The forty-six thousand acres over which the property extends contains mountain, forest, and plain, and a splendid supply of running-water. A little town of Indian and Negro labourers and attendants near the convent walls was doubtless governed on the paternal system so dear to the monks, who in the old days brooked little interference from the secular arm. Probably the English proprietor reaped the benefit from this state of affairs, and for some years he had obedient workmen and the estate yielded large profits. Then followed disputes amongst his heirs, changes of management, and law-suits. Meanwhile the serfs of the monkish rule were beginning to learn and to abuse their independence; squabbles arose between town and hacienda, and a feud gradually sprang up which has never died out. But quite lately the crisis became acute; Indians and half-castes had squatted in the outlying portions of the property and played havoc with timber and game, incendiary fires were of constant occurrence, irrigation ditches were damaged and cattle mutilated; finally, a mob from the town wantonly burned down the sugar-mill and attacked the overseer in charge. When matters reached this stage the proprietors placed their case in the hands of the English Minister at Guatemala, and after some negotiation the Government (who knew that its own officials in the town had aided and abetted in the attacks) was induced to settle the question by turning the squatters out of the land and paying an indemnity of $14,000 to the owners, and by purchasing from them a part of the estate on which to settle some of the townspeople; whilst the owners on their part, for certain considerations, ceded to the townspeople the church—one of the possessions mostly fought over, although its use for religious services had never been interfered with—and all town land and houses. During the riots one of the managers of the estate lost a finger, and a townsman who was caught in the act of mutilating cattle was shot dead.
We were assigned a monk’s rooms opening into a gallery in that part of the convent said to be haunted by ghosts; but no unearthly visitors molested us. The room was windowless, and light was admitted by opening the upper half of the door, when we gained a lovely view over the plain and the rolling hills to the distant purple mountains. In the foreground were waving green cornfields, coffee-bushes, and bananas, and immediately below us was a garden filled with orange-trees laden with fruit and blossom. The softest of summer breezes wafted up to us the scent of the flowers, and the tinkle of the fountain filled the air with a gentle murmur. Next morning we wandered round the small town and visited some of the distilleries for which it is famous; for at the hacienda itself no distillation is done, only a “panela” or low-grade sugar is made, which is sold to the owners of the small distilleries, and from this panela it is that the Puro de San Gerónimo is made. As we passed through the streets we could not help observing what a strong strain of Negro blood there was amongst the people; and it is possibly this mixture of races which has made the townspeople so difficult to deal with, for in all the disputes between town and hacienda there seems to have been an assertion and initiative on the part of the people unlike the usual passive stubbornness of the pure-blooded Indian.
Our haste to reach Copan obliged us to decline the pressing invitation of our hosts to prolong our stay, but rather to accept with gratitude their offer of mules and an arriero for the journey to Zacapa, about sixty-three miles distant. We set out next day in the fresh coolness of the early morning, and after a charming ride up a wooded mountain-side we descended some two thousand feet to a hot valley, where we halted for lunch. Indeed, this day our elevations changed rapidly, for in the afternoon we again rose to a height of over four thousand five hundred feet, and by nightfall had descended again a thousand feet to the little town of Tocoy or Morazan (as it is now called), with its palm-leaf roofed houses, cocoanut-trees, and tropical climate. The most agreeable shelter to be found in this part of the country is in the village school-house, and the reception under its roof depends on the goodwill of the schoolmaster whose house it is. The school-houses are all much alike, with walls of adobe, a roof of thatch or coarse red tiles, and a mud floor; and the inventory of furniture includes a few rough wooden benches, a table, a blackboard, and sometimes a rickety chair.
The schoolmaster at Morazan most kindly put the large room at our disposal, reserving for himself an inner apartment with no exit to the outside. As the pleasures of privacy are but feebly appreciated by a Guatemalteco, the idea of my objecting to his passing at any hour through what had become my bedroom never occurred to him until Gorgonio, with blandest voice and most courtly manner, suggested that the señora was “muy distinguida,” and might be “muy molestada” by the intrusion. Kindly taking the hint, the pedagogue closed the door between the rooms, and made his own exits and entrances by climbing through a window. As the sun set, a splendid full moon rose over the town, hiding all its defects and beautifying our surroundings with the magic of its light. A warm breeze stirred the feathery leaves of the cocoanut-palms, gently wafting them together in a clinging embrace; and, tired as we were, we lingered late in the plaza enjoying the beauty of the tropical night—a beauty which no words of mine can describe.
We were up next morning at dawn, and had to hurry through our packing to make way for the school-children, who thronged in almost as soon as the sun rose. Our day’s journey lay across dry sandy plains and a gently undulating country, where nature had conspicuously adapted the vegetation to its environment, for not even the hungriest animal would have dared to face the armour of pines and prickles which both on shrubs and trees guarded the precious green leaves. The stunted acacias, now leafless from the drought, bristled with huge hollow thorns, affording secure houses for the ants; and almost every one of these thorns which I examined was bored at the base with a small round hole, through which the ants ran in and out. Amongst these thorn-protected branches the wasps, too, build their delicate paper nests, safe from the attack of any insect-feeding bird. There was one tree with pale green leaves and apple-like fruit which was particularly noticeable, as the hard spines, some of them over 2 inches long, were arranged symmetrically in rosettes over both trunk and branches. As a rule the trees were but sparsely scattered over the plain, forming only here and there clumps and small thickets, where perchance the yellow and red bottle-brush flowers or the purple masses of a flowering creeper would catch the eye.
The redeeming feature in the landscape was the beauty of the lignum-vitæ trees, covered even in this dry season with green leaves and with clusters of purple blossom. But if the vegetation was for the most part stunted and unattractive, both interest and colour were supplied by the birds, for we were riding through a veritable aviary, and small bright-plumaged birds were so numerous that at times the bare branches appeared flushed into flowering sprays. The sensontes poured forth volumes of liquid sound from every thicket; sweet-voiced orioles arranged themselves into golden bunches; saucy blue jays, and their still more impudent cousins, the crested grey jays, circled noisily around us and perched on branches almost within reach of our hands, and chattered at one another as though they were discussing the propriety of allowing us to pass. Green and yellow flycatchers flew from their perches, and made erratic sweeps in the air in chase of unwary insects. Now and again one caught sight of a stupid-looking mot-mot with lovely blue and green plumage, swinging his queer tail-feathers from side to side in uneasy movement. Tiny iridescent humming-birds flitted across our path, hovered for a moment over a flower, and then darted out of sight, and numerous wrens not much larger than the humming-birds could be seen slipping and sliding through the thorny hedges and fences. Large flocks of the friendly blackbirds, with unmanageably long tails, whose gregarious movements we had so often watched in the plazas and patios, gossiped together vociferously, and red-headed woodpeckers tapped loudly against the tree-trunks. The pretty little ground-doves, whose plaintive cooing notes contrasted pleasantly with the strident screams of the parrots and the incessant chatter of the jays, ran along the path in search of food, and would not take to flight until our mules were almost over them.
I was told to keep a sharp look out for the ground-cuckoos, and can conscientiously say that I saw one; but as he leapt out of one low bush, raced across the path and disappeared like a flash of lightning in the next shelter of undergrowth, and as all the others we met with on our journey behaved in precisely the same way, I have only a very sketchy idea of their appearance. I should like to be able to describe in words the beauty of the flight of the flocks of parrots and parroquets as they swept overhead, their brilliant plumage dashing like emeralds in the sunlight, or the stately sailing far up in the soft blue sky of the eager-eyed zopilote, and the fine downward swoop which he makes to secure his prey; however, words cannot do justice to the charms of tropical bird-life, which must be seen to be fully appreciated, but a ride in such an aviary as we passed through this day is an experience not easily forgotten.
Late in the afternoon we again approached the banks of the Motagua, no longer the babbling brook we had crossed near its source, but a swiftly flowing river which, shrunken as it was by the summer drought, was not less than 150 yards in width, and a formidable stream for our laden mules to ford. However, cross it we must, so the faithful Gorgonio led the way and the baggage-mules followed, their loads only just clearing the water, which swirled up alarmingly near to them at every step. We brought up the rear, our beasts splashing in and struggling to keep up against the current, which threatened to carry my little mule off her feet. In midstream I was forced to curl up on my saddle, risking the chance of a serious fall, in my efforts to keep dry; and I was glad enough to feel the water shallowing again and to reach the opposite bank without mishap.
A ride of a few miles brought us to the town of El Jícaro, where we had intended to pass the night, but no lodging could be found as the town was in fiesta, and the Jefe of Zacapa and his staff had arrived on an official visit; so we journeyed on about a league to another settlement, where we hoped to find a hospitable school-house. But here a disappointment awaited us, for the school-house was locked up, and the schoolmaster had ridden off to do honour to the Jefe at El Jícaro and had taken the key with him. Such shelter as the verandah afforded appeared to be all the accommodation we should find that night; so we set up our beds on the undulating mud floor and were hanging up rugs and cloaks to shield them from the gaze of passers by, when a skeleton of a horse came in sight stumbling along under the load of two riders whose bodies swayed first in one direction, then in the other, and must have been saved from a heavy fall only by the intervention of that special providence which seems to guard the movements of drunken men. In front of the school-house the poor horse stopped short and both his riders promptly fell to the ground. As soon as they had struggled to their feet again they gazed in a dazed way at us and our mountains of baggage piled up in the verandah, and one of them muttered sulkily “es mi casa,” but added more politely, as key in hand he made an erratic dive at the lock of the door, “No se molesten los señores.” There was no doubt left that this was our host, and we immediately urged on him the propriety of giving up his house to us for the night; but either our request did not penetrate his dull brain or it did not suit his views, for he remained obdurate, although he stated his intention of returning to El Jícaro to make a night of it. For half an hour my husband and Gorgonio persisted in the discouraging task of arguing with a drunken man, and I could hear Gorgonio repeating to him his favourite phrases that the Señora was “muy distinguida” and “muy delicada” and very much averse to sleeping in a verandah; but it made no impression on him, and everyone’s patience was exhausted when by some lucky stratagem my husband managed to get possession of the key, and the schoolmaster was too muddle-headed to demand it back again. It was a happy moment for us, but a sad one for the poor horse, for the two drunken men managed to scramble on his back again and set off for El Jícaro. The road was monotonously straight, and there was a brilliant moon overhead, but long after we were comfortably in bed we heard them shouting as they passed and repassed the house in their efforts to find the right way.
The night was still and sultry and we were up at dawn and got off as soon as possible, but the morning air had no freshness in it and the sun seemed to assert its full power from the moment it showed above the horizon. Our road lay through a parched and waterless land. Here and there were dotted the wretched tumble-down cabins of the miserable, sallow-faced, fever-stricken half-castes, who must find it hard enough to make a living. Indeed, in contrast with that of these poor people, the condition of the half-caste population we had met with in other parts of the country was one of riches and thrift.