Guatemala

by William Tufts Brigham

All night we had mosquitoes, but no rain; and to our wakeful excitement was added the horrible noises of tigres, wild hogs, monkeys, alligators, and other animals. We were getting tired of the river, and our voyage seemed interminable. Early in the morning we passed the mouth of the Rio Cahabon, where the steamer had anchored the night before, and soon after I shot my first alligator. He was a large one, and my ball struck him just behind the foreleg. He jumped clear of the water, turned over, and fell back, tingeing the river with blood.

We thought we had counted twice the seventy-two vueltas in the fifty miles between the mouth of the river and Pansos; but this port still fled before us, and it was nearly dark before I smelt human habitations. Not one of our company had ever been there before; but the Caribs were greatly amused at my assertion, and I think Frank smiled in his sleeve at my scent. But I certainly smelt them, and kept the men rowing, and blew the conch-shell, as the law requires on approaching a port; and at last, long after dark, the lights of the steamer fast at the wharf appeared, and we were soon alongside.

We had been a week in our canoa, and five days without landing; but our troubles were not yet ended. The stupid soldiers flatly refused to allow us to land our traps without a permit from the comandante, and insisted that we should go with them to the Comandancia, nearly a quarter of a mile away. I started with Santiago, over a road worked into pasty mud by the ox-carts from Coban. It was raining and very dark, and the almost naked soldiers tried to light the way with splinters of fat-pine, called here ocote. At last the road ended in a black pool, into which the barelegged soldiers waded. But I declined to go farther unless they carried me; and it almost made the night bright to see the look these apologies for men gave each other and the stranger who weighed twenty pounds more than their united weights. It ended as it should have begun; and Santiago went on with one guard to explain matters, while with the other I returned to the steamer. The officers of the steamer had kindly invited us to sleep on board; but the soldier on guard refused to let us pass the plank, so I pitched him into the river,—the proper place for all such stupid military men,—and went on board unopposed. Soon word came that we might sleep where we pleased. Mosquitoes were as bad here as anywhere on the Polochic; and while Frank slept on the dining-table without a net, I had a very dirty bed and a net full of mosquitoes and other things; so in the morning we could not decide which had had the least comfort.

With light usually comes a more cheerful feeling; and a good breakfast, to which the officers of the steamer invited us, made us feel at peace with all men, and I even took the trouble to ask if the soldier I had pitched into the river was drowned. The rain having ceased, we started for the town, ferrying ourselves over the creek in an old canoa half full of water.

As the comandante had not recovered from his overnight debauch, we went about the little village to do some necessary shopping and arrange for our journey to Coban. The town was small, but neat and attractive. A clear brook ran over a limestone bed, and in one place it fell over a ledge into a pool where washing is done both of persons and garments. An old Spaniard was bathing here, and, although half a dozen women were washing clothes or soaking maiz in the same limited bath-tub, he invited us to join him. Near by, a man was dressing an oxhide by pegging it to the ground and then salting the inside.

At the Comandancia we found, not the chief, who was still too drunk, but two very polite officials, with whom I had a pleasant chat; I then wrote my name, residence, and all the titles I could ever lay claim to, as well as those of Señor Don Francisco, my “Secretario.” The impression was so marked that our lawless neglect of Izabal was overlooked, and we were given a full permit to land our luggage. Once more we returned to the river, in order to dismiss our Carib boatmen, and on the way we met an intelligent ladino who spoke English (indeed he had been to London); and he, acting as our interpreter, greatly assisted us in shopping and in our preparations for the long journey before us. In his garden were some goyava-trees (Psidium); but the fruit was unripe, and we found that our new friends eat the goyava as the Chinese eat pears and other fruits,—quite hard; salting it, however. Santiago found horses for Frank and myself, and at the Comandancia we procured Indian mozos to carry our luggage. This was our first experience of a system that we found very convenient throughout the country. By an order from the Comandancia, Indios are obliged to carry burdens, as in the present case, precisely as their Northern brothers have to serve on a jury, and do it for three reals (37½ cents) a day,—quite equal here to the fee the law allows an intelligent juryman in the North. They cannot be sent beyond their district, nor made to carry more than four arrobas (100 lbs.). In many cases they carry six arrobas without complaint, supporting their burden by a raw-hide strap (called mecapal) over the forehead. The person hiring pays to the authorities, with whom the men are registered, a real a head. I provided four of these men to carry our luggage to La Tinta; but Santiago cut down the number by half at the end of the first stage. Our experience with these mozos de cargo was pleasant, as they usually kept up with our horses on the mountain-roads, and took good care of the parcels intrusted to them. Each one carries a palm-leaf umbrella (suyacal), which also serves for bed at night. I have employed dozens of these bearers, and found only one of whom I could complain; and he was not with me on the road, but sent with our mozo Santiago,—which might be an excuse for him.

There is no posada in Pansos; and after getting our breakfast at noon in a little shop which was papered with pictures from “Harper’s Weekly” and “Puck,” we decided to spend the night at Teleman. After some difficulty in getting permission for our guide to leave town,—the comandante being still drunk,[10]—at two o’clock, mounted tolerably, Frank and I, with our boy Roberto, left Pansos. The pleasure of being again on horseback after the dull inaction of our canoa voyage was so great that I was willing to overlook any deficiencies in my mount. As Roberto stopped a short distance from the town to make a slight addition to his wardrobe, we went on alone for a while; the road could hardly be missed, it is so worn by the bullock-carts used to bring coffee from the plantations of Alta Verapaz. The beautiful vegetation, healthy and luxuriant, drew our attention from the muddy road, which became worse as we got farther into the forest. Many fine clear brooks crossed our path, and as we came out of the woods the valley of the Boca-nueva lay before us. Two piers of masonry stand on opposite banks of this river; but the iron bridge lies on the shore at Livingston, and there seems to be no very strong attraction between the iron and the masonry. The absence of a bridge was no great hardship, for not only was the river shallow and easily fordable, but there was a most curious vine-bridge, built of vejucos, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet long, hung from two convenient trees and approached by ladders. It was old, and one side was broken down; so it required care and courage to cross it. It was very similar in construction to modern wire suspension-bridges, but wholly vegetable, there being not a particle of metal about it.

A few miles farther brought us out of the wooded to the cleared land, where is the hamlet of Teleman, famed for its delicious oranges. Although nearly sundown, and cloudy, the thermometer stood at seventy-eight degrees. We found lodging at the house of Don Pablo, a fine-looking old man with a heavy gray beard. His little home was in the midst of orange and coffee trees close on the road, and only a light rail kept the too familiar cattle out of the house. We had no long time to look around before dark; but our comida was good, and the coffee grown there was very fine. The hospitable Don Pablo pointed to a pile of oranges on the floor and told us to help ourselves, which we did freely. Another Spaniard came in soon after we were settled, and I had the best chance I had ever had to exercise my “book Spanish.” I surprised Frank, and myself as well, obtaining from these two agreeable men a great deal of information about our road and the country generally. The room was certainly as strange a one as I had ever slept in,—a table in one corner, with a mahogany bench fifteen inches wide before it (on this bench a small child slept all night, without pillow or covering); two hammocks; a bedstead with mosquito-netting; piles of coffee, oranges, and other small matters; a shrine of tinsel containing two images, before whose dingy holiness a sardine-box lamp burned luridly; meat in strips hung from the roof. The chickens had all gone under the bed for the night; and when it was time for the featherless bipeds to roost also, our host and his women retired into the dark inner room, after assigning me the bed and Frank one of the hammocks, while the stranger took the other and soon settled himself comfortably. The bed certainly was not luxurious, and the pillow had seen better days; but I rigged up a cleaner head-rest with a towel, and was comfortable enough. Not so Frank, who was unused to hammocks; and before I was quite asleep I heard his whisper, asking if there was room to take him in; and as the bed was large, his hammock was deserted.

We were up at four; and as it was still quite dark, the sardine-box lamp was again lighted, and we drank the delicious coffee grown in Don Pablo’s garden, while a little muchacha drove out her chickens from under the bed. The clouds promised rain; but we had none all day, in spite of the predictions of both host and guide.

We crossed two aguas calientes. One of them was steaming in the cool morning air; but their temperature was very little above that of the atmosphere at midday. Cacao-trees were very common, though we saw none cultivated. Here we first saw in abundance some of the convolvulus blossoms for which the country is noted. One was of a pale rose, another a deep blue, with hispid calyx and a corolla five inches across, while a third was of flesh-color and satiny texture, covering the trees near La Tinta. We arrived in that village about noon, and after some delay found a house where they would cook us an almuerzo. Our menu comprised good white rolls, broiled meat, fried plantains, frijoles, fried eggs, and good coffee,—all which we relished exceedingly; and we were not less satisfied with the price,—two reals each. The house contained only one room, a stone cooking-bench[11] at one end, and a row of box-like beds along one side. Under these several hens were sitting, and two or three dogs tried hard to get into a bed, while a colt kept putting his head into a window, and finally upset the corn-box. There was not much to the town, certainly. The school had thirteen pupils,—some bright enough; but the church was an insignificant shed. Pasturage was good, and we noticed a very large proportion of bulls by the roadside; these were quite as gentle as the cows.