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Updated: May 6, 2025
Climbing up a little bank of clay, we found ourselves on a flat meadow, covered with grass and weeds, through which narrow trails ran to a few scattered palm-thatched huts. With a letter from the jefe, we called at Señora Mora's house. This lady was a widow, whose husband had but lately died; she was well to do, and promised to supply us with animals after we should have had our breakfast.
So a little chapel was built; the family and servants attended every Sunday, and many days in the week; and the country folk from great distances found their way through the woods to hear Mass in the palm-thatched sanctuary of 'El Riposo.
His palm-thatched rancho, or cottage, stood at a little distance from the bank of the river, at a point where it was much infested by caimans as the country around was wild and thinly settled. The vaquero had a wife and one child, a daughter who was about six or seven years old; and being a pretty little girl, and the only one, she was of course very dear to both the parents.
Each night from these palm-thatched quarters we heard the faint sounds of a music that went far back of civilization to a savage ancestry near by in point of time and otherwise immeasurably remote; for through the still, hot air, under the brilliant moonlight, we heard the monotonous throbbing of a tomtom drum, and the twanging of some old stringed instrument.
Here and there in the distance could be seen the palm-thatched roofs of the cottages, which form several villages scattered about on the sides of the hills, and all united by good roads.
From any modern point of view, the system is little more than military junk, better fitted for its present use as barracks, asylums, and prisons than for military defence. But it is all highly picturesque. In the beginning, most of the buildings of the city were doubtless of wood, with palm-thatched roofs. In time, these gave place to rows of abutting stone buildings with tiled roofs.
At early morn the journey was continued till a broad reach of the river was ascended, at the far end of which was a good-sized island, in which was a palm-thatched building of some consequence, while, only separated from it by a narrow arm of the river, stood the largest collection of houses they had seen, with what was evidently a mosque by the river side.
No palm-thatched huts occupied the open spaces, or crowned the little eminences that diversified its windward side; no wreaths of smoke could be seen rising above the tops of the groves; no canoes, full of tattooed savages, glided over the still waters within the reef; and no merry troops of bathers pursued their sports in the surf.
Whether it was fortune or seclusion from his kind that Mr. Van Wyk sought, he could not have pitched upon a better place. Even the mail-boats of the subsidized company calling on the veriest clusters of palm-thatched hovels along the coast steamed past the mouth of Batu Beru river far away in the offing.
By the morning of January 5 we had left the marsh region. There were low hills here and there, and the land was covered with dense forest. From time to time we passed little clearings with palm-thatched houses. We were approaching Caceres, where the easiest part of our trip would end. We had lived in much comfort on the little steamer. The food was plentiful and the cooking good.
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