CHAPTER XIX. CAJABON AND THE NORTHERN FORESTS. (BY A. P. M.)
I had passed the last two months of the year 1886 in an interesting journey through the Altos, examining the ruins of Indian towns which were known to have been occupied at the time of the Spanish invasion; then crossing the main range I found myself, in January 1887, in my old and comfortable quarters at Coban in the Alta Vera Paz. I had no settled plan of work before me, but was prepared to do a little amateur map-making about the headwaters of the Rio de la Pasion, and to examine into the truth of some rather vague rumours concerning important Indian ruins which were said to exist in the Northern forests near the frontier of British Honduras. Carlos Lopez was sent ahead to the village of Cajabon to engage Indian carriers for the forest journey, and as it was still early in the season which in these parts is by courtesy called “dry,” I decided to spend a fortnight in mapping the track between Coban and Cajabon, a distance of about sixty miles, and fixing the position of the latter village, which I felt sure was placed too far north on the published maps. I had already spent some days taking angles and counting my steps in the direction of Cajabon when we met Carlos Lopez returning to Coban in company with a deputation of Cajabon Indians who were going to the Jefe Político to protest against the orders they had received from him to accompany me into the forests. Carlos told me that he had met with no success whatever in his mission, and that the reason most frequently given for not accepting service with the expedition was that it was unsafe to go with me, as “Los Ingleses comen gente” (the English were cannibals!). I had never met with this objection before, and as it was urged quite seriously, I can only suggest that it is a strange survival of the stories told to the Indians by the Spanish priests and officials in the days when buccaneers infested the coasts and English smugglers were thorns in the side of Spanish authorities.
The expected dry weather would not arrive, and owing to the prolonged rains the track, which threaded its way between innumerable conical limestone hills from one to two hundred feet in height, was almost ankle deep in mud and was often broken into great mud holes which I had no wish to fathom. Now and then we passed a solitary Indian rancho, and our nightly resting-place was in one of the sheds or “Ermitas” which are to be met with every four or five leagues, and which if not peculiar to this part of the country are certainly more noticeable here than elsewhere.
The Indians have their headquarters in straggling towns, such as Coban, San Pedro Carchá, and Cajabon, but in order to secure new ground for their plantations of beans and corn, they spread out all over the country, moving their ranchos every few years to a new clearing in the forest, or returning to some old plantation which has long lain fallow. When they are thus abroad the Ermita becomes the temporary meeting-place of the families settled round about. It usually consists of a thatch roof set upon about a dozen posts with little or nothing in the shape of wall or enclosure. At one end of it, or on one side, is a rough wooden altar supporting an open wooden box, some times protected in front by a cracked glass, which holds a crucifix or a Madonna, or the figure of the Saint after whom the Ermita is named—a figure which is sure to be tawdry and mean-looking even when one has grown used to the style of art which the Spaniard has carried with him to the West. Behind the altar usually stands a collection of wooden crosses varying in height from one to eight feet—the smaller ones the individual offerings of the pious, and the larger ones brought there by the company which assembles on the feast day of the Saint; for it is in these Ermitas that the Indians hold their fiestas, meet to transact local business, get drunk, and bury their dead. I had several times noticed the unevenness of the hard mud floor when I was setting up my camp bed, but it was not until I was trying to get the bed level above a more than usually distinct mound, that I asked a question and found out that I was about to sleep above the last addition to the majority.
The third night out was the worst we experienced; the rain had held off during the day, and we worked on until sundown. Then, as there were no Indian houses to be seen, we cooked our supper and prepared to sleep in a little walless rancho perched on the hillside close by the path, which could hardly be dignified by the name of Ermita, for it had no altar in it, although my Indians called it by the name of a Saint. We stacked our baggage as well as we could on logs and stones, then I set up my camp-cot, Gorgonio slung his hammock between the posts, and the Indians, who for some unknown reason had brought no hammocks with them, rolled themselves up in their blankets, and fitted their bodies into the depressions in the uneven mud floor, through which protruded knobs of limestone rock, and were soon snoring. About nine o’clock down came the rain again—at first it only sprayed through the thatched roof, so that an open umbrella sufficed to protect my lamp and the book I was reading; then it began to fall in drops on the rug which covered the foot of my cot, and I had to rig up a waterproof sheet over it, which made the heat stifling; then it ran in little streams over the sloping floor, and the Indians began to shift about in hope of finding dry spots, but the rancho was very small and we were twelve in number. By midnight the streams broadened and increased until the whole floor was a watercourse. Then one by one the Indians rose solemnly from the ground and squatted on logs or stones or anything that raised them above the flood, and covered themselves over with their leafy rain-coats. As they squatted there, looking just like a group of little haystacks, I wondered whether they were inwardly cursing their folly in not bringing their hammocks with them; if so, they certainly showed no outward signs of mental disturbance, but sat solemn and silent all the night through patiently waiting for the dawn.
To the north and west of Coban the land is fairly level, but it is dotted over with innumerable more or less conical limestone hills, usually standing apart from one another, or more rarely clustered together in groups. As we neared the village of Lanquin a high range of hills rose to the north of us, and our track lay down a narrowing valley, through the middle of which one might have looked for a fair-sized stream; however, it held no more than a small rivulet, which finally disappeared altogether. Then the track dropped down suddenly between high mountain walls and we saw the pueblo beneath us, and there to the left of it was our lost stream bursting out of a cave in the rock, a full-grown river. A large track of the porous limestone region to the north and west must be drained, sponge-fashion, to supply this swift-flowing Rio Lanquin. Just above the cave from which the stream flows out there is another stalactite cave, much talked about in the neighbourhood as one of the wonders of the world, but very seldom explored beyond the first hundred yards.
From Lanquin we rode on to Cajabon without stopping, leaving this part of the track to be surveyed at our leisure, as we intended to make Cajabon our headquarters, whilst the mozos were being collected for our journey to the north. On our way we crossed an affluent of the Cajabon river by means of a hammock bridge, one of those wonderful structures of twisted creepers and natural ropes for which the tropical American Indian has always been famed. From Coban (which stands 4280 feet above sea-level) the track had made a continuous descent, and at Cajabon we were again in a hot country only 704 feet above the level of the sea.
A HAMMOCK BRIDGE.