“The ceaseless toiling hosts impress one with their power, and one asks, What forests can stand before such invaders? How is it that vegetation is not eaten off the face of the earth? Surely nowhere but in the tropics, where the recuperative powers of Nature are immense and ever active, could such devastation be withstood.... None of the indigenous trees appear so suitable for them as the introduced ones....
“In June, 1859, very soon after the formation of my garden, the leaf-cutting ants came down upon it, and at once commenced denuding the young bananas, orange, and mango trees of their leaves. I followed up the paths of the invading hosts to their nest, which was about one hundred yards distant, close to the edge of the forest. The nest was not a very large one, the low mound of earth covering it being about four yards in diameter. At first I tried to stop the holes up; but fresh ones were immediately opened out. I then dug down below the mound and laid bare the chambers beneath, filled with ant-food and young ants in every stage of growth. But I soon found that the underground ramifications extended so far and to so great a depth, whilst the ants were continually at work making fresh excavations, that it would be an immense task to eradicate them by such means; and notwithstanding all the digging I had done the first day, I found them as busily at work as ever at my garden, which they were rapidly defoliating. At this stage our medical officer, Dr. J. H. Simpson, came to my assistance, and suggested the pouring carbolic acid, mixed with water, down their burrows. The suggestion proved a most valuable one. We had a quantity of common brown carbolic acid, about a pint of which I mixed with four buckets of water, and, after stirring it well about, poured it down their burrows. I could hear it rumbling down to the lowest depths of the formicarium, four or five feet from the surface. The effect was all that I could have wished; the marauding parties were at once drawn off from my garden to meet the new danger at home. The whole formicarium was disorganized. Big fellows came stalking up from the cavernous regions below, only to descend again in the utmost perplexity.
“Next day I found them busily employed bringing up the ant-food from the old burrows and carrying it to a new one a few yards distant; and here I first noticed a wonderful instance of their reasoning powers. Between the old burrows and the new one was a steep slope. Instead of descending this with their burdens, they cast them down on the top of the slope, whence they rolled down to the bottom, where another relay of laborers picked them up and carried them to the new burrow. It was amusing to watch the ants hurrying out with bundles of food, dropping them over the slope and rushing back immediately for more. They also brought out great numbers of dead ants that the fumes of the carbolic acid had killed. A few days afterwards, when I visited the locality again, I found both the old burrows and the new one entirely deserted, and I thought they had died off; but subsequent events convinced me that the survivors had only moved away to a greater distance. It was fully twelve months before my garden was again invaded. I had then a number of rose-trees, and also cabbages growing, which the ants seemed to prefer to everything else. The rose-trees were soon defoliated, and great havoc was made amongst the cabbages. I followed them to their nest, and found it about two hundred yards from the one of the year before. I poured down the burrows, as before, several buckets of water with carbolic acid. The water is required to carry the acid down to the lowest chambers. The ants, as before, were at once withdrawn from my garden; and two days afterwards, on visiting the place, I found all the survivors at work on one track that led directly to the old nest of the year before, where they were busily employed making fresh excavations. Many were bringing along pieces of the ant-food from the old to the new nests; others carried the undeveloped white pupæ and larvæ. It was a wholesale and entire migration; and the next day the formicarium down which I had last poured the carbolic acid was entirely deserted.
“Don Francisco Velasquez informed me in 1870 that he had a powder which made the ants mad, so that they bit and destroyed each other. He gave me a little of it, and it proved to be corrosive sublimate. I made several trials of it, and found it most efficacious in turning a large column of the ants. A little of it sprinkled across one of their paths in dry weather has a most surprising effect. As soon as one of the ants touches the white powder it commences to run about wildly, and to attack any other ant it comes across. In a couple of hours round balls of the ants will be found all biting each other; and numerous individuals will be seen bitten completely in two, whilst others have lost some of their legs or antennæ. News of the commotion is carried to the formicarium, and huge fellows, measuring three quarters of an inch in length, that only come out of the nest during a migration or an attack on the nest or one of the working columns, are seen stalking down with a determined air, as if they would soon right matters. As soon, however, as they have touched the sublimate, all their stateliness leaves them; they rush about, their legs are seized hold of by some of the smaller ants already affected by the poison, and they themselves begin to bite, and in a short time become the centre of fresh balls of rabid ants.”[67]
I wish I could quote all Mr. Belt’s interesting article; for his conclusion as to the use the ants make of the bits of leaf they are so incessantly collecting, is an ingenious one, and probably true. It is certain that the little fellows are never seen taking a nibble of their burdens, which would probably be the case if this material was intended for food; and Mr. Belt thinks that the smaller ants, who seldom leave the nest and never carry leaves, have the task of cutting the leaves up into very small bits, which serve as manure for a minute fungus, which is the real ant-food. It seems that “some of the ants make mistakes, and carry in unsuitable leaves; thus grass is always rejected by them. But I have seen some ants, perhaps young ones, carrying leaves of grass; but after a while these pieces are always brought out again and thrown away. I can imagine a young ant getting a severe ear-wigging from one of the major-domos for its stupidity.”
QUICHÉ PRAYER.
Here is a translation I have made from the Spanish version given by Milla of a Quiché prayer; and as the petitioner is a supposed Christian, it will serve to illustrate the theological status of the Indio converts, and no less of their descendants of the present day. Compare it with the heathen prayer (p. 249):—
“O Jesus Christ my God, thou God the Son with the Father and the Holy Spirit art but one God! To-day on this day, at this hour, on this day of Tijax, I invoke the holy spirits who attend the dawn and the last glimmerings of day! With the holy spirits I pray to thee, O chief of the Genii who dwell in this mountain of Sija-Raxquin! Come, blessed spirits of Juan Vachiac, of D. Domingo Vachiac, of Juan Ixquiaptop; blessed spirits of Francisco Ecoquij, of Diego Soom, of Juan Tay, of Alonso Tzep; holy spirits, I repeat, of Diego Tziquin and Don Pedro Noj; you, O priests, to whom all things are open, and thou Chief of the Genii; ye Gods of the mountain, Gods of the plain, Don Puruperto Martin,—come, accept this incense, accept now this candle! Come also mother mine, holy Mary, and thou my Lord of Esquipulas, the Lord of Capetagua, ... Captain Santiago, Saint Christopher, ... thou Lord and King Pascual, be present here! And thou frost, thou God of the plain, thou God Quiacbasulup, thou Lord of Retal-euleu [here follows a long list of names of towns and mountains]! I make myself compadre and comadre, I who pray; I am the witness and the brother of this man who makes himself your son, of this man who prays. O blessed spirits, suffer no evil to come to him, nor let him be in any way unhappy! I the one who speak, I the priest, I who burn this incense, I who pray for him, I who take him under my protection, I beseech you that he may easily find his food. Do thou then, God, send him his money; do not allow him to get sick with fever, let him not become paralytic, let him not be choked with a cough, let him not be bitten by a serpent, let him not be swollen with wind nor asthmatic, let him not become mad nor be bitten by a dog, let him not perish by a thunderbolt, suffer him not to perish by rum, nor die by sword or stave, neither let an eagle snatch him away; assist him, O clouds! assist him, O lightnings! assist him, O thunderclap! Aid him, Saint Peter, aid him, Saint Paul, aid him, thou Eternal Father! I then who have spoken for him thus far, I pray that sickness may come upon his opponents; grant that when his enemy goes forth from his house he may encounter sickness; grant likewise that wherever he may please to go, there he may meet with difficulties. Do your duty against enemies wherever they may be; do it as I pray you, blessed spirits! God be with you! God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost! So be it! Amen, Jesus!”
THE NAMES OF GUATEMALTECAN TOWNS.
It is uncertain whether at the present day any of the aboriginal names of places survive, for the successive invaders from the North or from beyond the seas, if they did not utterly destroy towns, imposed new names on the conquered places. We speak of the ruins of Palenque or of Quirigua, but we do not know the former names of these places, and call them, for convenience, by the name of the nearest modern village. Much ingenuity has been expended in the derivation of Indian names still extant, even the name of the republic itself being one of the undetermined ones; for while Guatemala is undoubtedly taken from the name of the Cakchiquel capital, Tecpan Quahtemalan, it is not known whether this was named for Prince Jieutemal, or indeed whether the prince of that name ever existed. Quiché is derived from qui, “many,” and che, “trees;” or from queche, quechelau, meaning “a forest,”—an inappropriate name now. No less questionable are the derivations of Tucurúb, “town of owls;” Es(Itz)cuintla(n), “land of dogs;” Izmachi, “black hair;” and many others.