeman in 
Latin America. It has had no revolution in over 
forty years, but owing to the errors of its past 
governments, its foreign credit is bad. Its new 
president, Don Ricardo Jimenez, is a progressive 
of the modern northern school. Under his ad¬ 
ministration of, and our growing interest in, 
Ticoland, roads may be built and maintained, 
and the mulo and all that goes with his pres¬ 
ent sway give way to the auto and a swifter 
life. 
Austria not only sells timber, but timber 
products from its forest lands, and disposes of 
about 1,500,000 railway ties a year. There is 
no provision in the United States by which the 
national forests can dispose of manufactured 
lumber, though the policy of selling standing 
timber is well established. 
A shingle mill in Maine uses 2,000 cords of 
paper birch each year in the manufacture of 
toothpicks. 
