>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. [ Silence ] >> Greetings. My name is Marylou Ricker and on behalf of the Library of Congress' Office of Scholarly Programs and the John W. Kluge Center, I welcome you to a lecture today by Dr. Hector Leyva Carlas entitled "Marvelous Country, Precious and Horrible: Honduras through Travel Literature Writing from the Nineteenth Century." Dr. Leyva Carlas received his PhD in Hispanic Philology with a specialization in Hispanic-American Literature, Cum Laude from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is now a Professor of Literature and Chair of the Department of Literature and Linguistics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras. His work focuses on the history of Honduran Literature and bridges the worlds of history and literature. Dr. Leyva Carlas has published widely on many aspects of literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. His work includes studies of colonial texts from the 16th through the 18th century, collections of 19th century Honduran poetry, and work on the oral literature of the indigenous peoples of Honduras. He has written or edited for example, Imaginary Underground: Literary and Cultural Studies in Honduras, published by Plural [phonetic] in 2009. Selected poetry manuscripts by Antonio-- excuse me-- Jose Antonio Dominguez in 2008, and the stories, The Lights on The Roof of The Church from 1742, and the added flapper from 1747 by Antonio de Paz Salgado in the year 2006. A few months ago, Dr. Leyva Carlas came to the Library of Congress in a full bright fellowship to focus his research on the history of a Honduran travel literature, a special aspect of his broader study of Honduran literature. Today, you will learn more about his research and I hope you will help me welcome him, Professor Hector Leyva Carlas. [ Applause ] Welcome. [Laughter] Oh, may I say one other thing. At the end, there will questions, but your asking a question constitutes your permission for it to be recorded and broadcast through the library's website. [ Pause ] >> Good evening everyone. It is a pleasure and an honor to me-- for me to be here. I have prepared my lecture as a PowerPoint presentation so you can follow it in the monitor. I hope you enjoy it and bear with me if I make any mistakes since this is my first lecture in English. Acknowledgment, I would like to thank all the staff at the John Kluge Center who supported my research project and granted me access to the invaluable resources at the Library of Congress. Special thanks to Carolyn Brown and Marylou Ricker who conduct the center so well, and also to my colleague researches with whom I share long hours at the library. I also thank Elizabeth Gettins from whom I receive guidance and advice, and Alicia Robertson who assisted me in everyday issues. I also wish to thank the Fulbright Program for funding my project, and everyone who helped make this scholarship a reality. Jake Silva from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars in Washington DC, and very especially Karla Castaneda from the US Embassy in Honduras. Objectives, my work initiative with the purpose of identifying and gathering books written by travelers to Honduras as well as theory about travel writing. During the three months of my research, I found most of the books which is in itself of great interest since many of them are unknown in my country. I also gathered important classical and recent literature about my subject in order to develop some interpretation guidelines. I am still in the process of reading and analyzing all these materials, but I believe that when I conclude my work, it will give a new public and academic interest on travel writing, therefore, stimulating and increasing its reading with a more critical eye. Why history, travel writing? We understand by travel writings those which gathered the experience, observations, impression of someone who lived or crossed through a foreign country. Even if some of these books generally contain scientific and technical information that could be useful to historian or other scientist, this information is often interspersed with opinions and very subjective reaction. It can be said that the information in travel books is contingent, referred to singular subjects and moment whose images were immediately consumed by time, resembling their ephemeral art or sand drawings. We could also say that travel writings are part of the expansionist intentions of the great metropolis as they integrate it through the reviews, all peripheral territories like military or American chiefs did, those country were willing to establish a colonial order in the world. If travel writing does not reflect reality faithfully, but instead adds nuances to it, if the visions the writer rendered were ephemeral and born from a foreigner, often [inaudible] colonial interest in our point of view. And if we also see this document as a part of the history of the traveler's nation, what importance lies in recovering them from the perspective of the visited countries? It is difficult to answer that question imparted in such a way since the answers are for traveler in advance. In fact, we can say that the importance of recovering this literature is the same as the one discovered by recovering any other document from an archive to initiate a debate about the meaning and representations of the past, to infer what these books really tell us, decide how much we can believe, excuse me, what deserves to be remembered, and what should preferably stay forgotten. This analysis is linked to the post-colonial criticism of documents about peripheral countries and also to the intention of consolidating views on constructive historic memory through understanding both foreign actors and local realities. Review of Travel Writing through Honduras. The first travel writings in English about Honduras have distinctly imperial portraits associated to the interest of England to settle in the Honduran territory, A Journey Over Land, From the Gulf of Honduras to the Great South Sea, 1735, by John Cockburn, is the survival account of a pirate who crossed the country while in a spying mission. Memoir of the Mosquito Territory, 1808, by John Wright is the record of an officer of the British crown scouting for the possibilities of founding a colony in the wild course of the country. Narrative of a Residence on the Mosquito Shore, 1847, by Thomas Young, is the account of the stay of an official of the British Land Company and his journey through the cities and port of Spanish Honduras. By the 19th century, American Travel Books replaced British ones, reflecting a mixture of economic interest, scientific descriptions, and personal emotion. Incidence of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 1841, by John Lloyd Stephens, is the narrative of the discovery of the Mayan ruins of Copan, written in a romantic style during the sensitivity and points of view, characteristic of the period. George Ephraim Squier, Ambassador to Central America and Head Officer of the Interoceanic Railroad Project, wrote two very different books. Our country's technical scientific reports, Notes on Central America: Particularly the States of Honduras and San Salvador, 1855, and a lyrical novel based on his travels through the jungle, Waikna or the Adventures on the Mosquito Shore, 1855. Exploration and Adventures in Honduras, 1857, by William Wells, combined his investigation to establish mining exploitation with his perceptions about people, towns, and cities visited. Mary Lester, an Australian Catholic teacher wrote A Lady's Ride Across Honduras, 1884. She narrated her journey through the country making general observation about Hondurans and expressing her criticism towards foreigners like herself. Cecil Charles, the now forgotten novelist who wrote in 1890, Honduras: The Land of the Great Depth, the title translates the name of the country, combines his impeccable literally style with a more simple one to offer both the account of the journey and a guide for investors and employees of American companies. I could identify 41 books of travelers through Honduras, most of them written by American and British authors from the 19th and early 20th century. I found two books before 19th century, 21 books from the 19th century, 17 from the 20th century, one from the 21st century, for a total of 41 books. Concerning the language, I found 20 books in American English, eight in British English, four in Spanish, three German, three French, three in Italian, one in Polish, one in Russian. And I found 36 books out of 41 in the Library of Congress, almost all the books are in the library. With few exceptions, most of the books are available at the Library of Congress of the United States. The aesthetics of representations, history travel literature certainly involves an aesthetic operation since as antiquities, they are objects from older times that even if they were not created with an artistic intention are therefore our contemplation. We acknowledge the artistry of their illustrations, style, stories, and reflections. Due to this aesthetical quality, travel books deal with deep dimension of the human condition with particular representation of the writer's own identity and that of the others, as well as their distinctive ways to live in the world to interpret it and to feel it. Travel writings have the singularity of covering contact areas. This text fled the comfort zone of the traveler in attempt to describe and understand the places of the others, their customs, their landscapes. In the process, the traveler defines himself on his country of origin as he becomes aware of other places and other people. Illusive reality, nothing is more difficult, however, than to a picture a foreign land in an unfamiliar language to capture its uniqueness and render all the sparkles of different fortune within another cultural tradition. When travelers are ensured to having accomplished the most accurate description, they often fall into common place and cliche. However, when the author hesitates and their impression become ambiguous and they lack the right words, it's probably when they are the closest to reality they intend to describe. The picturesque, Jessica Dubois finds that travel writing participate on an aesthetic of picturesque according to which the visited sites are pleasant and desirable, precisely because the subject makes them fit into places and situation familiar to him or her. Picturesque means that the landscape or a person looks like taking from a picture or that they have an artistic appearance. What is natural seems artificial, a granary looks like a garden and people resemble literary characters. A scene will be picturesque in a travel book if it'd resemble our now and one. Well, by then, the character or the new landscape will have been possible or even disappear as if they were absorbed into the language and cultural background of the travelers. The picturesque will then be a way of representation that allows the observant to the cultural frames of the observer through pleasant and attractive images. [ Pause ] And I will read a certain fragments from the books to illustrate these aesthetics. Dawn brought slowly out of the soft obscurity, for after the storm there was the infinite quietude of a moonless tropical night, a sweet and smiling picture, Tigre Island with its splendid verdure, its sunlit shores inviting to a new world. All the splendid freshness of the morning pours in and blinds you for the moment. You stand there dazzled by the beauty of the heavens; you draw long, delicious breaths. Oh, this is weather that they might have in Paradise. The houses are built even with the street, and the patios or inner court-yards are very large, and usually contain beautiful gardens with orange and pomegranate trees. When a family gives a ball, the patio is lighted with Japanese lanterns, and serves as a conservatory for lovers Precious country, one of the typical representations of Honduras in travel writing is the picturesque. The country has a benign climate, the landscapes are amazing, the natives have kind manners, and nature is splendid. Nevertheless, sometimes travelers make Honduras seem as the complete opposite, awful and impetuous climate, empty on sovereign landscapes, criminal natives and most merciless on mortal nature. Just like any other place, the country truly offered, it still does, many angles on human and natural realities. The ultimate reality and its essential identity eludes us, yet it is still possible to conceive an alternative reading that would follow these roots of friction, contradiction, and misalignments between the traveler's cultural frames and the realities before him. [ Pause ] The only time I really suffered from hating Honduras, the only truly memorable time was down by the River Ulua at the mid-north, sitting under a huge lemon tree. Just at that spot, by the house of the ferry man to whom we shall come in on after chapter, the road curves so that there is not passage of air. There was not a breath astir that day; the sun was hot, suffocatingly hot. I sat motionless with perspiration oozing from every pore, and the hot huge lemons fell around me as if themselves overcome. Grotesque is the opposite of picturesque, the extremely ugly graceless repugnant or brutal. According to Wolfgang Kayser in the realm of the grotesque, a familiar and apparently harmonious environment is altered by-- of these small forces that chapter its coherence in the kingdom of spawns and monsters. The traveler confronted to uncomfortable situation that repel or attack him accentuates the conquest, distorts or exaggerates them, thus, new realities observed are transfigured to enter the hallucinatory and nightmares. The grotesque expressed the overflow of cultural frames with images Horrible country. Entering the woods, the umbrella struck against the branches of the trees and frightened the mule, and while I was endeavoring to close it, she fairly ran away with me. Having only a halter, I could not hold her, and, knocking me against the branches, she ran through the woods, splashed into the river, missing the fording-place, and never stopped till she was breast-deep. The river was swollen and angry, and the rain pouring down. Rapids were forming a short distance below. The rain fell as it fall as floodgates were opening from above. And while my mule was sleeping and sliding It was necessary to enter the woods on the right. I had come out by a foot-path which I had not noticed particularly. There were cattle-paths in every direction, and within the line of a mile I kept going in and out, without hitting the right one. Several times I saw the print of Augustin's feet, but soon lost them in puddles of water, and they only confused me more; at length I came to a complete standstill. It was nearly dark; I did not know which way to turn. And as Mr. Henry Pelham did when in danger of drowning in one of the gutters of Paris, I stood still and halloed. Mr. C. was in his hammock, and I was half undressed, when the door was suddenly burst open, and twenty-five or thirty men rushed in, the alcalde, alguazils, soldiers, Indians, and Mestitzoes, ragged and ferocious-looking fellows, and armed with staves of office, swords, clubs, muskets, and machetes, and carrying blazing pine sticks. Their whole stock of wearing apparel was not worth a pair of old boots; and with their rags, their arms, their dark faces reddened by the firelight, their appearance was ferocious and doubtless, if we had attempted to escape, they would have been glad Sublime. [ Pause ] Sometimes, travelers impression are so extreme either terrible or beautiful that they seem otherworldly. These astonishment before the extraordinary raptures their feelings on imagination contra poses that the sublime as the absolutely run exceeding all measure of perception associating it to the idea of infinite. The scenery and landscapes subjugate travelers overwhelming their cultural frames and come out in the writing as fantastic almost religious images of rally. [ Pause ] But architecture, sculpture, and painting, all the arts which embellish life, have flourished in this overgrown forest; orators, warriors, and statesmen, beauty, ambition, and glory had lived and passed away, and no one know that such things had been, or could tell of their past existence. Books, the record of knowledge, are silent on this theme. The city was desolate. No remnant of this race hangs around the ruins with tradition handed down from father to son and from generation to generation. It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name effaced, her crew perished, and no one to tell when she came or whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction. Of the moral effect of the monument themselves, standing as they do in the depths of a tropical forest, silent and solemn, strange in design, excellent in sculpture, rich in ornament, different from the work of any other people, their uses on purposes, their whole history so entirely unknown with hieroglyphics explaining all, but perfectly unintelligible, I shall not pretend to convey any idea. Often the imagination was pained in gazing at them. The trees which shroud it may have sprung from the blood of its slaughtered inhabitants. They may have perished howling with hunger or pestilence, like the cholera may have piled its streets with dead and driven forever the feeble remnants from their homes of which dire calamities to other cities we have authentic accounts. One thing I believe that its history is graven on its monuments. No Champollion has yet brought to them the energies of his inquiring mind. Who shall read them? Chaos of ruins! Who shall trace the void, o'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, and say, "Here was or is" where all is doubly night? [ Pause ] The sublime is the experience of absolutely beauty, as state of intense emotion and expansion of one's imaginations. It gives the subject the impression of participating of the war as a whole and somehow in the essence of the universe. The country that in other occasion can seem miserable to human or terrain, seems to prompt spiritual experiences through the images conveyed by the traveler's antechamber of the heaven. [ Pause ] Marvelous. Night, under the tropics, falls like a curtain. The sun goes down with a glow, intense, but brief. There are no soft and lingering twilight adieus, and stars lighting up one by one. They come, a laughing group, trooping over the skies, like bright-eyed children relieved from school. Reflected in the lagoon, they seemed to chase each other in amorous play, printing sparkling kisses on each other's luminous lips. The low shores, lined with the heavy-foliaged mangroves, looked like a frame of massive, antique carving, around the vast mirror of the lagoon, across whose surface streamed a silvery shaft of light from the evening star, palpitating like a young bride, low in the horizon. Then there were whispered "voices of the night," the drowsy winds talking themselves to sleep among the trees, and the little ripples of the lagoon pattering with liquid feet along the sandy shore. The distant monotonous beatings of the sea, and an occasional sullen plunge of some marine animal, which served to open momentarily the eyelids drooping in slumbrous sympathy with the scene-- these were the elements which entranced me during the long, delicious hours of my first evening, alone with Nature, on the Mosquito Shore. Towards an alternative reading. Travel providers tend to organize their work in different rhetoric styles that allow them to communicate their experience while transforming their reference. Out of gazing at the country, the experience of the subject will always be in the foreground. People on landscapes are out of focus or all side of the referential frames of this course. Stripped from the ethic of rhetorical frames, all there is left is a myriad of different and contradictory process of a country that could never contain them all as a unity, multiple pieces of a puzzle, each searching for their own sense within the radically heterogeneous ensemble. [ Pause ] We couldn't say that the images offered travel book are false but neither could they be taken as truthful. We could not assert the interpretational frames of traveler as the ultimate true nor could we replace them entirely with others completely alien to the text. For Paul de Man, a reading is possible yet not serving the aporia of language by traveling in and out of the text taking into consideration external reference and mental representation on the truth and fanciful intrinsic to all expressions. This particular reading will renounce to definitive explanation and will be satisfied by permitting the race of a new sense. A plausible reading that could be productive and generate another text, a reading such as the one we have initiated here today. [ Applause ] Thank you. Okay, I would show you some of the pictures taken [ Pause ] I will just show the picture because I'm not a specialist in this kind of-- but they are very nice and we want to share it with you. This is Tegucigalpa, the capital of country. [ Pause ] Pictures of the weather that could be nice, but it could be foggy also. This is a storm in the mountain. [ Pause ] Honduras has a lot of mountains. This is one of the presidents of Honduras. This is our beaches. We have nice beaches in the [inaudible]. The mangroves, who has seen that before? I have more. [ Pause ] The birds, beauty and [inaudible] at the same time. This man is the king of Mosquito kingdom. [ Pause ] The beaches. The moonlight. The natives. [ Pause ] Another grotesque person from the Mosquito Coast. [ Pause ] How beautiful. It's not a princess, it's a kind of [inaudible] of the Indians. The rivers. [ Pause ] I have just four more about Copan. The drawing type from Frederick Catherwood and the book of John Lloyd Stephen that we have read sometime. It's the way they found the Copan ruins. [ Pause ] Mr. Frederick Catherwood, first he draw the-- he's drawing with pencil, but after in London, he prepared a colored version of his works. [ Pause ] This is a fantastic view because you see they aren't-- it's not like the original drawing that Frederick Catherwood did. He recreated the same-- in this picture and it could be seen in this that he put many artifact that about the world, person, And that's it. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Noise ] Do you have any question? I can do my best to answer you. >> Of the 41 books that you've looked at, how many of those were-- would have been available in Honduras for example? >> Well, very few. >> For example-- >> For example, the John Lloyd Stephens books, we can read it in Honduras, and Vincent William Wales, we have translation in Honduras. I see diff-- maybe seven books we can read in Honduras, but in the library-- even in the libraries in Honduras, we cannot read the books. We have a normal edition of John Lloyd Stephens and William Wales, we can read it. A couple of them, the people know in Honduras, but most of them, no. >> Do you have a [inaudible] there were not more books in Spanish about Honduras? Is there a reason for that? >> Yes, because the travelers where from British, from the United States. >> But there weren't Spanish travelers going to Honduras? >> No, we don't have Spanish travelers from Honduras-- to Honduras. It's a good question. Granting that the [inaudible] deals with-- that travel book as a genre is common from England. The travel book is a genre developed in the-- and they traveled from England to Europe since the 16th century-- 18th century. It was a kind of book to-- that reflect the education of the person in the main Europe and it gives them the framework of the genre and when the 19th century came, the travelers goes to the exotic places and the main intention in the beginning was to learn, to create a text about their experiences. I think that's the reason that the travel book is a genre from the English language. >> So, you examined exclusively works written about Honduras as opposed to travel works that included Honduras with other localities that people have interest in. >> I have only a studio. I don't hardly collect the books. On Honduras, there are many books about Central America in which there are part that could deal with Honduras, but I-- there are so many. [Inaudible Remark] Yes, I have the-- [ Inaudible Remarks ] >> Also, on labeling on the illustrations of some of the found sculptures as being behind all this has subsequent research shown that they were not necessarily objects of [inaudible] or, you know, it's not a supposition that reflects the [inaudible] inclinations of the [inaudible] >> Well, I don't understand what your question, but are you asking if these are idols? >> They're labeled as idols in-- >> In the books of the 19th century, but they're-- >> Subsequently, we have found that they weren't necessary-- >> No, they are not idols. >> They could have been-- >> No, they are not idols. >> Catherwood's-- >> Yes. >> -- and other-- >> Yes, it's the way that Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens interpret those artifacts, but they-- actually the archeologist is telling us that these persons were kings, kings of the sea. And the city keeps the images of the-- this Stelae, is the correct name of those idols. This Stelae represents the kingdoms of the sea. And the hieroglyphs and the size of the Stelae tell the story of each of these kings. That's the actual, you know, interpretation of those. [ Inaudible Remarks ] Excuse me, I can't hear you. Are you asking-- >> I'm sorry. The question was, with the naming, with, you know, [inaudible] did most of these authors have some sort of discussion on Mosquitos in area, you know, the-- >> If they have a discussion about the Mosquito? >> Yeah. >> In many of the books? >> Yeah. I was just wondering, did the authors comment on the presence or maybe the [inaudible] of Mosquitos to a state where it was called the Mosquito Coast? >> Yes. Well, it's [inaudible]. There are two kinds of travelers: the traveler who crosses the country by the Spanish country, you know, which is the main country in the center of the territory; and the travelers who prefers to travel by the Mosquito Coast. It was wild and it was populated by the Mosquitos and other indigenous people in that area. The attracting-- we're different because the traveler who travels by the center of the county, maybe they are looking for the mining, they are looking for-- they have economic interest and so. But the travelers who used to go to the Mosquito Coast, they were looking for the pure indigenous cultures. They were upset with the civilization and they were looking for the pure indigenous culture, but what they found in the Mosquito Coast, the Mosquito, it was a very syncretic people which came from the mixtures of black American, indigenous people, even English pirates, and so they used to dress as we see in the images with clothes from Europe and so on. And they were not so pure as they want. But they were indigenous like the princess or the chamana chaya that conserves the original customs and the way of dressing and then all the mythologies and-- that the travelers prefers down the Mosquito. So, the travelers wrote about the peoples on the Mosquito Coast a lot and they were fascinated with this possibility of a state of race or something like that of the indigenous in that area. >> Do you have sense for, as specific to Honduras-- [ Inaudible Remark ] -- or not, I don't know, but could you-- >> Yes. >> -- give me a sense of that. >> I see that-- well, I'm dealing with Honduras, but I am trying to say that they will happen in any place. The kind of aesthetic, we use to see the travel books are like the clear representation of the places, but it is not the way, not for Honduras, not for any other place. So, I'm researching on Honduran books, but I'm thinking of the travel books as a genre. I think Honduras is out of focus. I'm saying here, but if you are going to watch [inaudible] also, but in the betweenness of what we are thinking, many that are interesting things to reflect, to think about that could be interesting because I don't see that the Honduran, the travelers books, the-- no, the books about Honduras were the same about Guatemala, maybe they are different. So many different about the book, maybe don't cash them that is-- we will have general issues, cliches which will be repeated in many place. >> On that point, I've seen John Lloyd Stephens writings on the scripts to the Middle East and they're-- and clearly, his previously conceived images of [inaudible] descriptions of what you were seeing and that's why I ask you about the idols because it reflected a certain bias [inaudible] context. >> Yes, see, John Lloyd Stephens, first he went to Egypt and they have a very nice book on the pyramids and those stuff and he-- when he arrived at-- to Copan, he compared the city of Copan with the cities in Egypt. >> Okay. >> Wow. [Laughter] I don't know how to-- [Inaudible Remarks] >> All right. [Laughter] All right, let me [inaudible]. I have two questions actually. One is, given that anyone who comes to another culture and carries the bias of their own culture, it's just like for a speaker of a second language, there is the inclinations of their first culture. Is there ever a place in travel literature where that bias can be removed? Or is it always there? Is it possible for someone who was-- who left the country when they were 10 or 12 to come back and have that bias removed, not [inaudible] through which they see that the other or is it always going to be there? >> It's always going to be there because it's the way that we interpret the world. Even if we write about our own country, we will have our bias because the reality is never-- and that's the premise of [inaudible] premise of [inaudible] frame of this research is that the language, the way of writing, all we see is altered in what we see. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Yeah, you're right, maybe I haven't considered the-- [ Inaudible Remark ] Yeah. Maybe I haven't considered the audience, but the audience is always pressing the writer, because the writer is-- in writing to an audience, not for the country that he is-- I don't know. >> Do you have a cellphone? >> Yes. >> [Inaudible] I have to get people to turn off all your cellphones. Maybe they have phone calls anyway. Yes, I think the audience is pressing the writer and it's very interesting that when the writer is annoyed, when the writer couldn't understand what's he's watching, he doesn't have the words and I-- in one of the images. And they are the very interesting parts of the books, where they don't have the words, they don't have to-- if it is correct to say this to the audience, but when he permit it to write about-- even-- don't seem that he is hesitating, it's very interesting. And it's very interesting to us. I will give you all an example. A traveler looks at an Indian servant and would make a fit. And he doesn't know how to interpret this because it's not just the custom, it's also a sign of a political and social status of this person. And he doesn't know how to behave with this. And he permitting, he's writing to think about it, and it's very interesting for us because it deals with the political situation, it deals with culture and everything. When the traveler doesn't have the words, when he is asking himself what does he mean, I mean, the traveler doesn't know if he's-- if it mentioned this thing could be good or not for the audience, or for the-- even for the country. I think that there are the-- there are triangle with the audience as your are just saying and maybe when the [inaudible] are not feeding well is with the audience or with the content, it's when the-- they have interesting scenes. >> Have you found any evidence of how would policy of the other nation having been informed by the-- these travel books because-- and then feeding back into Honduras? >> Not public policy, but see in private interest, the books on mining on Honduras, there are a lot of books of mining because it's a country of mining, even today. And the interest of the traveler were to explore and to report this and the other main interest to go to Honduras were the canal. Before the Panama Canal were built and the travelers goes to [inaudible] were possible to build the canal across Honduras. And they were interest by-- most private interest than, [ Inaudible Remark ] Yes, the authors are-- the Honduran authors will-- they will begin to write in the 20th century, the first decade of the 20th and they will react about some of the issues that these books left unwritten. Yes, there will be the-- but something very interesting when I-- or the story for me when I read more, that these books, these travel books was that there were-- this picturesque here, aesthetic that I'm mentioning is-- it was new for me because I expected more grotesque aesthetic that this picturesque, I'm sorry, the travelers tends to deal with the content very, very well. So, they write it in Honduras, doesn't have to react necessarily because the image of what's [inaudible] most of the time. But there were other parts and I haven't mentioned it here, very hard, resist-- very hard that the Honduran writer will contest in the beginning of the next century. [ Inaudible Remark ] Yes, but I haven't studied it very well because I am just reading the 19th century, but the 20th century is interesting. The books of the 20th century has ecological interest in the country. They went there to do bird watching and to take pictures of the [inaudible], is not economic interest. They don't want to write a novel or something literary, but they are interested in the natural expression, and in the [inaudible] accounts of the people's but more in the scientific way than the romantic traveler because the movie, the television and everything are fitted with these kind of aesthetic that we read in the traveler's books. And it's interesting, in the 21st century, now, the latest books are very interesting because there are people who are going to Honduras to-- wait, I have one or two books, but I'm remembering one, is a student from the state that he went to Honduras to think about the world, the destiny of the world. He's on an educational trip, but he is thinking about what will happen with third world, with the poor people in the world holds his life and what he wants to do is to think on that. It's very interesting, not to create a literary novel, but to develop even a philosophical reflection on it. It's very interesting, the book. And so-- but there are so many. We have one or two books of those kind. >> Thank you, Dr. Leyva Carlas,-- >> Thank you too. >> -- very much for your presentation today. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.