Cuartillo of Guatemala (enlarged three times).
CHAPTER IV.
FROM COBAN TO QUEZALTENANGO.
By Wednesday we had captured two mules; and these, in addition to our mare,—all being well shod,—enabled us to leave Coban accompanied by a capital mozo de cargo, who carried my photographic outfit. Santiago rode one mule, I the other; and Frank had the mare, who was a little wild at first, but soon became very tame and attached to us by kind treatment. After trying to get away for three days, we started early in the morning, and nearly forgot to look at the barometer, which was my constant companion; but after we were in the saddle the little dial was consulted, and the needle indicated an elevation of forty-four hundred feet. No barometer was needed to mark the elevation of our spirits on getting on the road again. As far as Santa Cruz we retraced our steps. Our mozo kept up with us, carrying our photographic and cooking utensils easily. And now this little town, in the early morning, was far more attractive than when, wet and hungry, we came to it before. On this visit there was more to eat, and from a tree by the wayside we bought twenty-five oranges for three cents, and also some good bananas. Our breakfast was very satisfactory, although eaten in a dirty house full of filthy children. At two we started on a good road for San Cristobal, where we arrived in an hour and a half. This little town, of some four thousand inhabitants, is surrounded by hills of great beauty; but the Laguna is an insignificant body of water. As there is no posada, we rode into the Plaza, and had a capital room assigned us in what was once a monastery,—now confiscated to public uses. Our comida was obtained at the house of an aged señora to whom the polite comandante conducted us. We found that Thursday and Sunday were the principal market-days, that the town-clock chimed the quarters, that there were unworked mines of silver and lead close at hand, and that the maguey grew abundantly there. We also watched the process by which the rotted leaves are macerated and washed in the brook which flows through the town, and we saw the resulting pita spun into cords for hammock-weaving.
The priests’ kitchen was roofless; but the great cooking-range was intact, being built of brick, with perhaps a dozen pot-holes of graduated sizes,—the largest being cut from the corners of four tiles, the smaller ones from the edges of two. Besides this range, which occupied the middle of the kitchen, there were two large cooking-benches.
The road to our next stopping-place was remarkably good, and the scenery very fine,—the road winding along the side of a mountain and overlooking deep valleys in which the night-clouds still lingered. By the wayside we saw a cascade of calcareous water, which petrified twigs and leaves in its reach. By eleven o’clock we rode into a sugar-plantation belonging to President Barrios, now in the charge of an old schoolmate of his, Juan Prado. There both sugar and coffee were cultivated, and much fine imported stock kept. It was but one of the many fincas belonging to the President, where he has endeavored to improve the agricultural standard of his country and the native stock as well. The cane was of the ribbon variety, and of fair quality; but the mill was simply a vertical twenty-inch iron roll-mill turned by four oxen. There was but one open kettle, with no clarifier; and the inspissated syrup was run into wooden moulds and cooled into very dark hemispherical blocks (panela),—a form of sugar much in demand among the Indios.
Señor Prado received us most hospitably, and set before us bananas, anonas, and limas, or sweet lemons; then brought us large glasses of a warm liquid made from rice and sugar,—not at all to our taste, although a favorite drink of the mozos. The buildings at the President’s finca were neither pleasant nor convenient; but a large roof, substantially framed, was being walled in with hewn pine-planks three inches thick, each plank representing an entire tree. In this building men were grating off the juicy pulp of the coffee-berry in rude machines; after this pulping the berries are washed, and spread in the sun to dry.
We here learned that we could not cross the Chixoy (pronounced chisoy) River that afternoon, as the wire suspension-bridge had been swept away the last year, and the man whose duty it was to haul travellers across on ropes would not be there so late in the day; we were consequently obliged to yield to the importunities of our host and stay over night at Primavera. To entertain us, in the afternoon Señor Prado took us to a mound which the new roadway had just grazed; and together we dug out fragments of fine pottery and bits of human bones much decayed,—the lower third of a left femur and a fragment of a pelvis being the most distinctly human. Some earthen vessels had been found here and sent to the Museo Nacional in Guatemala City. The bones were mingled with charcoal and ochre, and often cemented together like lime concretions or fulgurites.