Historical Dispatch 03/13/2012 or Stalking Byron Cole

Since I came back from Nicaragua I have developed a kind of an obsession over Byron Cole.  If you remember, my middle name is Cole and Byron Cole, purportedly a San Francisco newspaperman, was the right-hand man of William Walker, a filibuster from Tennessee, who tried to take over Nicaragua and most of Central America.  A Nicaraguan immigration official saw my name and jokingly threatened to deport me.

I came home, curious to find if William Walker's Byron Cole was, in fact, a distant cousin of mine.  I have done some genealogy and am aware that I did have at least one relative by that name of approximately the correct age.

By all accounts, William Walker met Byron Cole in San Francisco in 1854 after he was tried (and acquitted)  of violating The Neutrality Act of 1794. In 1853 Walker had attempted to conquer the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California for the purpose of establishing the Republic of Sonora as a U.S. slave state.  After this failed expedition Walker, who had some newspaper experience, went to work for the San Francisco Commercial Advertiser, a short-lived newspaper (it ceased publication in 1854) of which Byron Cole was purportedly editor.

San Francisco -- 1852

Truth can be elusive.  Byron Cole is variously described in a number of places as a "New Englander" or a "wealthy San Francisco newspaperman" or "publisher" who had spent "some time" in Nicaragua and who convinced Walker that Nicaragua, then in a state of civil war, was ripe to be plucked as a U.S. slave state.  Attempting to track through records I get a somewhat less grand picture.

The California State Census of 1852 lists a Byron Cole in San Francisco.  He was a 23-year-old from Maine working as a "printer."  His last residence prior to this census is listed as Boston.   Assuming this is the correct person (there are two others) this establishes his nominal birthplace and sets his birth year at about 1829.   The 1850 Census has a B.F. Cole of the right age, also born in Maine, working the gold fields.   He is, at that point, only 21 years old.  I also found an entry in the Passenger Lists debarking in San Francisco in 1852 of a Byron Cole.

Route of the Nicaraguan Canal

I have a theory.  Prior to the construction of the Panama Canal the least expensive way from the east coast of the U.S. to the west coast was across the Nicaraguan isthmus.  Ships would sail from New York City down the east coast, then up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua.  They would then unload at Rivas. Cargo and passengers would be taken by stagecoach across the rest of the isthmus to San Juan del Sur, loaded onto ships which would sail to San Francisco.  This trade route was exclusively contracted to the Accessory Trade Company owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt by the Nicaragua government in 1849.  Vanderbilt was also given the option to build a canal within 12 years.

I am inclined to believe that Byron Cole came to California as part of the California Gold Rush in 1849.   I suspect, like so many people who came west to "strike it rich," that he did not.  If he spent time in Nicaragua as a young man it may have been because he was working to earn his passage and went back after his gold dreams failed to pan out.  I see him as more opportunist than intelligence.  Surely he saw what Vanderbilt was doing, understood the instability of Nicaragua, and realized this was a way to become wealthy.

Gratefully, Walker's Byron Cole is not my ancestor.  My Cole line comes from New York, so I can still joke about it. The Nicaraguan canal was never built, partially because of the intervention of William Walker into Nicaraguan affairs.  Colonel Byron Cole was killed in the Battle of Hacienda San Jacinto on September 14, 1856 at age 27.

Painting of the Battle of Hacienda San Jacinto

Nicaragua Dispatch 2/24/2012 or Final Thoughts: In the Village the Mono Sleeps Tonight

I am in the Ecolodge pool overlooking Lake Nicaragua and the Volcan Concepciòn. The vultures are riding the updrafts from the Caribbean winds that sweep to the west across the lake, no doubt hoping for "Sopa de Turista." There is a gecko sunning itself on the rocks next to the pool, beneath the notice of the vultures but eying me warily as a potential predator. A couple of small parrots fly overhead chattering to each other about what is, no doubt, a domestic problem. It is, in a word, idyllic.

Actually, this happened about half an hour ago. I'm now by the side of the pool writing in the late afternoon sun as there is no way I would take the iPad into the pool. It was bad enough that I forgot and left my "water-resistant" watch on, though it is now drying out and seems to have survived the experience.

Nevertheless, it is idyllic. This part of Nicaragua is unspoiled, in both the good and bad senses of the word. To the good is that it is quiet, with not many people, and with a sense of not having yet been discovered, or having discovered itself. The people are friendly and tourists are not quite yet seen as the necessary evil they have come to be seen as in other parts of Latin America.

This morning Elia and I walked down the mile of bad road to the nearest village, which is little more than a crossing in the road with a few hand-made homes. On the way, we encountered a tribe of monocongos (howler monkeys) crossing the road. Their alpha male watched over them carefully and regarded me with some trepidation as if I could be a potential rival for his wives. I assured him I had enough difficulty with women in my life so that his mates weren't of interest to me but he chuckled a warning to me as if he weren't buying it. This is what Nicaragua can offer as a pure and innocent gift to the visitor.


On the other hand, the country is hard, and sometimes very depressing. Nicaragua is the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. It's a long way from the disaster of Haiti, but poverty is everywhere here and will not be hidden. These are people who, like the Palestinians, have been overrun by so many cultures that they no longer have a cultural identity clearly their own. There certainly is a national identity and national pride, but it isn't backed strongly by the continuity of history.

On the same stretch of bad road where Elia and I encountered the howler monkeys there were partially built houses and homes that seemed to be constructed from the flotsam of central American life. Atop many of these houses was the red satellite dish of Claro, the big Nicaraguan communications company. 

This is most likely my last post from Nicaragua. Tomorrow we head back to Granada and on Sunday I come back to North Carolina. Do I want to come back? Maybe. There's lots of the world to see and, at least for me, a dwindling number of years to see it. I would like to see what the Nicaraguans do with their country, whether they succumb to the wants of foreigners like me or chart their own future.

Nicaragua Dispatch 2/23/2012 or Ecoliving Means Living With the Ecology

This morning as I was about to take my shower (always a challenging experience in a facility run by solar power with a gas-fueled on-demand water heater designed to run as economically as possible) I picked up my backpack to find a very unhappy little scorpion. I was as unhappy to see him as he was to see me but we both kept our cool, and he kept his tail folded down, no doubt to save any wrath for a later and more serious encounter.

In truth, we were told that the scorpions here are not poisonous.  That doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt to be stung, however.  That looked to be a pretty serious stinger had he decided to deploy it.  Worse, the encounter would not only have hurt me but would probably have been fatal to the little scorpion.  He fled.  I put my backpack down elsewhere and we both hopefully went on with our daily activities.

There is flora and fauna aplenty here on the slopes of Maderas. I can hear the howler monkeys constantly. Sometimes they are close, though I haven't seen one yet.  We have been told that there are Capuchin monkeys further up the slopes of the volcano, but that it takes more than a bit of hiking to see them. The Urrucas are a constant -- chattering, carrying on, and showing off in the way of corvids.  While I do, in fact, miss the rustling and calling of the Grenadine bats and, in a way, the caterwauling of the feral cats there, I am not without nightly companionship.  There is a little Gecko in the room chirping sweetly for its mate (and not once has it talked to me with an Australian accent or tried to sell me insurance.)

At about 4:30am this morning, though, things really began to get serious. I heard, close to the cabin, "The thing that goes Wow! In the night." I have no idea what it might be, though my best is a frog of some kind. Its call started out with a low bass murmur which most of the time built up to a loud "wow!"   that sounded as if it were made by a breath intake.  After some exceptionally long buildup the "wow!" was followed by something that sounded like an arrow being released from a bow. Whatever made those sounds, I hope it attracted her.

This afternoon I found a spider the size of my hand behind the bathroom door. Again, I left it to its own devices, most likely to eat something that I'm sure I'd like much less than I liked the spider.  At lunch, thousands of tiny, tiny ants found their way onto the restaurant menu, no doubt to see what they could expect from the kitchen.  As yet, however, we have yet found the need to deploy the mosquito netting provided for our beds.

Vultures are riding the breezes that come from the Caribbean and sweep up the eastern windward slopes of the volcano. Whatever you think of vultures, they are amazing gliders and soarers. Several came into eye me while I was sitting out by the pool this morning.  I assured them, as loudly as possible,  that not only was I not dead, I had no intention of expiring any time in the near future and most certainly not before lunch.

Nicaragua Dispatch 2/19/2012-2 or Do I Have Bats in my Belfry?

Well, maybe not in my belfry but in my bedroom?  Well, maybe not in my bedroom but living in the ceiling?. Well, maybe not in the ceiling but under the Spanish tiles that cover the ceiling.

I was awakened at 4:30 this morning by a curious rustling.  I turned on the light and saw nothing unusual.  I turned off the light, sat in the dark waiting and the rustling returned along with squeals and high-pitched squeaks. I quietly realized that I was listening to bats returning from their nightly hunting adventure.

Five years ago,  when I visited Granada,  I enjoyed watching swallows hunting at dusk. Their artful dives in search of bugs that I couldn't see were the stuff of aerial ballet.  As darkness fell, however, they and their powerful but delicate glides, turns and swoops were replaced by free-falling daredevils who climbed and fell in impossible aerodynamic maneuvers that boggled the mind. The bats were on the wing!

I imagine the bats, coming home to their families afterward and talking about their prowess and their kills like old fighter pilots, then settling in for a good day's sleep (upside down, of course) dreaming of moths, grasshoppers, and mosquitoes.  Maybe there are bat bars where old veterans hang around, drinking bat beer, smoking bat cigarettes, and swapping war stories.  

I was in my room again, changing for a dip in the pool this afternoon, when I heard them rustling; squeaking, sounding, testing their radar in preparation for another night's hunt. They've been doing this for eons, part of the eternal war between mammals and insects, long before there were countries or cities or houses or Spanish tile roofs or tourists to listen to them.

It makes me proud to be of the order mammalia.

Nicaragua Dispatch 2/19/2012-1 or Getting There is Half the Fun

I am spending this week with my father and our friend Elia in Granada, Nicaragua at Casa Diamante, a house owned by my sister.  I arrived last evening in Managua, about a fifty-minute drive from Grenada.  Plans for this trip have been afoot since at least last August and I was  led to  understand that Gustavo, our hired driver, would  meet me on arrival in the passenger arrival area (presumably holding  one of those embarrassing signs with my name on it.)

Before finding the passenger arrival area, however, I had one of the most pleasant and fun encounters with an immigration officer that I have ever had. Usually, immigration officers are bored civil servants who check and stamp your passport and paperwork with a kind of tolerant resignation.  In Egypt, the immigration officer kept impatiently rapping the inside of his plexiglass bubble with his pen.

his immigration official was, however,  different.   He was alert, knowledgeable, and had a sense of humor.

Backstory:  William Walker was a Tennessee Filibuster who, along with his henchman and sponsor, a failed San Francisco newspaper publisher named Byron Cole, tried to take over Nicaragua, and admit it as a slave state to the Confederate States of America.  Walker was actually recognized as the  President of Nicaragua by the Franklin Pierce administration until he was ultimately defeated and expelled by the Nicaraguans, Hondurans, and Costa Ricans.  This is an important event in Nicaraguan history and is commemorated by a plaque near the cathedral in Granada. 

Now,  my middle name is Cole and I am possibly distantly related to William Walker's henchman. The immigration official took one look at my passport and laughed. "Byron Cole?" he asked in surprise. I laughed and said "Yo lo se! Yo lo se!"  (I know!  I know!)  He looked again, laughed, and with a mock scowl gestured to the departing gates and said "Byron Cole -- Out!".  We laughed together as he stamped my passport.

When I finally did get to the passenger arrival area, however, there was no embarrassing sign, and presumably no Gustavo.  I waited and waited, and waited for about 45 minutes, and still no sign and still no Gustavo.  I began to panic.  While I knew how to get to Granada, I had no idea of how to get to Casa Diamante (this was my first visit since my sister bought and restored the house,) nor did I know the address of Casa Diamante and I had no telephone number!

I called my father's mobile phone.  No answer.  I called my sister's mobile phone. No answer.  Finally, I called my sister's home and talked to Leo, my brother-in-law, who gave me basic directions to Casa Diamante (assuming you were in Granada, some 50 minutes away.)  I also managed somehow to connect to free Wi-Fi at the airport and to send my father an SOS by email describing my predicament.

I attracted a covey of interested and opportunistic taxi drivers when I made it known that I needed to go to Granada but didn't quite know where I was going.  One, in particular, seemed most enterprising and allowed  that he could take me to Granada. We wrote down the directions that Leo had given me and off we went.

In the meantime my father had received my email, responded to it, and had also posted a message on my Facebook timeline to the effect that Gustavo was waiting for me at the airport.  By that time I was long out of Wi-Fi  range, however, and was quite literally bouncing along the roads from Managua to Granada with terrifying abandon at equally terrifying speeds.   I did try to call my father's mobile a couple more times, but still without an answer.

Finally, and breathlessly, we reached Granada and made our way to the center of town.  We tried to find Casa Diamante by following Leo's directions and by asking questions at every turn, to little avail.  Just when I was on the verge of entirely giving up hope, my cell phone rang.  It was my sister, in Seattle!  She had seen my father's posting on Facebook and had decided to intervene.  She talked us, street by street,  to Casa Diamante, revealing to me in the process that my enterprising taxi driver had absolutely no clue where he was and no familiarity with Granada in general.  Casa Diamante, as it turns out, doesn't have an address, just a location (which is why, I suppose, addresses are direcciones in Spanish.)

Four things I learned from this experience:  (1)  My Spanish, while not yet fluent, is now good enough for me to make my wants and needs known and good enough to negotiate complicated problems.  (2)  It is a testament to technology that my sister could guide me through the streets of Granada, Nicaragua while in Seattle, Washington. (3) Make sure you know the house cell phone number of the place you're going (there was a house number, but nobody had bothered to give it to me)  and that your father hasn't left his cell phone at home in Seattle. Finally, (4)  make sure you have your times of arrival agreed upon!

I am here.  I am drinking a cervesa and life is still good.