LOOKING BACK ACROSS THE RIO NEGRO.
We had descended to the bridge by a track which might claim to have been made for the passage of men and animals, but the ascent next morning on the northern side of the valley could boast of no such mark of civilization. The tracks, if such they could be called, were numerous and confused, and had been formed by mules, cattle, and Indians wandering about in all directions seeking a firm foothold amongst the loose stones and slippery rocks. Our animals were suffering from want of food, and we left them to scramble up by themselves; the unshod mules, although they made many halts, easily distanced the horse, whose iron shoes clattered in uneasy jerks over the loose stones. We ourselves were not inclined to hurry, as the ascent on foot was very tedious, and we were glad of the halts, which gave us time to enjoy the beautiful views across the gorge and to watch the breeze ripple along the velvety slopes on the far side of the river, and turn the grass from green to gold and gold to green again. This ever-changing background seemed only to intensify the blue-green of the isolated pine-trees which clung to the steep slopes and helped to make up a landscape as quaint and delicate in colour as it was beautiful in outline.
We clambered up about 3000 feet, and then mounting our animals rode over the ridge and found ourselves amongst rolling hills almost bare of grass, but supporting here and there rugged-looking ocote pines, and in every sheltered nook a frangipani-tree with its bare fleshy branches tipped with glorious bunches of yellow and white blossoms. After riding for an hour or more through this desert we stopped for breakfast by the edge of a ravine where the Indians knew of a spring hidden away in a scrubby thicket. Then we continued our gradual ascent, and the oaks and pines increased in number until they formed patches of woodland. Great bunches of mistletoe of various sorts—green and orange and brown—were conspicuous amongst the oak-leaves, and the branches of the trees were laden with clusters of orchids and tillandsias. My companions gathered for me beautiful sprays of orchid blossom and gorgeous crowns of crimson leaves which surround the flowering spikes of the tillandsias, and these, added to the bunches of frangipani we had plucked on the arid hillsides and fresh green sprigs of lycopodium, overflowed the mouths of my saddle-bags and formed a decoration to my saddle that would have been the envy of Covent Garden.
As we rode on, the marked difference in colour between the north and south sides of the hills began to disappear; a green tinge was spread over the whole. Then a turn in the track showed the main range in front of us covered with dark forest to the summit and dotted here and there with bright green patches where the Indians had made their plantations. Heavy clouds hung over the mountain-tops, marking the edge of the rainfall which deluges the country to the north up to the end of February. A short descent brought us to the bank of a brilliantly clear stream, an affluent of the Rio Negro, and half an hour later we rode into the straggling village of San Miguel Uspantan, lying at the foot of the forest-clad sierra. The Alcalde allotted us a room in the convento, which had been swept and garnished with a fresh carpet of pine-needles in expectation of the arrival of the Jefe Político of the Department of Quiché.
At Uspantan we were on the borders of the unknown, for to the north of us the map shows nothing but uninhabited mountains and forests, and rivers whose courses have only recently been traced flowing towards the land of the untamed Lacandones. In the 16th and 17th centuries both military and missionary expeditions penetrated these forests, but the memory of them has faded away, and to learn their history one has to hunt through the monkish chronicles or dive into the mountains of manuscript stored in the archives at Seville. The recent additions to the map are due to the interminable boundary disputes with Mexico, and are the result of much hard work on the part of survey expeditions led by Professor Rockstroh and Mr. Miles Rock, which were attended by much suffering and loss of life.
Our room in the convento was only a monk’s cell, windowless, and infested with rats and mice. It opened into a long gallery, with a kitchen at one end and at the other a door leading into the church. The monks had of course long ago disappeared from the scene, and at the present time there is not even a cura resident in the village. One of the cells was used as a school for girls who were taught by a Ladino woman. There was much interest taken in us by these queer-looking scholars, clad in white huipils and blue enaguas, who fluttered about us like frightened birds, we being probably the first of our kind they had ever seen.
The little village was in no way pretty, but the climate was exceedingly pleasant, the blossoms on the orange-trees in the plaza filled the air with perfume, the green hills round us were refreshing to look at, and our tired animals fared sumptuously. Our housekeeping was of the usual primitive kind; we set up our dining-table in the gallery, and cooked our food at a fire on the ground just outside. The kitchen of the convento was closed and we were refused the use of it, but on the third day of our stay several bustling Ladino women took possession of it, kindled big fires, put on huge pots to boil, and set to work to pluck and prepare numberless fowls, all in anticipation of the Jefe’s visit. Whilst these matters were in progress down swooped an angry company of Indian “mayores,” the town councillors of the Indian Municipality, who for some minutes stood at the kitchen door and pelted the cooks with hard-sounding words, which in their monosyllabic language seemed literally to fly from their mouths like peas from a boy’s pea-shooter. It was a question of firewood: someone had clearly stolen somebody else’s firewood, but who stole whose and how the matter was settled we never knew; however, the cooks seemed to have the best of it, for, after the charge was made, all talked at once for the space of ten minutes at the top of their voices, and then the “mayores” retired, looking more important and superior than when they arrived.
The preparations for the Jefe and his party seemed to exhaust the food-supply of the village, and nothing more could be bought; but luckily we had bespoken a turkey on the day we arrived, and a magnificent bird he looked, when just as we were starting on a ramble, we met him being led home in triumph by our boys, Caralampio having hold of the extreme end of one outstretched wing, and Santos of the other, whilst the turkey paced solemnly between them. When we returned from our walk we found our household with their heads together in deep consultation; the turkey had been killed and plucked, but there was no pot big enough in which to cook him. Cooked he must be that night, so he was set up on end in the largest pot we possessed and one end of him was cooked first, then he was turned over and we cooked the other end. After that he was cut up and grilled over the embers, and very excellent he proved to be.
As soon as we had settled down in our headquarters we began to make diligent enquiry about the existence and position of ruined Indian buildings. All sorts of answers had been given to our questions. Some said that there were ruins five leagues distant, others that they were just over the hill, and others that they were to be found in all directions; and the latter were probably right. However, it was settled to look first of all for those said to be close by, so my husband and Gorgonio left me alone at the convento and started off one morning along the spur of the hill which runs out into the valley to the west. They walked about a mile and a half without seeing any trace of mounds and were nearly giving up the search in that direction, as the end of the ridge appeared to be so near, when they noticed that the shrubs in front of them covered an artificial mound, and that there was a dip in the ground between them and it. This dip proved to be a ditch, which may originally have been twenty feet deep, cut across the narrow neck of the ridge, and a long steep-sided mound barred the passage on the other side. Beyond this mound the top of the hill broadened out again into an extent of ground nearly the same as that of the site of Utatlan, and almost the whole of it was covered with foundation mounds. There was a small plaza with a temple mound at the east side of it, and an altar mound in front of the temple. In some cases the foundations retained part of their casing of well-dressed stone and cement facing. In position and arrangement the ruins differed little from those at Iximché and Utatlan, and the town, surrounded as it is by deep valleys with precipitous sides, must have been almost impregnable.