We wasted the whole morning in a futile attempt to call on the President. His house was a large one-story building at the corner of the Plaza, not distinguishable from its surroundings except by the guard of soldiers at the gateway to its interior courtyard. The corporal in charge refused to take my card in, telling several falsehoods as to the whereabouts of the President his master; but at last a superior officer arrived, who at once ordered the fellow to take the card, and we were soon ushered, without further ceremony, into the bedroom of the Chief of the State. It is the custom in this country to arrange the chairs in a reception-room on either side of a sofa and at right angles to it; and the host is expected to sit on the sofa and entertain his guests on either hand. President Barrios occupied this place of honor when I entered; but as we conversed he moved about until we sat side by side. He had not forgotten our interview at Totonicapan, and was affable, seeming to understand our wishes perfectly. He said we should have all we asked for, and called an officer to conduct us to the Department of the Interior, where Señor Lainfiesta, the Secretario de Estado en el Despacho de Fomento, also promised to expedite our business. Some days later, while discussing the resources of Guatemala with the Minister of Foreign Relations, I spoke incidentally of the bad arrangement of the Guatemalan exhibit at Boston in the International Exhibition of 1883; whereupon the minister asked me to accompany him to the President and acquaint him with the matter. We went at once,—simply across the street; and it was gratifying to see the stupid soldiers and the insolent corporal jump up and salute the cabinet officer as we passed in unannounced. The President’s room was full of disorder,—articles of daily use, with books, guitars, newspapers, all mixed together. In the courtyard was a fine bull and several sheep, just imported. I felt that Señor Barrios greatly improved on acquaintance, and his bright, quick eye was decidedly intelligent. He was not tall, but stout, with an air of military stiffness which wore off slowly. In our conversation I asked him to refer me to any printed accounts of his personal history; but he smiled and said, “That, señor, has never been written.” Alas for the progress of the country! that life was soon to end by violence, in an attempt to restore the confederation of the republics,—a scheme very dear to this energetic man, who in ten years did more for the internal prosperity of his own republic than has been effected by all the governments of Central America in fifty years!
There is in Guatemala but one theatre, and to that we went on a Saturday night. The building, a general imitation of the Église de la Madeleine in Paris, stands in the centre of a plaza of considerable size laid out as a public garden.[25] The Government subsidy of $25,000 to $40,000 permits the employment of good artists for five or six months in the year; and we saw a company fresh from Madrid play “La Mujer del Vengador.” The ballet was tolerable,—the males far surpassing the females in skill and agility. The tickets are kept by the visitor, the coupon being taken at the entrance. The auditorium was lighted by gasoline sufficiently, but the decoration was plain, and not attractive. The parquette was occupied almost exclusively by gentlemen, who gazed serenely at the ladies in the boxes which surround this, and were gazed upon in turn in a way that would scandalize even a Boston audience. The wife of the President, a lady of great personal beauty, was pointed out to us; and we were assured that it was not improper to stare at her, even with glasses. In all such places the audience always claims quite as much of my attention as the stage; and among the boxes I noticed an elderly lady of decidedly American appearance, and I fancied she might be the distinguished Madame Susannah Peñol, to whom I had letters. A few days later, as I was ushered into her reception-room, I saw at once that I was not mistaken; for on the wall was a capital portrait of the lady I had seen.
Spanish Stirrup.
Our hotel proved a most wretched one; the comida was poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. A ballet-dancer and her pet dog took most of the best bits as the various dishes were passed among the company. Our host proved much the same sort as we had met at Quiché; and we were compelled to move to the Gran Hotel, which we found very comfortable.
Terra-cotta Figurines.
On Sunday the correct course is to see a cock-fight in the forenoon, a bull-fight in the afternoon, and to go to church and wash up in the evening. We varied the programme, and in the morning visited the Chief of Police, Colonel Pratt (formerly of New York), from whom we learned many points of interest in the municipal regulation of this city. The Cemeterio, or Campo Santo, next claimed our attention, where we found catacombs partly underground and lighted by a clerestory. Several very showy monuments have been erected since the prohibition of burial within the churches, though but few of them are in good taste. A far pleasanter visit was to the “Bola de Oro” baths, near the Teatro Nacional, where we had two good bath-rooms, with douche and plunge, all for four reals. The water in the city is not good, and in the baths its turbid character was disagreeable. The pressure on the mains is regulated by water-towers, usually built into the house; and not being sufficient to supply a douche, the water for this purpose has to be pumped into an elevated cistern. From the bath we went to an exhibition of native products and industries in the building of the Instituto Nacional. The exhibition was a good one, and some of the products—as chocolate, rice, sugar, and wax—were of exceedingly high quality. More interesting to me was the Instituto itself. Originally a monastery, the Government confiscated it when the religious orders were suppressed, and President Barrios established in the vacant halls a college which would be creditable to any country. We went through the recitation-rooms, the physical laboratory, the dormitories,—where the iron bedsteads looked neat and comfortable,—into the printing-room; thence through the garden to the menagerie, where were many good specimens of native beasts and birds. We next visited the meteorological observatory, the faculty room, where hung a dismal painting of some poor Indios being torn to pieces by dogs at the command of the Conquistadores, and finally the museum, where, together with stuffed animals and birds, a series of specimens of native woods (labelled only with native names), minerals, ores, and the rest, we found a choice collection of antiquities. Here on the walls were the dress-swords of Alvarado and Cortez, and strange stirrups, of wrought iron of great size and weight, that the Conquistadores had brought from Spain.[26] In the cases were grotesque incense-burners that my friend E. Rockstroh had brought from the country of the Lacandones; idols from various places, a lava mask from Copan (figured on page 200), figurines in terra-cotta with tails and tigre-heads, stone figures with turbans,—all on a subsequent morning made their impression on my plates. But an incense-burner of red clay found in the Lago de Amatitlan failed to excite the delicate film, so dark was the room and so refractory the color; the form was most complicated, quite rivalling in this respect those ancient Japanese bronzes used for the same purpose. In the library are many valuable manuscripts, mostly unpublished, but of interest to the historian and antiquarian.
Almost worn out with sight-seeing, we stopped at a restaurant near by, and with our lunch had some native cerveza negra,—an unpleasant beer brewed from molasses. We had lost the cock-fight; but there was to be a bull-fight in the afternoon, to which we were strangely attracted, and we purchased seats under the roof at three reals, walking over to the Plaza de Toros at four o’clock. There was a fair audience—perhaps six or seven thousand—in the immense circular building or enclosure. As an overture we had an exhibition-drill. The soldiers wore red jackets, blue trousers, and white caps and cross-belts. The evolutions were well done to the bugle-notes, and the whole performance was to me much like a ballet,—simply a complicated series of preconcerted movements of the human body.