There should be a railroad from Coban to the capital. At present it takes as long to cover the intervening distance of one hundred and twenty-five miles as to travel from Chicago to San Francisco on the overland flyers. There are also several important and fair-sized cities, such as Huehuetenango, Totonicapan and Santa Cruz del Quiché, in the mountains which have no railway communication and where such an enterprise would be welcomed. Nothing is more needed and no improvement will aid more in developing the country than new railroads connecting these cities with the outside world.
The engineers and conductors on all the Central American roads are almost exclusively Americans—many of them, as I learned, having been discharged from American roads for various offences. Some of them gravitate that way by a succession of steps on Mexican roads. It is, nevertheless, a satisfaction to an American travelling there for he has some one to talk to in his favourite language. There is only one train a day on any of the roads, and that a mixed passenger and freight, and the speed is never great enough to alarm the timid traveller.
CHAPTER VII
THE ANCIENTS AND THEIR MONUMENTS
“World wrongly called the New! this clime was old
When first the Spaniards came, in search of gold.
Age after age its shadowy wings have spread,
And man was born, and gathered to the dead;
Cities rose, ruled, dwindled to decay,
Empires were formed, then darkly swept away;