Tobacco planters stopped there too, going
down to Portate. Men from the ships in the harbour came out, and
carried off advertisements of the hotel, and plastered the coast with
them. I saw an advertisement of the "Hotel Helen Mar" ten years after
in a shipping office in San Francisco, and it read:
"Hotel Helen Mar, Portate, Peru. Mountain and Sea Breezes. Board and
Lodging Good and Reasonable. Sailor's Snug Harbour. Welcome Jolly
Tar. Thomas Buckingham and Stephen Todd."
That was for foreign patronage. The home advertisements were in
Spanish and went up country with the mule trains. Up in the Andes
they knew more about the Hotel Helen Mar than they did of the
Peruvian Government. We ran the hotel to surprise South America.
It was nearly a year before we heard from the ship's owners, though
we sent them the proper papers; and then a man came out, and looked
at the _Helen Mar_, and says:
"I guess she belongs where she is. Running a hotel, are you?" and he
carried off the sails and other rigging.
She was propped up at first only by the bunch of fruit trees, but
by-and-by we bedded her in stones. We painted a sign across her forty
feet long, but cut no doors, because a seaman won't treat a ship that
way.
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