we went before a notary and swore to it and had three seals put on the
paper and sent it him as a joke. We start tomorrow the 22nd so you see
we are behind our schedule and I suppose you people are all worried to
death about us. We will be much longer than six days on our way to
Tegucigalpa as we are going shooting and also to pay our respects to
Bogran the ex-president and the man who is getting up the next
revolution. But we take care to tell everyone we are travelling for
pleasure and are great admirers of Bonilla the present president.
Somers and I are getting on famously. He is a very fine boy with a
great sense of humor and apparently very fond of me. We had five men
counting Jeffs who we call our military attache and Charwood and four
drivers and eleven mules so it is quite an outfit. In Ecuador with one
more man it would constitute a revolution.

DICK.

SANTA BARBARA--January 25, 1895.

DEAR FAM:

We are not at Tegucigalpa as you observe but travelling in this
country. "As you see it on Broadway " and as you see it here are two
different things. We have had five days of it so far and rested here
today in order to pay our respects to General Bogran the ex-president
of the Republic. It is still six days to Tegucigalpa. The trip across
Central America will certainly be one of the most interesting
experiences of my life. It is the most beautiful country I have seen
and the most barbarous. It is also the hottest and the most
insect-ious and the dirtiest. This latter seems a little view to take
of it but it means a great deal as the insects prevent your doing
anything in a natural way; as for instance sitting on the grass or
sleeping on the ground or hunting through the bushes. It is pretty
much as you imagine it is from what you have read, that covers it, and
I have discovered nothing new by coming to see it. I only verify what
others have seen. The people are most uninteresting chiefly because
they are surly to Americans and do not make you feel welcome. I do not
mean that I did not do well to come for I am more glad that I did than
I can say only I have not, as I have been able to do before, found
something that others have not seen. I never expect to see such a
country again unless in Africa. If you leave the path for ten yards
you would never get back to it except by accident and you could not get
that far away unless you cut yourself a trail. In some places the mail
route which we foll