A Glimpse at Guatemala / And Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America

by Anne Cary Maudslay; Alfred Percival Maudslay

“Quien sabe!” was the answer. “How should I know!”

The want of religious education did not prevent the villagers from celebrating Easter by idling for a week and getting very drunk. On the “tres dias grandes,” from Good Friday until Monday, of course no one worked, but I had the greatest difficulty in getting anyone to work in Holy Week at all. Mr. Giuntini could not go on with his plaster moulding without some assistance, and I spent a weary hour in persuading the most intelligent of my workmen to limit his holiday to the three days. The only reason he adduced for not wishing to work was the fear of ill-luck—as he put it, “se puede machetearse,” “one might cut oneself with a machete.” However, he gave way on the promise of extra pay, and no ill effects followed.

Soon after Holy Week, I was hurriedly implored one morning to go and see an old man who was suffering from “goma.” In my ignorance I asked what “goma” might be, and was given the satisfactory answer that it was “goma” of course, and my dullness at not understanding was met with open-mouthed astonishment. Then I looked the word out in the dictionary, but failed to find it. At last, after much questioning, I learnt that it was the term used for the after-effects of drunkenness, and I refused to have anything to do with the case; but I was entreated and implored to come, as it was feared that the man was dying, so I went off to his hut and found him in a miserable condition. He seemed to have been poisoned by the vile new spirit, and had been able to take no nourishment for several days. As it was too serious a case for the Worcestershire Sauce cure, I had to take a shot at a remedy, but with the help of small doses of solution of opium and beef jelly we gradually managed to get him round.

Ignorant, lazy, dirty, and drunken as these people undoubtedly are, I found them to be cheerful, kindly, and honest. My hut was full of things which were of value to them, and although at first I was always careful to padlock the door when I went off to the ruins and to give the key to the Niña Chica, later on it was often left open nearly all day long, yet nothing was ever touched. There was indeed one case of theft, but the villagers were not to blame. I had occasion to send Manuel, one of my workmen, to Zacapa with a few dollars to make some necessary purchases, and he returned empty-handed, saying that he had been robbed and ill-treated on the road. This was quite possible, as the country was in a disturbed state; but I had my suspicions, and talked the matter over with the Alcalde and Niña Chica. They said that they could not answer for the man as he came from another village, but that he had been living some months amongst them and they had always found him to be honest, and believed his story to be true. Next Saturday a machete was missing, and my suspicions again fell on Manuel; but there was no direct evidence against him, and he came to my hut that night with the others to receive his weekly wage. As it was Saturday, the village green was decorated with the week’s wash hung out to dry. Next morning I was awakened by cries of indignation and despair—all the clean clothes had disappeared, and as few could boast of possessing more than two shirts, or, indeed, more than two of any other garment, the distress was universal. An indignation meeting was held outside my hut, and the wildest stories of raids by a licentious soldiery passed from mouth to mouth. When things had quieted down a little, I asked “Where is Manuel?” but Manuel was nowhere to be found. There was no doubt that it came as a real shock to the villagers to find that the theft had been committed by one who had been living amongst them. Two or three men were sent at once in pursuit of the thief, but he had a good start, and they were many days tracking him from place to place before they overtook him on the frontier of Salvador, where he was brought to justice and some of the clothes recovered.

I believe that Gorgonio and his brother did real missionary work in Copan, by bathing every day in the river and affording proof to the other half-castes that cleanliness was not necessarily followed by fever. And on the day when my numerous friends and patients came to bid me good-bye and bring me little parting presents, I felt quite proud of the success of my preaching when a woman, whose child I had been doctoring, whispered, rather shyly, as she gave me a little bundle of native cigars, “Don Alfredo, I wash my baby every day!”

As soon as the war was over we had begun to send mules and carriers to Yzabal with cargoes of paper and plaster moulds. The paper moulds, after being well dried in the sun, were given a good dressing with boiled linseed oil, and then made up into packages covered first with “scrims,” a sort of loosely woven canvas, and then with an outer coat of shiny waterproof cloth. Each package was then fixed in a crate made of the long light stems of a species of Hibiscus, which we had previously cut and dried. They were unwieldy burdens, but as none of them weighed more than sixty pounds, we had no great difficulty in engaging mozos who carried them on their backs in safety to the port. The conveyance of the plaster moulds was a more difficult matter, as there were in all about fourteen hundred pieces of various shapes and sizes, which needed the greatest care in handling and packing. Each piece was first of all wrapped in tow, which I had brought from England for the purpose, and then tied up with string in a sheet of strong brown paper. Thirty-two of these packets could, on an average, be packed into the two boxes which each mule carried. We usually managed to send off about ten cargoes at a time, with instructions that the boxes (which were those in which our stores had been brought from home) should be unpacked at the port, and returned to us empty. On his last journey but one the muleteer was told to bring back only half the empty boxes; but, alas! we had made a miscalculation, and when the mules returned for their last loads, we found that we had still on hand five muleloads of plaster moulds, and no boxes to pack them in.

It would have taken at least ten days to get the empty boxes back from the port, and to us they would have been days of idleness, as our camp was broken up and most of our luggage packed. So we looked about to see where we could procure ten rough boxes nearer at hand. We had already exhausted the resources of Zacapa, and now I learned to my dismay that there was no hope of buying any boards from which boxes could be made nearer than the port itself! Finally we had to search the native “milpas” for the stumps of the scented cedar trees which had been left in the ground when the forest was cleared and the plantations made: these we split up with our axes as nearly as possible into boards, and carried them into the village to be dressed down with an adze. No such thing as a saw could be heard of for miles around, and we had to make use of a small blunt saw about an inch in breadth which Mr. Giuntini had brought with him for cutting plaster. Even then our difficulties were not over, for we had come to the end of our small store of nails and screws, and one messenger despatched to Zacapa, and another in the opposite direction to Santa Rosa, were between them only able to buy just enough for our purpose. At last, after all hands had been hard at work on the job for a week, ten boxes, or rather crates, sufficiently rigid to protect the moulds on their rough journey were finished, and we set out on our way to Yzabal. A week was spent at the port in making strong wooden cases out of a supply of timber which I had fortunately had the foresight to order to be sent from New Orleans, and in repacking the moulds for shipment to England. I have gone into these rather uninteresting details about packing only to show how absolutely necessary it is, when starting on an expedition of this kind, to think out every detail beforehand.

It was lucky, indeed, that the moulds were well packed and the cases strong and well made, for the vessel in which they were shipped ran on a reef off the coast of Florida, and the cargo had to be transhipped under difficulties; and when the freight came to be paid I was initiated into the mysteries of a “general average” which added largely to the cost. Throughout this expedition it seemed as though the sea had a spite against us. The vessel in which Mr. Giuntini sailed from England broke her shaft when a few days out, and had to return to Queenstown, so that he did not reach Guatemala until a month later than arranged; then the vessel which held the precious results of our work ran on shore; and, lastly, the small steamer in which Mr. Giuntini and I took passage on our way home from Livingston to New Orleans, broke her shaft when sixty miles off the north coast of Yucatan, and we lay for some days helplessly drifting into the Gulf of Mexico, until we were able to anchor on the great Bank of Yucatan, about fifty miles from land and in about forty-five fathoms of water. The weather fortunately held fine, but it proved too hot for the preservation of the cargo of fruit, which was thrown overboard as it ripened, until a broad yellow band of floating bananas stretched out astern as far as the eye could reach. At the end of a week our signals of distress were most fortunately sighted by a small fruit steamer which had strayed somewhat out of its course; and the passengers were carried in her to New Orleans, whence tugs were sent out to rescue the disabled vessel and tow her into port.

Since the date of this expedition the ruins of Copan have undergone a considerable change. In 1896 the Directors of the Peabody Institute of Massachusetts made an arrangement with the Government of Honduras by which they acquired complete control of the ruins for a period of ten years, on certain conditions, of which one is that a certain amount of work shall be done on the spot during each year. Before I returned to Copan in 1894, two years’ work had already been done and very valuable results obtained. Unfortunately, during the second year, Mr. John G. Owens, the leader of the expedition, and a young man of great promise, was attacked by a malignant fever, from which he died, and now lies buried at the foot of one of the monuments in the Great Plaza. This sad event somewhat disorganized the work of the Institute, and the Directors were not prepared to send out another expedition in 1894. It was in these circumstances that, thanks to the kindness of Mr. Charles Bowditch of Boston, and of Professor Putnam, an arrangement was made by which I held a commission from the Institute, and did the amount of work at the ruins necessary to prevent the lapse of the concession, whilst I was able to carry on my own investigations.

One great and important piece of work done by the Americans has been the building of a substantial stone wall which encircles and protects the principal ruined structures, so that there is no longer any danger of the sculptured monuments being damaged by fire, as has so often happened before from careless burning of fallen timber when the natives have been clearing ground for plantation. The site of the ruins has been carefully resurveyed, many important excavations have been made, and many specimens of pottery and other articles have been unearthed from tombs, amongst which the skull of a peccary covered with incised ornament and hieroglyphics is not the least interesting.