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

by Anne Cary Maudslay; Alfred Percival Maudslay

I was not going to be taken in by the same trick on this journey, and made sure that the reserve stores of totoposte should not be tampered with; but there was no doubt that the mozos had really overburdened themselves with the extra food they had chosen to bring with them, and the result was that at first we only crawled along, and the best part of each day was spent in resting and eating. One mozo in particular, named Domingo, absolutely appalled me with his prodigious appetite. I had brought him with me from Coban, because he stated that he knew of some stone idols in a cave close by the track we were to follow. His account of the discovery was that, some years previously, whilst travelling through the forest from San Luis to Cajabon, he had shot at and wounded one of a herd of wild pigs which had run across the track in front of him, and that after following the wounded animal through the bush for half an hour or more he had lost all trace of it, but found himself in front of a cave in which there stood some great idols carved out of stone. He told the story in a way that impressed one with his truthfulness, and I could not help believing that what he called a cave was the ruin of a temple, and that it would be worth while to have a good hunt for it. Domingo was more intelligent than the other mozos, and he spoke Spanish fluently. He had brought a younger brother with him, apparently to help minister to his voracious appetite, for on our way from Coban this brother was always disappearing down by-roads, only to return again an hour later laden with food. As we were then travelling very slowly and in an open country, I let them do as they liked, but now that we were on a narrow track in the forest, and it was necessary to keep the men together, Domingo and his brother gave me great trouble with their frequent halts and everlasting meals, and they helped to demoralize the other mozos.

We had risen to a height of over two thousand feet in crossing the hills to the north of Cajabon, and on the third day we began to descend again, and crossed the headwaters of the Rio Sarstoon—here a stream which one could almost jump across. It probably flows for about thirty miles towards the north-east, and, making a short bend to the south, reaches the Falls of Gracias á Dios, whence it flows for about twenty-five miles in an easterly direction to the sea, and forms the boundary between Guatemala and the colony of British Honduras. We followed down the course of the stream for some hours, crossing and recrossing it several times, and then turned again over the limestone hills, whose rough surface I can only compare to that of a gigantic fossil bath-sponge with innumerable pits, sharp edges, and projecting points. We had frequently to use the backs of our axes to break away the points and edges of the rock before it was possible for our animals to pass, and many hours were spent in cutting away the great loops of roots and lianes which formed a dangerous entanglement across the narrow track; even the sure-footed Indians had much difficulty in picking their way, and how the horse and mules escaped accident during the first part of our journey has always been a mystery to me.

About midday on the 21st, after a slight rise and fall, the track became clearer, and we passed an abandoned raft now high and dry, which had been used a week earlier, when the flood was higher, by two Indians whom I had met and talked with at Cajabon. We were now in the valley of the Chimuchuch, another branch of the Rio Sarstoon, and for two hours we waded through flood-water from ankle-to knee-deep. At last the water became so deep that I had to strip off my clothes and carry them on my head. The mozos managed their cargoes most skilfully, shifting them up as high as they could go on their backs, and in this way we crossed a deep backwater, walking along a sort of underwater bridge which the Indians whom I had sent on the day before had prepared for us. A few yards beyond this we had to cross the river Chimuchuch itself, which was still a deep stream, although in the middle of the dry season I am told it is a mere muddy-banked brook. The Indians, with great judgment and skill, had felled two trees from opposite sides of the stream, whose branches interlaced, and along this rough bridge the cargadores carried their loads in safety, whilst Gorgonio, Carlos, and I swam the animals across where the stream was clearer of trees and branches. We were already pretty well wet through with the wading and splashing, and we fared no better when we were across the stream and on rising ground, for the rain came down in torrents and completed our discomfort. We were intending to sleep in a small ermita not far from the river bank, but here we were met by an Indian who told us he had a rancho on a hill about a mile distant, where he begged us to come and pass the night. The rancho was small and dirty, with no partitions in it, and its human occupants were two women (one of them the wife of the Indian who had welcomed us) and a dying baby. It was in the hope that I could do something to recover his child that the poor Indian had been so insistent on our passing the night beneath his roof; but the little I could do was of no avail, as the poor little mite was in the last state of distress and racked by a croupy cough.

The rain and the darkness had come on together, and my long train of mozos crowded in under the scanty covering of the roof and disputed with the pigs and chickens for shelter from the storm. It was all I could do by appeals and threats to keep the men tolerably quiet and prevent them hustling the poor woman who hung over the rough hide bedstead which held her dying child; almost every hour she broke out into fearful shrieks and wails as she thought it had drawn its last breath. At one time some of the mozos, who seemed absolutely indifferent to the woman’s trouble, began to make the night more hideous by playing on the wretched toy instruments which they had brought with them from Cajabon; but I got up and raged at them until they really seemed scared, and then one by one they rolled themselves in their blankets and dropped off to sleep. Before dawn the poor child died, and the wretched mother sobbed and groaned until morning.

The rain was still too heavy for us to make a start, and, strange to say, our Indian hosts did not show any anxiety to get rid of us, but seemed rather pleased to have someone to talk to in their trouble. Their satisfaction was greatly increased when they found out that I had a saw with me; some rough planks were soon produced, and Gorgonio and I spent the morning making the child’s coffin. In the afternoon the rain ceased, and the body was carried off to be buried in the small ermita in the forest. I did not go with the burial party, but could hear in the distance the report of my gun, which had been borrowed to fire a last salute over the grave. The Indian told me that he and his wife belonged to Cajabon, and returned there for a week once or twice a year, but that they spent all the rest of the year in this rancho, where they kept their live stock and planted their milpa. However, they had found the situation to be very unhealthy, and this was the third child they had lost within a year of its birth.

We were obliged to spend another night in the overcrowded rancho; then, as the weather had cleared, on the 24th we went on our way, and this day crossed a small stream flowing to the westward towards the Usumacinta. This great river, which, after a course of nearly five hundred miles, eventually pours its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, rises within the frontier of British Honduras as the Rio Santa Isabel or Sepusilhá and flows for some distance in a south-westerly direction. After crossing the boundary-line of the colony it receives the water of numerous streamlets and becomes known as the Rio Cancuén, and at the end of its sweep to the south it is joined by the Rio Chajmaic, a stream which rises in the mountains to the north of Lanquin. After its junction with the Chajmaic the river is named the Rio de la Pasion; it then takes a northerly direction and is joined in its course by two considerable affluents from the east, the Machaquilá, which rises on the British frontier, and the San Juan. On reaching the latitude of 16° 40´ N. the Rio de la Pasion makes a sharp bend to the westward, and about thirty-five miles down stream is joined by the Rio Chixoy, a large river which drains the northern side of the great backbone of Guatemala mountains, and is the same stream which under the name of the Rio Negro we crossed near Uspantan in the year 1894. Below the junction of the Pasion and Chixoy the river flows in a north-westerly direction and is known as the Rio Usumacinta, and after a course of about twenty miles is joined from the south by the Rio Lacandon, which drains a considerable portion of the State of Chiapas.

Throughout the whole of its length the Rio de la Pasion must be a very sluggish stream. In its westerly course before its junction with the Chixoy there are reaches of the river where during the dry season hardly any current is perceptible, and after heavy rains the flood-waters extend for so many miles through the forest that one is almost led to think that this region from the mouth of the Chajmaic northward may at one time have formed the bed of a great lake. Where we crossed the Cancuén, at a distance of not more than forty-five miles from the Gulf of Honduras, and with four hundred miles of its course still to run, the height of the stream above sea-level did not exceed 600 feet, and it is said to fall considerably before the mouth of the Chajmaic is reached.

After its junction with the Chixoy the current of the river slightly increases and it becomes still swifter when joined by the Rio Lacandon. A few miles below the junction with the latter a low range of hills almost bars its course, and for a short distance the water with its surface slowly twisted in great oily-looking swirls, swings through a narrow pass between cliffs not more than forty feet apart. During the heavy autumn rains the flood-water rises rapidly above this narrow passage and tears through it with tremendous force. When I descended the river in a canoe from the Paso Real to the ruins of Menché Tinamit in 1884 I saw huge mahogany logs lying stranded thirty or forty feet up the banks, and my companion Mr. Schulte (who was in the employ of a large mahogany-cutting firm) told me that during one great flood he had tied up his canoe to the posts of a deserted rancho, which, at the time we passed the night in it, stood a good fifty feet above the surface of the water. Below the barrier of hills the river broadens out again. In 1883 Mr. Rockstroh followed down its course for a few miles below Menché; beyond this it is still unmapped, but for some distance it is known to pass through a deep gorge choked with boulders, where it is broken into rapids in which no canoe could live. The gorge ends in two falls a few miles above Tenosique, whence the river is navigable by small steamers to the sea.

But I must go on with my journey. For two days we travelled on over low ground drained by small muddy-banked streamlets, affluents of the Cancuén. The only incident worth recording is that on passing a small recess in the limestone rock, measuring not more than three feet in height and depth and in no way remarkable, each one of the mozos took off his hat as he approached it, crossed himself, and deposited a small dab of copal on the rock. It was, they told me, the “Mouth of the Hill.” As one may learn from old records of the journeys of the Dominican monks through this part of the country, the Indians have a curious reverence for localities, and Gorgonio tells me that in some places they will not kill snakes because they belong to “the hill,” and “the hill” might do them harm in return.

On the morning of the 27th I sent some of the mozos on ahead to clear the track towards San Luis, and as we were now at a place called Chichajác, near to the spot where seven years earlier Domingo had seen the three Idols in a cave, we determined to camp there, and have a thorough good search for them. Gorgonio and I set out along the track under Domingo’s guidance, until he came to a spot which he seemed to recognize as the place where the wild pigs had crossed his path, and we turned off through the forest in the direction which he supposed the wounded pig had taken. I took a compass-bearing and then we spent hour after hour cutting our way with our machetes, making casts across and across this line without any success, for we saw no trace either of buildings or caves. After the first two hours of fruitless search Domingo came to a halt and proposed that we should make an offering, so we all three squatted down facing one another and solemnly burnt small pieces of copal so that the scented smoke might rise into the air and propitiate the spirits of the hills. This offering was made almost every hour during the rest of our search and seemed to inspire Domingo with renewed confidence, but he told us that there were times when the hills were “muy mañosos” (very cunning), and would give up nothing one desired to find. Once Gorgonio asked him why he did not pray, but he answered at once that there was no use whatever in saying prayers when one was in the forest. Possibly he thought prayer to belong to the Christian side of his faith, for use only in church and in the neighbourhood of the priest, and that propitiatory offerings alone were of avail with the ancient hill spirit. Certainly in this case the Spirit of the hills was more than usually ill-disposed; perhaps it resented the presence of a doubting stranger, for neither that day nor the next did it vouchsafe to show us those images of the ancient gods of which we were in search. On our way back to camp, quite close to the track, we came upon some “cimientos,” rough stone foundations of ancient Indian dwellings, and Domingo at once said that the cave had stones round it just like that, so that we felt more than ever convinced that he had chanced on the ruins of an ancient temple.