Having occasion to be in Guatemala City that day, I rose at two and, swallowing a cup of black coffee and two raw eggs and paying a bill of $12, struck out to cover the two long leagues left to Retalhuleu in time to catch the six-o'clock train. The moon on its waning quarter had just risen, but gave little assistance during an extremely difficult tramp. All was blackest darkness except where it cast a few silvery streaks through the trees, the road a mere wild trail left by the rainy season far rougher than any plowed field, where it would have been only too easy to break a leg or sprain an ankle. Bands of dogs, barking savagely, dashed out upon me from almost every hut. Besides four small rivers with little roofed bridges, there were many narrower streams or mud-holes to wade, and between them the way twisted and stumbled up and down over innumerable hills that seemed mountains in the unfathomable darkness. When I had slipped and sprawled some two hours, a pair of Indians, the first to be found abroad, gave the distance as "dos leguas," in other words, the same as when I had started. I redoubled my speed, pausing only once to call for water where a light flickered in a hut, and seemed to have won the race when at the edge of the town I came to a river that required me to strip to the waist. As I sprinted up the hill beyond, the sound of a departing train drifted out of the darkness ahead and an Indian informed me that it had been scheduled to leave at five. Fortunately I continued, for it turned out to be a freight, and the daily passenger left at six, so that just as the east began to turn gray I was off on the long ride to the capital.
The train takes twelve hours to make this run of 129 miles by a three-foot-gage railroad, stopping at every cluster of huts along the way. The third-class coach was little more than a box-car with two rough benches along its sides. The passengers were unprepossessing; most of them ragged, all of them unclean, generally with extremely bad teeth, much-pimpled faces, emaciated, and of undeveloped physique, their eyes still possessing some of the brightness but lacking the snap and glisten of those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow with fever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in bare feet, the same listless inefficiency showing in their weak, unproductive, unshaven features. The car grew so crowded I went to sit on the platform rail, as had a half-dozen already, though large signs on the door forbade it.