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Tramping Through Mexico; Guatemala and Honduras: Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1916
About the author
Harry A. Franck
68 books6 followersHarry Alverson Franck, better known as Harry A. Franck was an American travel writer during the first half of the 20th century.
http://www.harryafranck.com/
http://www.harryafranck.com/
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 27, 2016
When I was in high school, my fantasy future was to wander the planet, working my way from here to there, exploring whatever country I might find myself in. I never managed to make that fantasy come true, but I still love the dream and live it by armchair.
The author of this book had the same idea but he actually made it happen, and this volume is one of many he wrote about his various journeys.
The wiki article about Franck mentions that "Many of his racist observations mirror the attitudes of his time." This was obvious from the very beginning of the book and was annoying. I always thought travel was supposed to broaden the mind, not close it. At times he was a classic example of The Ugly American. I wondered in that first chapter if I would be able to vagabond along with Franck at all, but my curiosity about travel in Mexico in the early 1900's overcame my reluctance, yet I never was entirely comfortable with the man. I certainly would not have wanted to travel with him in real life.
It was too easy for him to chalk up any reaction of the people to ignorance and/or superstition, when the reasons may have been something else entirely. How would you feel if you were out working hard in your field and some stranger came stomping across your freshly plowed furrows wanting to take your picture just because you look quaint to him? I almost cheered for the way this farmer in Michoacan made it plain that he did not want his privacy invaded:
'I ran early into their superstitions against photography, however, their belief, common to many uncivilized races, being that once their image is reproduced any fate that befalls it must occur to them in person. When I stepped into a field toward a man behind his wooden plow, he said in a very decided tone of voice, "No, señor, no quiero!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"Porque no quiero, señor," and he swung the sort of small adze he carried to break up the clods of the field rather loosely and with a determined gleam in his eye. I did not want the picture so badly as all that.'
At least Franck spoke Spanish fluently, that certainly helped. But I had to laugh at his astonishment over the difference between his college-learned Castilian Spanish and the Spanish that the majority of people spoke. It is not necessarily a whole other language, but it can sure sound like it. Words are not pronounced the same, vocal cadences change from region to region, descriptive terms for everyday objects are different from pueblo to pueblo. For me this is fascinating, but for someone like Franck, who seemed to have a need to have the world behave the way he wanted it to behave, these language oddities must have been maddening.
The chapters which tell about Mexico and Guatemala were the most interesting, and I googled plenty of cities to learn more about them. But by the time we got to Honduras I was ready to stop vagabonding. Honduras is an extremely mountainous country. Our man Franck walked up and down and around and about until he had a bad sore on one foot and I was exhausted. There were not many people along the way, and he had more contempt for the Hondurans he did see than for anyone in the other countries. But we finally made it to a port on the Pacific Ocean and eventually a steamship came along to take him to Panama. Our vagabonding days were over for this book.
The next volume he wrote begins on the boat and tells of his trip down through South America, but I think I have traveled with this particular Ugly American long enough. I might have a peek Someday at the book called Zone Policeman 88, which tells of his five months in the Canal Zone working as a policeman, because I cannot imagine what kind of messes he might have gotten into there, but as far as any future armchair trips with Franck, I think I will just stay home instead.
The author of this book had the same idea but he actually made it happen, and this volume is one of many he wrote about his various journeys.
The wiki article about Franck mentions that "Many of his racist observations mirror the attitudes of his time." This was obvious from the very beginning of the book and was annoying. I always thought travel was supposed to broaden the mind, not close it. At times he was a classic example of The Ugly American. I wondered in that first chapter if I would be able to vagabond along with Franck at all, but my curiosity about travel in Mexico in the early 1900's overcame my reluctance, yet I never was entirely comfortable with the man. I certainly would not have wanted to travel with him in real life.
It was too easy for him to chalk up any reaction of the people to ignorance and/or superstition, when the reasons may have been something else entirely. How would you feel if you were out working hard in your field and some stranger came stomping across your freshly plowed furrows wanting to take your picture just because you look quaint to him? I almost cheered for the way this farmer in Michoacan made it plain that he did not want his privacy invaded:
'I ran early into their superstitions against photography, however, their belief, common to many uncivilized races, being that once their image is reproduced any fate that befalls it must occur to them in person. When I stepped into a field toward a man behind his wooden plow, he said in a very decided tone of voice, "No, señor, no quiero!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"Porque no quiero, señor," and he swung the sort of small adze he carried to break up the clods of the field rather loosely and with a determined gleam in his eye. I did not want the picture so badly as all that.'
At least Franck spoke Spanish fluently, that certainly helped. But I had to laugh at his astonishment over the difference between his college-learned Castilian Spanish and the Spanish that the majority of people spoke. It is not necessarily a whole other language, but it can sure sound like it. Words are not pronounced the same, vocal cadences change from region to region, descriptive terms for everyday objects are different from pueblo to pueblo. For me this is fascinating, but for someone like Franck, who seemed to have a need to have the world behave the way he wanted it to behave, these language oddities must have been maddening.
The chapters which tell about Mexico and Guatemala were the most interesting, and I googled plenty of cities to learn more about them. But by the time we got to Honduras I was ready to stop vagabonding. Honduras is an extremely mountainous country. Our man Franck walked up and down and around and about until he had a bad sore on one foot and I was exhausted. There were not many people along the way, and he had more contempt for the Hondurans he did see than for anyone in the other countries. But we finally made it to a port on the Pacific Ocean and eventually a steamship came along to take him to Panama. Our vagabonding days were over for this book.
The next volume he wrote begins on the boat and tells of his trip down through South America, but I think I have traveled with this particular Ugly American long enough. I might have a peek Someday at the book called Zone Policeman 88, which tells of his five months in the Canal Zone working as a policeman, because I cannot imagine what kind of messes he might have gotten into there, but as far as any future armchair trips with Franck, I think I will just stay home instead.
February 26, 2023
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras (1916): Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond by Harry Alverson Franck
This is the first Harry A. Franck book I have read, I chose this book purely because it was one of the few copyright-expired books on Project Gutenberg that features Honduras. The way he compares locations in his travels to those in Asia and Europe led me to look up the author and find he was a traveling phenomenon in the first half of the 20th century, having seen much of the world before middle age. What is his modern equivalent? Rick Steeves (for those few Americans of a certain age who watch PBS). This was his fourth published work. Franck wrote the books as a way to provide an income for himself; this book chronicles part of his journey into Central and South America that covers a mere part of his "four unbroken years of Latin-American travel."
"Such a surging of pauperous humanity, dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name 'republic' is no cure for man's ills." - Franck upon his entry into San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where he remarks other traveling writers must have clearly been lying about its charms.
Unlike other travel books of the period, Franck includes almost no broad history of the countries or territories he encounters, and very little context. Mexico was in a state of flux from revolutions, apparently. Guatemala was under the thumb of Manuel Estrada Cabrera
It can be frustrating at times as he comes across an interesting story and provides no details, he's too busy traveling to the next destination. (Google provides more details of locations and helped me map his route.) The book contains too many mundane details to be easily readable, it is like a stream-of-consciousness retelling of his daily diary. He chances upon a doctor from Texas in extreme rural Honduras who provides some hospitality but Franck provides no further information on why the man is there in the middle of nowhere, he simply travels on to his next destination.
As he travels mostly on foot and relies mostly on the hospitality of strangers along the way, he encounters everyday individuals in detail, such as the "peons" in Mexico (which in 1916 context meant a Mexican day laborer). He is evidently on a shoestring budget and reliant upon strangers for water and food. As such, his observations are largely of everyday life. The condition of people's modest houses, their dress, the long solitary walks on mountain trains and virgin forests, the idle conversations, etc. Franck doesn't spend much time on sites or museums, indeed some of the areas of ancient ruins he mentions (such as Copán in Honduras) had not yet been properly excavated in his time, he is unimpressed and gives them merely a few sentences. Oddly, he makes it a point on his journey to visit prisons and cemeteries, perhaps because there is no charge for admission. He does take a job in one of the American-owned mines in Guanajuato, Mexico and tries his hand at the dangerous work, working along side both "gringos" and Mexicans, witnessing some attempts at theft of pure silver from the mines and some of the violence of the territory.
Some of his observations are of the period, politically incorrect in modern terms, but not so harsh or racist as one might expect. He's critical of Americans as well as the natives: "Small wonder the Mexican considers the 'gringo' rude. An American boss would send a peon to fetch his key or cigarettes, or on some equally important errand; the workman would run all the way up hill and down again in the rarified air, removing his hat as he handed over the desired article, and the average man from the States would not so much as grunt his thanks."
Honduras is the least-developed country on his journey and it seems clear that he is worn out by the end of his journey. Railroads and carriages were not an option there, he could only walk on foot over the mountainous terrain from the Guatemala border to Tegucigalpa, a journey that took 15 days. The "cities" look nothing like cities of similar size elsewhere on his journey:
"The fitting shield of Honduras would be one bearing as motto that monotonous phrase which greets the traveler most frequently along her trails, 'No hay.' The country is noted chiefly for what 'there is not.'"
"Here was a town of a size to have been a place of importance in other lands, yet even the mayor lived with his pigs on an earth floor."
He finds the people very uneducated and quite superstitious and the land similarly full of potential yet uncultivated. The people show him kindness and hospitality, but their simple natures annoy him as they ask him questions about his life and his possessions that most Americans would find rude.
"(E)very person I had met in Honduras had been kindly and courteous—if dirty—and never with a hint of coveting my meager hoard. Beggars seemed as unknown as robbers—perhaps from lack of initiative and energy."
His arrival to Tegucigalpa is rewarded with a pair of new shoes he had shipped from the United States before he began the journey and a visit with the American legation, where he learns of failed ventures in development in the country. But he is eager to leave, and hikes further to the island of Ampala where he has to wait for days in "prison" like conditions to catch a steamer to the Andes to begin his next adventure. Having recently visited the country, I appreciated this book for showing me how far the country has come in the last 100 years, a short time period relative to Mexico and Guatemala which were already more advanced at the time.
I give the book three stars. I am glad it exists and it gives the reader a seemingly reliable eyewitness account of what he actually saw, as it's largely boring and unembellished. Franck has no reason to lie, indeed he probably would have sold more books had he made up stories to make it more interesting. I am currently reading one of Harry L. Foster's works, another well-known traveler of the time, and finding I can't believe a word he says because his observations are much lively and contrast quite sharply with Franck, ostensibly because Foster is a journalist and understands plainly that sensationalism sells.
I look forward to reading Franck's book on his travels in the "West Indies" next.
This is the first Harry A. Franck book I have read, I chose this book purely because it was one of the few copyright-expired books on Project Gutenberg that features Honduras. The way he compares locations in his travels to those in Asia and Europe led me to look up the author and find he was a traveling phenomenon in the first half of the 20th century, having seen much of the world before middle age. What is his modern equivalent? Rick Steeves (for those few Americans of a certain age who watch PBS). This was his fourth published work. Franck wrote the books as a way to provide an income for himself; this book chronicles part of his journey into Central and South America that covers a mere part of his "four unbroken years of Latin-American travel."
"Such a surging of pauperous humanity, dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name 'republic' is no cure for man's ills." - Franck upon his entry into San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where he remarks other traveling writers must have clearly been lying about its charms.
Unlike other travel books of the period, Franck includes almost no broad history of the countries or territories he encounters, and very little context. Mexico was in a state of flux from revolutions, apparently. Guatemala was under the thumb of Manuel Estrada Cabrera
It can be frustrating at times as he comes across an interesting story and provides no details, he's too busy traveling to the next destination. (Google provides more details of locations and helped me map his route.) The book contains too many mundane details to be easily readable, it is like a stream-of-consciousness retelling of his daily diary. He chances upon a doctor from Texas in extreme rural Honduras who provides some hospitality but Franck provides no further information on why the man is there in the middle of nowhere, he simply travels on to his next destination.
As he travels mostly on foot and relies mostly on the hospitality of strangers along the way, he encounters everyday individuals in detail, such as the "peons" in Mexico (which in 1916 context meant a Mexican day laborer). He is evidently on a shoestring budget and reliant upon strangers for water and food. As such, his observations are largely of everyday life. The condition of people's modest houses, their dress, the long solitary walks on mountain trains and virgin forests, the idle conversations, etc. Franck doesn't spend much time on sites or museums, indeed some of the areas of ancient ruins he mentions (such as Copán in Honduras) had not yet been properly excavated in his time, he is unimpressed and gives them merely a few sentences. Oddly, he makes it a point on his journey to visit prisons and cemeteries, perhaps because there is no charge for admission. He does take a job in one of the American-owned mines in Guanajuato, Mexico and tries his hand at the dangerous work, working along side both "gringos" and Mexicans, witnessing some attempts at theft of pure silver from the mines and some of the violence of the territory.
Some of his observations are of the period, politically incorrect in modern terms, but not so harsh or racist as one might expect. He's critical of Americans as well as the natives: "Small wonder the Mexican considers the 'gringo' rude. An American boss would send a peon to fetch his key or cigarettes, or on some equally important errand; the workman would run all the way up hill and down again in the rarified air, removing his hat as he handed over the desired article, and the average man from the States would not so much as grunt his thanks."
Honduras is the least-developed country on his journey and it seems clear that he is worn out by the end of his journey. Railroads and carriages were not an option there, he could only walk on foot over the mountainous terrain from the Guatemala border to Tegucigalpa, a journey that took 15 days. The "cities" look nothing like cities of similar size elsewhere on his journey:
"The fitting shield of Honduras would be one bearing as motto that monotonous phrase which greets the traveler most frequently along her trails, 'No hay.' The country is noted chiefly for what 'there is not.'"
"Here was a town of a size to have been a place of importance in other lands, yet even the mayor lived with his pigs on an earth floor."
He finds the people very uneducated and quite superstitious and the land similarly full of potential yet uncultivated. The people show him kindness and hospitality, but their simple natures annoy him as they ask him questions about his life and his possessions that most Americans would find rude.
"(E)very person I had met in Honduras had been kindly and courteous—if dirty—and never with a hint of coveting my meager hoard. Beggars seemed as unknown as robbers—perhaps from lack of initiative and energy."
His arrival to Tegucigalpa is rewarded with a pair of new shoes he had shipped from the United States before he began the journey and a visit with the American legation, where he learns of failed ventures in development in the country. But he is eager to leave, and hikes further to the island of Ampala where he has to wait for days in "prison" like conditions to catch a steamer to the Andes to begin his next adventure. Having recently visited the country, I appreciated this book for showing me how far the country has come in the last 100 years, a short time period relative to Mexico and Guatemala which were already more advanced at the time.
I give the book three stars. I am glad it exists and it gives the reader a seemingly reliable eyewitness account of what he actually saw, as it's largely boring and unembellished. Franck has no reason to lie, indeed he probably would have sold more books had he made up stories to make it more interesting. I am currently reading one of Harry L. Foster's works, another well-known traveler of the time, and finding I can't believe a word he says because his observations are much lively and contrast quite sharply with Franck, ostensibly because Foster is a journalist and understands plainly that sensationalism sells.
I look forward to reading Franck's book on his travels in the "West Indies" next.
February 27, 2013
This book is hard to find and expensive when you can find it. I started reading it years ago by visiting the archives at the Birmingham Public Library. They don't let you take the books out of there but will let you read them on the spot. I never finished.
A while back I found the electronic version on Amazon for free and started reading it again. It was a very enjoyable read. The author describes his trek thru Mexico and Honduras in the early 1900s. As I read, I was alternately struck by how much things are different and also how much they are the same.
If you have an interest in the period or the area then I highly recommend this book.
A while back I found the electronic version on Amazon for free and started reading it again. It was a very enjoyable read. The author describes his trek thru Mexico and Honduras in the early 1900s. As I read, I was alternately struck by how much things are different and also how much they are the same.
If you have an interest in the period or the area then I highly recommend this book.
March 27, 2024
This is the account of Harry Franck, who traveled, much of the time by foot but occasionally by train, from Mexico down through Honduras in 1916. He has a humorous/sarcastic tone and the writing is engaging. However he is of his age and his descriptions of the ordinary people he meets along the way show evidence of his prejudices and what seems to be an excessive desire to be critical. It is still the account of places and people of a time and place much changed and there is value to the content. It is his writing style which elevates it a bit over the ordinary travelogue. I have an edition from 1916 which has numerous b/w photos all through the book. That also adds to my rating.
January 14, 2023
According to Franck, Tramping Through Mexico was a bit of a preview in preparation for his much bigger adventure, Vagabonding Down the Andes. The latter was published in 1917, just a year after this book. And it was the first of Franck's travel writing pieces I've read. In comparison, Tramping Through Mexico is not quite so epic. And the adventures in Mexico while not grim, are not nearly as exciting as those in South America. In this volume, however, Franck does pull his automatic pistol in a showdown with would be bandits or robbers. He doesn't know exactly, because he backs off holding his weapon, while one of his antagonists acts similarly. Nonetheless, things just seem sort of drab in Mexico. I was expecting more. Events do pick up a great deal in Guatemala, and the chapter on that country is the best in the book, I think. Franck is back to his usual good humor and wry observations. He carries that through on the concluding pages about Honduras. All of which rescues the book for me. What I cannot get over with Franck is how he gives such personal looks at the Indians and peons of the countries he visits. He often criticizes what he considers their laziness, ignorance, and even "stupidity." But he is always eager to share his medicine, rescuing people from fevers, and observing the names, personalities, and kindnesses of people who for most travel writers are left to linger at the margins.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews