Maria Soltera

34/2021. A Lady's Ride Across Spanish Honduras by "Maria Soltera" (pseudonym) is an 1880s travelogue reprinted from Blackwood's Magazine, about an English spinster travelling coast to coast across the country by mule to become a school teacher serving colonists in their new banana plantations. As one would expect from non-fiction travel writing aimed at the readers of Blackwood's, who were a comparatively well-informed audience, this extended essay is full of astute observations and mildly show more amusing incidents. Perhaps more surprisingly the author is unafraid to compare cultural differences such as Mexican craftwork and Spanish names and Honduran sanitation favourably against their English counterparts, although it probably goes without saying that she also reproduces some racist and classist stereotypes.

In conclusion: I'm now slightly bitter that no stranger has ever given me a revolver and a bag of coconuts.

Quotes

Opening paragraph: "It was the question of pounds, shillings, and pence. Should I take steamer from San Francisco to Panama, cross the isthmus, and from the Atlantic side enter Spanish Honduras? Or had I better travel by steamer as far as Amapala, and thence take mules and ride across the country to San Pedro Sula - my destination - a distance of about two hundred and nineteen miles? Thus was perplexed the mind of your globe-trotting servant "Soltera", as she pored over railway and steamboat guides and calculated expenses, in her comfortable but very costly bedroom in the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, in the month of June, in year of grace 1881."

Science fiction fans never change, lol: "as no company is better than uncongenial company, I tucked myself into a shady corner on deck, nursed the purser's cat, and read Jules Verne's 'Twenty Leagues under the Sea'." (sic) show less