In the _aldea_ of Tutule I fell in with Alberto Suaza, a pleasant appearing, all but white Honduranean, who had once been in the army and was now returning on horseback from some government errand. The hamlet slumbered on a slope of a little leaning valley backed by a wooded mountain ridge, all but a few of the inhabitants being engaged in coffee culture in the communal tract up over the hill when we arrived. Suaza picketed his diminutive animal before the hut of a friend, in which we shared two eggs and coffee and turned in together. Unfortunately I let my companion persuade me against my better judgment to lay aside my hammock and sleep on his "bed," a sun-dried ox-hide thrown on the earth floor, on my side of which, "because he was more used to hard beds than those señores gringoes," he spread most of the _colchón_ (mattress)--which consisted of two empty grainsacks. Either these or the painfully thin blanket over us housed a nimble breed I had miraculously escaped thus far on the journey, robbing me of the much-needed sleep the incessant barking of a myriad of dogs, the itching of mosquito bites, the rhinoceros-like throat-noises of the family, and the rock hardness of the floor would probably otherwise have pilfered. The man of the house had stripped stark naked and, wrapping a red blanket about him, lay down on a bare wooden bed to pass the night apparently in perfect comfort. Soft mortals indeed are we of civilized and upholstered lands.
Suaza made no protest when I paid the bill for both, and by seven we were off, he riding his tiny horse until we were out of sight of the town, then dismounting to lead it the rest of the day. He had announced himself the possessor of an immensely rich aunt on whose hacienda we should stop for "breakfast," and promised we should spend the night either in the gold mine of which she was a chief stockholder or at her home in La Paz, which I gathered to be a great mansion filled with all the gleanings of that lady's many trips to Europe and the States. I had long since learned the Latin American's love of personal exaggeration. But Suaza was above the Honduranean average; he not only read with comparative ease but cleaned his finger nails, and I looked forward with some eagerness to a coming oasis of civilization in the hitherto unsoftened wilderness.