Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1888-02-09
THE END.
COSTA RIGA.

COSTA RIGA.
Nearly four hundred years ago RI
old sailor coasted along the eastern
shore of Costa RIGA in bark not much
bigger than canal-boat, searching
for passage to the western sea. He
had bunk built in the bows of his
] little vessel ,ewhere he could rest his
weary bones and look out upon the
world he had discovered. There was
little left for him but his will. He had
explored the whole coast from Yukatap
to Trinidad, and found it an unbroken
line of continent-a contradiction OF
all his reasoning, defiance of all his
theories, and an impossible obstacle
to the hopes he had cherished for thirty
years. The geography of the New
World was clear enough in his mind.
The earth was globe; there was no
doubt of it; and there must be navi-
gable belt of water around. So he
grouped along, seeking the passage he
felt should be there, cruising into each
river, and following the shore-lines OF
each gulf and bay. Instinctively he
lowered around the narrowest portion
of the continent, where was but a
slender strip of land, upheaved by
some mighty CONFUSION, to shatter his
theories and defy his dreams. 1t was
the most pathetic picture in all
history. Finally, overcome by age
and infirmity, he had to abandon the
attempt, and fearing to return to Spain
without something to satisfy the ava
rice of his sovereign, surrendered the
n Of l., 90
brother Bartholomew, and wept while
the carnival of murder and plumber,
that was to last three centuries,
was begun.
Among other points visited for bar
ter with the Indians was little har-
Dor in which were islands covered with
Lines, and Columbus marked the
place upon his chart puerto de
Limon." To-day it is collection of
che zap wooden houses and bamboo huts,
with wharves, warehouses, and rail
waN-shops, surrounded by the most
luxurious tropical vegetation, alive
with birds of gorgeous plumage, ven
omous reptiles, and beautiful tiger
cats. Here and there about the
place are patches of sugar-cane and
wide-spraading bread-fEuit that God
gave to the tropical savage as He gave
rice and maze to his Northern brother,
and the slender, graceful rubber-tree,
whose frosty-tolored notified trunk
looks like the neck of a giraffe. 1t
scarcely casts shadow; but the
banana, with its long pale green
plumes, furnishes plenty of shelter for
the palm-thatched cabins, the naked
babies that play around them, and the
half-dressed women who seem always
to be snoozing III the sun.
Surrounding the city for radius of
three-score miles is Il jungle full of
patriarchal trees, stately and vener-
able, draped with long moss and slen-
der vines that look. like the Rigging Of
a ship. Their limbs are covered with
wonderful orchids, as bright and
radiant as the plunvage of the birds,
the Espiritu SantO and other rare
plants being as plentiful as the daisies
in New England meadow. There is
another flower, elsewhere unknown,
called the "turn-sol, which in morn
ing is white and wax-iike, resembling
the camellia, but at noon has turned
to the most vivid scarlet, and at sum
set drops off its stem. This picture
is seen from shipboard through vail
of mist-miasmatic vapor-in which
the lungs of men find poison, but the
air-plants food. 1t reaches from the
breasts of the mountains to the foam
fringed shore, broken only by the
feecy clouds that hang low and
motionless in the atmosphere, as if
they, with all the rest of nature, had
shifted the fragrance of the poppy and
sunk to sleep.
But in the morning and the even
ings, when the ak is cool, Limon, is a
busy place. DwaTfish engines with
long trains of cars wind down from
nanas. Half-naked roustabouts file
back and forth across the gang-planks
loading steamers for Liverpool, New
York and New Orleans. The coffee is
allowed to accumulate in the ware
houses until the vessels come, but the
bananas must not be pickd till the
last moment, at Geographic notice, the
morning the steamer sails. Trains OF
cars are sent to the side tracks of every
plantation, and arc loaded with the
half-ripe fruit still glistening with the
dew. There are often as many as
fifty thousand punches on a single
steamer, representing six million
bananas, but they are so perishable
that more than half the cargo goes
overheard before its destination is
reached.
Along the track many plantations
have been opened in the jungle, and
produce prolifically. Many of the
settlers are from the United States,
from the South particularly, and il
being the fashion to christen the
plantations, the traveller finds over the
entrances sign-boards that bear
familiar names. Over the gateway to
one of the finest haciendas, as they are
called, is the inscription, johnny
Reb's Last Ditch"-a forlorn and al
most hopeless ex-Confederate having
drifted there, after much buffeting by
fortune, and taken up government land,
on which he now is in a fair way to
make a fortune.-W. E. Curtis IN
Harper'S Magazine.
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