"You carry an apparatus for the making of photographs," he went on. "Suppose you had taken a picture of our fortress and garrison here?"
"It is the law of all countries, as you know, not to allow the photographing of places of military importance. Even the English would arrest you if you took a picture of Gibraltar."
It was careless of me not to have noted the striking similarity of this stronghold to that at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Both stand on hills.
"And where do I get this official permission?"
But I still carried Mexican cigarettes, a luxury in Guatemala, so we parted friends, with the manners of a special envoy taking leave of a prime minister. The only requirement was that I should not open my kodak within sight of this hotbed of military importance. I all but made the fatal error of passing between the sacred eave-post and the wall upon my exit, but sidestepped in time to escape unscathed, and left the great fortress behind and above me.
After all I had been far more fortunate than a fellow countryman I met later, who had had a $200 camera smashed by this same ragged "garrison."
Siesta time was past and I struck on out of town. In the last hut an old woman called out to know why I had gone down to the river, and showed some suspicion at my answer.
"There are so many countries trying to get our war plans," she explained.
A trail wide enough for single-wheeled vehicles crowded its way between jungle walls. In the breathless, blazing sunshine the sweat passed through my rucksack and into my formal city garments beyond, carrying the color of the sack with it. For some time no one was abroad except a dripping "gringo" and a rare cargador in barely the rags necessary to escape complete nakedness, who greeted me subserviently and gave me most of the road. The Indians of the region were inferior in physique to those of the Mexican plateau, ragged beyond words, and far from handsome in appearance. Their little thatched huts swarmed, however, and almost all displayed something to sell, chiefly strong native liquor in bottles that had seen long and varied service. There was nothing to eat but oranges green in color. The way was often strewn with hundreds of huge orange-colored ones, but they were more sour than lemons and often bitter. A tropical downpour drove me once into the not too effective shelter of the jungle, and with sunset a drizzle set in with a promise of increase. A woodchopper had told me I could not reach my proposed destination that night, but I pressed forward at my best pace up hill and down through an all but continuous vegetation and surprised myself by stumbling soon after dark upon electric-lighted Coatepeque, the first real town of Guatemala, and not a very real one at that.