GUATEMALA
THE LAND OF THE QUETZAL

MONOLITH ‘A’ AT QUIRIGUA.

GUATEMALA

THE LAND OF THE QUETZAL

A Sketch

By WILLIAM T. BRIGHAM, A.M.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1887

Copyright, 1887,
By William T. Brigham.

UNIVERSITY PRESS:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

PREFACE.

A belief in the increasing importance of Central America, both geographically and politically, has led the writer of the following pages to collect for his own use and print for the use of others, notes made during three journeys in Guatemala and Honduras. He does not pretend to offer a monograph on Guatemala, nor to add to the general knowledge of Central America; but remembering the lack of guidance from which he suffered in travelling through the country, would in some measure save others from the same inconvenience. He seeks also, with perhaps more ambition, to awaken among Americans greater interest in the much-neglected regions between the Republic of Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien.

A land which was the cradle of civilization on this continent, and whose recently explored monuments are most justly claiming the study and admiration of archæologists in Europe as well as in America, has been strangely neglected by the American traveller as well as by the American merchant. Since the Travels of Stephens fascinated the public nearly half a century ago, the people of the United States have paid very little attention to Guatemala or its commerce. Even now there are thousands of square miles of wholly unexplored territory between the low Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Lake of Nicaragua.

No country on the northern half of the American continent has a finer climate or more beautiful and varied scenery, or is a more attractive field for the genuine traveller. Valleys rivalling the paradises of the islands of the Pacific; uplands not unlike the plateau of the Indian Neilgherries; forests as dense and luxuriant as those of Brazil; lakes as picturesque as those of Switzerland; green slopes that might have been taken from the Emerald Isle; glens like the Trossachs; desert wastes that recall the Sahara; volcanoes like Ætna; and a population as various as in that land whence comes the Indian name,—all these features make but the incomplete outline of the Guatemaltecan picture. Then there is that charming freedom from conventionality which permits a costume for comfort rather than for fashion, accoutrements for convenience rather than for show. No dangerous beast or savage man attempts the traveller’s life, no lurking danger or insidious pestilence is in his path. The hair-breadth escapes, more interesting to the reader than pleasant to the explorer, are rare here, and the rough places and the irritations from which no land on earth is wholly free, seem softened and vanishing to the retrospective eye.

Old travellers know how soon the individuality of a country is lost when once the tide of foreign travel is turned through its towns or its by-ways; and when the ship-railway of Eads crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, when the Northern Railroad extends through Guatemala, when the Transcontinental Railway traverses the plains of Honduras, and the Nicaraguan Canal unites the Atlantic and the Pacific, the charm will be broken, the mule-path and the mozo de cargo will be supplanted, and a journey across Central America become almost as dull as a journey from Chicago to Cheyenne.

In the sober work to which this Preface introduces the reader, first impressions have been confirmed or corrected by subsequent experience, and flights of the imagination curbed by the truth-telling camera; from the published maps the most correct portion has been selected, and the statistics are from the Government reports. Many hundred photographic plates made by the writer during a period of three years have contributed to the illustrations of this book, so that accuracy has been secured. Where the plates are not direct reproductions from the negatives, the ink drawings have been made from photographic prints with care. There are no fancy sketches.

W. T. B.

Boston, June 16, 1887.

From an Ancient Manuscript.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

GUATEMALA:
THE LAND OF THE QUETZAL.

CHAPTER I.
THE KINGDOM OF GUATEMALA.

That part of the North American continent usually known as Central America was included by the Spanish conquerors in the kingdom of Guatemala; and while my purpose is to describe the republic of Guatemala,—a portion only of the ancient kingdom,—I may be pardoned if I call the attention of my readers briefly to the geography and history of all that country which once bore the name and is still closely allied with the interests of Guatemala.

Central America should extend from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to that of Darien; from the Caribbean Sea on the northeast, to the Pacific Ocean on the southwest. Mexico, however, has taken Chiapas and Yucatan, on the west and north, Great Britain has seized the east coast of Guatemala (British Honduras), and the Isthmus of Panama is included in the territory of South America. The present independent republics of Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, constitute what is known as Central America,—a territory extending between 8° 10′ and 19° 20′ north latitude, and between 82° 25′ and 92° 30′ west longitude. In length it measures between eight and nine hundred miles, while its breadth varies from thirty to three hundred miles. No competent survey has ever been made of this country, and even the coast-line is not always correctly laid down on the best charts. Maps have been made at haphazard in most cases, and very few positions have been scientifically determined. Government surveys along the lines of proposed canals or railways have not extended beyond a narrow line, usually in low regions remote from important centres. Dr. Frantzius[1] has published a very excellent map of Costa Rica; but most of the so-called maps published by or under the authority of individual republics are of no scientific value, the course of the principal rivers and the direction of the main mountain-chains being unknown. To illustrate the uncertain geography of Central America, let me give the extent and population as published by three authorities,—(I.) Lippincott’s Gazetteer, (II.) Whittaker’s Almanac, and (III.) the “Geografía de Centro-América” of Dr. González.

Without surveys and without a proper census of the Indian tribes no scientific description of the country can be given. Humboldt’s theory of an Andean cordillera has been disputed, and his mountain-chain has proved to be a confusing (but not confused) series of mountain-ridges. Yet it well may prove that the great naturalist was right; and so far as we now know from maps and personal observation, the vast earth-wrinkle which extends along the western border of our continent is a mountain-range of definite direction (about E. 20° S. to W. 20° N.) in Central America, and there occupying nearly the whole width of the continent. If we can picture to ourselves the formation in those remote ages, that it is the geologist’s task to rehabilitate in thought, of a vast ridge, not sharp like the typical mountain range, but of broad dimensions like the swell of some vast ocean, we shall have the material then forming the earth’s crust bent upwards, and in unelastic places broken, and this partly or entirely beneath the ocean. The rising land as the ages passed would be acted upon not only by the ocean waves and currents, but by the torrential rains, which were of a force and frequency that even our water-spouts of the present age cannot equal. Cracks were widened, gorges were formed; and as the earth approached the present geological age, the gentler rains only supplied the rivers and lakes which now occupied the furrows ploughed deeply by primeval torrents. The rough work was done, the statue blocked out; and henceforth meteoric influences were merely to finish, add expression and polish to the work.

A traveller crossing this territory from ocean to ocean would sometimes follow the river valleys, then climb ridges, again traverse a plain, cross a valley, ride along another mountain-ridge, compassing a volcano, and finally descend abruptly to the Pacific. His direction had not changed, but the nature of his path had been wonderfully transformed.

Geologists know well that on one of these lines of disturbance, such as has been described, molten and disintegrated material is apt to come to the surface as lava and ashes; they expect also to find metallic veins, especially of the precious metals, and hot springs with various minerals in solution, and they infer earthquakes. All these phenomena are present in Central America in full force. Immense cones have arisen along the Pacific slope since the general features of the land were made, and not only have spread vast deposits around their base, but have blocked up valleys, forming lakes as Atitlan, built promontories as Coseguina, islands as Ometepec in the Lake of Nicaragua, and have turned rivers, changed prevailing winds, and otherwise altered the physical conditions of the country.

Gold sands from the disintegrated veins sparkle in every mountain-brook, and the deposits of silver are no doubt as rich as those of Mexico, Nevada, and Potosi. Aguas calientes, or hot springs, are found all over the country, and earthquakes, often severe, are common on the Pacific slopes.

All along the Atlantic side the rock material is limestone or dolomite, while as one goes westward he meets andesyte and other forms of trachytic lava, such as pumice and obsidian. Even among the limestone mountains of the northeast are occasional volcanic deposits, exactly as might be expected when so extensive an upheaval has taken place.

Whatever has been the exact process by which this essentially mountainous country has been formed, we have at present at its northern boundary the high plain of Anahuac, extending from Mexico (where it is interrupted by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec) through Guatemala; of somewhat lower level in Honduras and Salvador; sinking to almost sea-level in Nicaragua (154 feet); and rising again in the Altos of Veragua to about 3,250 feet. This main range has its axis much nearer the Pacific shore and almost parallel to it, being in San Salvador distant seventy-five miles, and in Guatemala (Totonicapan) only fifty. Towards the Pacific the slope is steep, interrupted by many volcanoes; while on the Atlantic side the gently terraced incline is broken into subsidiary ridges extending to the very shores. In the oceanic valleys and along the coast are the only lowlands of Central America; and these contain the wash of volcanoes, limestone mountains, and ages of vegetable growth and decay, forming the richest of soils for agricultural purposes.

In Guatemala the mean height of the cordillera is about seven thousand, and probably the mean height of this republic is not less than five thousand, feet. The Sierra Madre, or Cuchumatanes, in the Department of Huehuetenango, is the highest land (always excepting the volcanoes, which will be described later); and of the less important ridges are the Sierra de Chamá (of limestone, and full of caverns), which extends towards the northeast and ends in the Cockscomb Range of British Honduras; Sierra de Santa Cruz, also of limestone, extends nearly eastward, north of the Lago de Izabal and the Rio Polochic, and south of the Rio Sarstun; Sierra de las Minas, nearly parallel to the last, and separating the valley of the Rio Motagua from that of the Polochic. Of this range is the Montaña del Mico and the peak of San Gil, near Livingston: the material is no longer limestone, but metamorphic rock, containing mines of some importance. Last we have the Sierra del Merendon, which forms the boundary between Guatemala and Spanish Honduras; and with various names it finally ends in the Montaña de Omoa on the coast,—an important landmark several thousand feet high.

The mountains of Salvador are all volcanic and shoreward of the main chain; but in Honduras the lines again repeat the general arrangement of Guatemala, while the names are many, indicating a more broken system. Between the ranges are broad and fertile valleys, the Llano de Comayagua being forty miles in length, with a breadth of from five to fifteen miles. In Nicaragua the ridges slope towards the southwest, breaking abruptly to the Mosquito coast, and an important part of its territory is occupied by the lakes of Managua and Nicaragua. From the broad valley the land again rises towards Costa Rica, where it attains the height of forty-three hundred feet, and, owing to the narrowness of the continent, the lateral branches are insignificant. From the table-land of Veragua the cordillera dwindles to the basaltic ridge of Panama.

Transcriber’s Note: image is clickable for larger version

CENTRAL AMERICA.

Rivers are, next to mountains, the most important factors in the physical aspect of the land; and in Central America they are abundant, though, from the broken nature of the country, not of great size. From the position of the backbone of the land, most of the watershed is towards the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea; even the great lakes of Nicaragua, which are really on the Pacific side, empty through the Rio San Juan into the Atlantic, the river taking advantage of a break in the cordillera. The lower or navigable portion of the Central American rivers is the only part known; the sources of even the largest streams are still unexplored. So tortuous are the courses that names are multiplied, and rivers that flow from inhabited valleys through wild forests again appear in the lowlands as unknown strangers; and the river that one traveller describes as important and navigable, because he sees it in the season of rain, the next visitor may cross knee-deep, and know only as a brook.

On the Pacific side may be mentioned the Rio Lempa, which rises near Esquipulas, receives the waters of the considerable Lago de Guija (on the boundary of Guatemala and Salvador), and even after the dry season is of large volume, thirty miles from its mouth attaining a breadth of more than six hundred feet and a depth of ten feet, which is nearly twenty-seven when the floods of the rainy season occur. If it were not for the bar, which has hardly a fathom of water, the navigation would develop rich lands on either bank. The Rio Paz, the Rio de los Esclavos, and the Rio Michatoya are not navigable, although formerly the latter stream at its mouth (Istapa) was large enough within the bar to admit the construction of vessels of moderate size; it was here that the Spaniards fitted out several fleets.

Far different are some of the rivers that find their way into the Atlantic. Chief among them all is the noble Usumacinta, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico through the Lago de Terminos, and is navigable many miles through a singularly fertile and interesting country, as beautiful as fancy pictures the cradle of the human race,—a land seldom visited by white men, and the home of the unconquered and unbaptized (La Candones) Indios. The swift Chixoy, the Rio de la Pasion, and the almost unknown San Pedro unite to form this “Child of many Waters.”

The Belize River, rising in the Montaña de Dolores near Peten and crossing the British colony, is the principal highway for the commerce of Peten, the pitpans bringing down huge mahogany bowls, paddles, baskets, and other Indian goods. The Sarstun forms the southern boundary of the British possessions, and is navigable for small canoes as far as the rapids of Gracias á Dios. None but timber-cutters disturb its solitudes. The Polochic is at present the most useful river of Guatemala. It rises near Tactic, and is a foaming torrent for much of its course in Alta Verapaz. At Pansos the waters are navigable for light-draft steamers, except in very dry seasons; and not far below, its volume is materially increased by the Cahabon. It flows through the Lake of Izabal, and, as the Rio Dulce, empties into the Gulf of Amatique over a bar of sand. The Motagua is nearly parallel to the Polochic, and rises near Santa Cruz del Quiché. From Gualan it is navigable in canoes. Smaller streams are the Ulúa, Aguan, and Segovia in Spanish Honduras, which are navigable for pitpans. Finally we have the San Juan, known as one of the elements of the “Nicaragua Canal” route, but not at present navigable for boats of any size.

All the rivers of Central America that can be used for commerce require a special river service; for wherever the depth of water is sufficient, the always-present bar cuts off access to vessels drawing more than six feet. Should the development of the country warrant it, the bar of the Rio Dulce could be deepened sufficiently to admit vessels drawing ten or fifteen feet.

Small lakes are common enough in the northern part of Central America. The Laguna del Peten is about five hundred feet above the sea, nine leagues long and five broad. The Lago de Atitlan, in the Department of Sololà, is sixteen and a half miles long from San Lucas Toliman to San Juan, and eight miles wide from San Buenaventura to Canajpú, and soundings show a depth of a thousand feet. With the Laguna de Amatitlan, this will be described in the Itinerary. Of Honduras, the chief lakes are the Laguna de Caratasca, or Cartago, close on the Atlantic coast, thirty-six miles long by twelve wide; the Lago de Yojoa, between the Departments of Comayagua and Santa Bárbara, twenty-five miles long and from five to eight wide; the Lago de Cartina, eighteen miles by eight, and the Laguna de la Criba, fifteen by seven miles. Of all the lakes of Central America, none is so interesting commercially as the Lake of Nicaragua. It is large (ninety miles by forty), and the largest south of Lake Michigan. Of a depth sufficient for all vessels (forty-five fathoms in places), and connected with the Atlantic by the Rio San Juan, with the Lago de Managua (thirty-five miles by sixteen), by the Tipitapa, it has the serious disadvantage of being a volcanic basin, whose bottom may at any time be elevated above the surface,—as in the case of the volcano of Ometepec. Whether the channel between these two lakes is permanent, is a matter of some doubt, as travellers have lately found no water flowing from Managua. The Lago de Guija, between Guatemala and Salvador, is seventeen miles long from east to west, and its mean width is six. Fishes and alligators abound, and its waters—which are not of the best quality—discharge through the Lempa to the Pacific. Another lake in Salvador has attracted attention in late years by a curious volcanic disturbance in its midst; Ilopango will be described with the volcanoes.

With this bare list of some of the prominent features of the country, we may join a brief account of those other natural and political characteristics of what was once Spain’s stronghold on this continent that have most immediate relation to the present inhabitants. Leaving Guatemala for a separate chapter, the other four republics may be described as follows:—

Salvador.—The smallest in extent, but by far the most populous, having no less than sixty-three inhabitants to the square mile. The central part is an upland of a mean elevation of two thousand feet above the sea, bounded on the Pacific side by a chain of volcanic peaks; beyond these a strip of lowland from ten to twenty miles wide. Eastward and westward are two great depressions, San Miguel and Sonsonate, “the place of a hundred springs” (centsonatl). The Gulf of Fonseca, fifty miles long and nearly thirty wide, is said to be the most beautiful harbor on the Pacific coast. On the southwest side is the principal port of La Union, a town of little more than two thousand inhabitants, and unhealthful, as are all the Pacific ports. The mean temperature is 80° Fahr.; and were it not for the capital commercial facilities of the town, its inhabitants would be few. Libertad has an open roadstead, and a population only half that of La Union. Acajutla lies between the headlands of Remedios and Santiago, and has but five hundred inhabitants; as the port of Sonsonate (distant five leagues), however, it is much frequented, and is provided with an iron pier, as is Libertad. In 1882 the first railway in the republic was opened, from Acajutla to Sonsonate, a distance of fifteen miles; and work has since been slowly progressing in the direction of Santa Ana.

Mines of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, and anthracite coal are found within the borders of Salvador, the principal being those of Loma-Larga, Corozal, Devisadero, Encuentros, and Tabanco.

The capital was founded April 1, 1528, by Jorge de Alvarado, brother of the conqueror of Guatemala; but ten or twelve years afterwards it was removed to its present site in the valley De los Hamacas, where it has been many times ruined by the terrible earthquakes to which this region is especially subject.

The republic is divided into fourteen departments, twenty-nine districts, and two hundred and twenty-eight towns.

The legislative power is exercised by two chambers,—one of Deputies, the other of Senators; each Department elects a senator and a substitute, each District a representative and his substitute. The executive power is in the hands of a citizen elected as President by the people directly; should there be no election by an absolute majority of votes, the General Assembly elects from the three citizens who have obtained the greatest number of votes. Three senators are designated as heirs-apparent. The term of office is four years, without immediate re-election. The judiciary is similar in order and functions in all these republics, and will be described as in Guatemala. The organized militia numbers about thirteen thousand men; and in case of invasion, war lawfully declared, and internal rebellion, all Salvadoreños between the ages of eighteen and fifty are liable to military duty.

In 1879 the number of primary schools was 624 (465 boys’, and the rest girls’); and these were attended by 20,400 boys and 4,038 girls, at a probable cost of $150,000. There is a central university, with faculties of Law, Medicine, Theology, and Civil Engineering, and it has branches at Santa Ana and San Miguel.

There are six hundred and ninety-three miles of telegraph, with forty offices; and the service is reasonably well performed by the Government officials. A railroad between Santa Tecla and the capital, and five hundred and nine leagues of cart-roads, afford communication; and there are lines of stages subsidized by the Government.

In 1879 the imports were $2,549,160.19, and the exports $4,122,888.05; the income $2,914,236.29, and the expenditures $2,785,068. The funded debt was $1,945,201, the floating debt $392,777.11, and there is no foreign debt.

Salvador is essentially an agricultural state, and coffee, indigo, balsam, tobacco, rice, cacao, sugar, rubber, and other less important products are produced abundantly from her fertile fields.

Honduras.—The third republic of Central America covers an area of about forty thousand square miles. Its boundaries are seen on the map, and its surface is diversified with high mountain-ranges, broad and fertile valleys, vast forests, and plentiful streams. Its climate is extremely hot on the coast; but in the mountain region, as at Intibucá, the temperature is low. Never so hot as a summer in New England cities, and not so cold as to check a most luxuriant vegetable growth, the traveller has an alternation of spring and summer as he changes his level, irrespective of the astronomical year. Four hundred miles of Atlantic coast-line, dotted with river-mouths, bays, and ports; sixty miles on the Pacific side, in the secure Gulf of Fonseca,—seem to provide ample commercial advantages; and to make these of use are the following resources: vast plains in Comayagua and Olancho, covered with excellent grass, pasture large herds of cattle, thousands of which are shipped each year to Cuba.[2] The forests, which occupy much of the Atlantic coast-region and the lower mountain-slopes abound in mahogany, rosewood, cedar (Bursera), logwood (Hæmatoxylon campecheanum) brazil-wood (Cæsalpinia Braziliensis), sarsaparilla (Smilax), and other marketable products; the principal timber regions being on the rivers Ulúa, Aguan, Negro, and Patuca,—all on the Atlantic side. In mineral wealth Honduras easily outranks all her sister republics. Silver ores are exceedingly abundant, chiefly on the Pacific slopes; and among them are chlorides of remarkable richness. Gold washings occur in Olancho, and are now worked by several foreign companies. Copper deposits are often mingled with silver; iron exists as magnetite,—sometimes so pure that it may be worked without smelting; antimony, tin, and zinc also have been reported. Beds of lignite are found in the Department of Gracias; and here too are the Hondureñan opals. Fruits of many kinds are now grown in the neighborhood of Puerto Cortez, such as bananas, plantains, coconuts, pines, for which there is a constant demand from the steamers which come here from New Orleans. Of indigo little is now exported; but the production of tobacco is increasing. Especially fine is the leaf grown near Copan, rivalling, when properly cured, the best product of the Cuban valleys; but the common cigars, which are sold for eight dollars per thousand, are dear even at that price. In 1879 the importations were valued at about one million dollars, and the exports twice that amount. In later years these exports have largely increased. A railroad of narrow gauge extends from Puerto Cortez to San Pedro,—thirty-seven miles; and while the republic is sadly deficient in cart-roads, it is only fair to say that the authorities are doing something to improve these very necessary means, in the expectation that the country is to develop as it deserves.

The government is very like that of Salvador, and the administrative departments are:—

Public lands are abundant, and are granted to actual settlers of any nationality at low rates, provided they will cultivate them. The towns are all small, although some of them were flourishing sixty years before the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. Of the more important are Tegucigalpa, the capital, in the midst of a plain some three thousand feet above the sea, and surrounded by a mining region. It possesses a Universidad Central, founded in 1849 by Don Juan Lindo, then President. Comayagua was founded in 1540 by Alonzo de Cáceres, also in the midst of a plain, where still are visible the monuments of antiquity,—the less perishable works of a people more energetic than their successors; for with the exception of some few churches, little of the work of the present inhabitants would survive three centuries of occupation by a foreign invader. Amapala, on the Island of Tigre, in the Gulf of Fonseca, was formerly a favorite rendezvous of the buccaneers, Drake making it his base of operations in the South Sea. Now it is no less desirable as a port, having deep water close to shore. Puerto Cortez, or Puerto Caballos,—as Cortez called it, from the death of some of his horses here,—on the north coast, in latitude 15° 49′ N., and longitude 87° 57′ W., was selected by Cortez as the entrepôt of New Spain, under the name of Navedad. For more than two hundred years it was the principal port on the coast; but dread of the buccaneers caused the removal to Omoa. The bay is nine miles in circumference, with a depth of from four to twelve fathoms over its principal area; and on the northern side, where the water is deepest, large ocean steamers may come to the wharves. Omoa, in latitude 15° 47′ N. and longitude 88° 5′ W., has a smaller harbor, defended by the Castillo de San Fernando. Trujillo, an ancient port on the western shore of a noble bay, is now growing in importance with the development of Olancho, of which it is the natural seaport; but it has no wharf or any sufficient landing-place for merchandise.

The Bay Islands are small, but of considerable importance. Roatan, the largest, is about thirty miles long by nine broad, and in its highest part nearly a thousand feet above the sea. Guanaja, or Bonaca, the first land of Central America discovered by Columbus on his fourth voyage, is fifteen miles from Roatan, and of an extent of five by nine miles. This group is fertile, and with a fine climate should prove very attractive to settlers from the North who appreciate the waste of life in an arctic climate of eight months each year, when all vegetation ceases to grow, and man himself can be kept alive only by artificial heat, where the farmer must toil wearily four months for the poor produce that is to sustain him all the “famine months,” and the laborer live poorly all the twelvemonth, whatever be his work.

The history of Honduras has not been a happy one, even since its revolt from the Spanish yoke in 1821, and revolutions have been the rule; but in 1865 a new Constitution was adopted, with some prospect of internal quiet. The four hundred thousand inhabitants include perhaps seven thousand whites, the Spanish population being mainly on the Pacific side, Caribs along the Atlantic coast, and several thousand of the mixed races, the great majority being Indios, known as Xicaques and Poyas. Perhaps the most adverse influence to the progress of this naturally rich republic, next to the revolutions, was the scandalous loan for building the “Honduras Inter-oceanic Railway” from Puerto Cortez to the Gulf of Fonseca, a hundred and forty-eight miles. This loan, amounting in 1876 to $27,000,000, was as complete a swindle as has ever disgraced American finances; but the people of Honduras, although responsible for the debt, had little to do with its origin, and cannot rightly be blamed for not paying interest on what they never had any advantage from. The internal debt is about $2,000,000.

Nicaragua.—Of nearly the same area as Honduras, Nicaragua is chiefly distinguished by its lower level and the great lake which offers so inviting a route for an inter-oceanic canal. The same fertility and genial climate extend from the Hondureñan uplands into Chontales and Segovia, where Northerners can enjoy life; but it is hot and unwholesome near the sea, especially throughout the Mosquito Reservation, where the frequent river-floods and the miasmatic marshes breed an endemic fever very fatal to Europeans. The mean annual temperature (excepting the highlands) is about 80° F., falling to 70° at night, and rising to 90° in the hottest weather. The seasons, as elsewhere in Central America, are two,—the wet from May to November, the dry including the winter months. At Rivas, on the isthmus between the Lago de Nicaragua and the Pacific, the annual rainfall is about a hundred and two inches; elsewhere the summer rainfall is about ninety, and the winter less than ten.

Geologically, Nicaragua is no less rich than Honduras in variety of structure and mineral possibilities. The volcanic formations on the extreme West are rich in pumice and sulphur, while across the lake are andesyte, trachyte, greenstone, and metalliferous porphyries, succeeded by crystallized schists, dolerites, and metamorphic beds, extending, so far as is known, beneath the alluvial deposits of the coast-region. The Chontales gold mines have been worked for some time near Libertad, and so have the silver mines of Matagalpa and Dipilto; but the total annual yield of precious metals seldom exceeds $200,000.

The chief articles of export are cacao, hides, coffee, and gums, as well as gold and silver bullion; and in 1880 the exports amounted to $2,057,500, and the imports to $1,475,000. The revenue for this year was $2,435,000, while the expenditures slightly exceeded it. All Nicaraguans between the age of eighteen and thirty-five are in the army.

For more than half a century Nicaragua has been darkly distinguished above all other countries of the world by war and bloodshed. Military pronunciamientos, civil war, and popular revolts have so exhausted all the resources of this rich country that it is quiet at last from utter exhaustion. Could these fermenting republics be induced to give up their absurd and expensive military establishments, and expend the money, now worse than wasted, in opening roads and teaching the people something besides military drill, the prosperity of this wonderfully fertile and agreeable region would be assured. Only their revolutionary habits now stand in the way of the introduction of foreign capital; and are not these habits fostered by the constant military display which guards the President and judges alike? It is certainly foreign to all Northern ideas to have a court of justice guarded by military sentinels. Would that this Eden might be reclaimed, the swords beaten into ploughshares, and the generals and other officers turn their wasted energies to agriculture and commerce!

Nicaragua is divided into the following departments, according to the census of 1882:—

These figures cannot, however, be relied upon for the population. With a coast-line of two hundred and eighty miles on the Caribbean Sea, the only port is San Juan del Norte (Greytown), formed by the northern branch of the delta of the San Juan; and this is now nearly choked with sand. The Pacific coast is bold and rocky, extending nearly two hundred miles from Coseguina Point to Salinas Bay, and has several convenient harbors, as San Juan del Sur, Brito, and, best of all, Realejo. Among the chief cities is Leon, founded by Francisco Fernandez de Córdoba in 1523 in Imbita, near the northwest shore of Lago de Managua, whence it was moved in 1610 to the present site at the Indian town of Subtiaba. Managua, the capital of the republic, was nearly destroyed in 1876 by a land-slide, but is now rebuilt. Granada is the collegiate town of the republic, and is on the shores of the great lake. A railway has long been in process of construction to connect the capital with the ocean. In 1882 the telegraphic system of eight hundred miles was completed, and eighty-one thousand despatches were forwarded the preceding year through twenty-six offices. In 1882 the total attendance at the national schools was only five thousand, or less than eight per cent of the whole population. The annual grant for the purposes of education was $50,000.

The Mosquito coast cuts from Nicaragua a large portion of her shore-line, precisely as British Honduras robs Guatemala of hers; and this has been a cause of serious trouble. This territory, which is about forty miles wide, had been under the protection of Great Britain from 1655 to 1850, when that very un-American document the Clayton-Bulwer treaty gave England certain rights in her colony of Belize in exchange for such claims as she had to this coast, and by the treaty of Managua, in 1860, she formally ceded her protectorate to Nicaragua; but there are still several disputed points.

Costa Rica.—The fifth and most southern republic of Central America has an area of only twenty-one thousand square miles. The Atlantic coast is low, and the country is covered with a dense forest, while the Pacific slope is characterized by wide savannas, or llanuras. Between these borders are high volcanoes and an elevated table-land three to four thousand feet above the sea,—the latter almost the only cultivated land in the State. The forests are largely composed of very valuable trees,—mahogany, ebony, brazil-wood, and oak; and the usual tropical fruits grow well. Coffee, however, is the staple export, being grown extensively in the neighborhood of San José and Cartago; the soil most favorable being dark volcanic ash, from three to eighteen feet deep. The amount exported in 1874 was valued at $4,464,000; in 1885 the amount is placed at $4,219,617.

On the Atlantic side Puerto Limon is the chief commercial town, and on the Pacific, Punta Arenas. In 1871 the Government negotiated a loan in London of $5,000,000, and the next year another of $12,000,000,—but from both of them never received more than $5,058,059.60,—with the avowed intention of building an inter-oceanic railway between the two principal ports; but only detached portions have been built,—twenty-four miles from Alajuela to Cartago, sixty from Limon to Carrillo, and six from Punta Arenas to Esparta. The country is bankrupt, and makes no attempt to pay any part of its liabilities; indeed, its revenues, derived from intolerable duties (even on the export of coffee), monopolies of spirits and tobacco, national bank, sales of land, and internal taxes, do not balance the expenditures.

The legislature is composed of a Congress of Deputies,—one for each electoral district,—holding office six years, half being renewed every three years. The members of the Corte de Justicia are elected by Congress. The present constitution (from 1871) is the seventh that has been in force. The departments are,—

The population is estimated by M. Belly.

Both the northern boundary on Nicaragua, and the southern one on Columbia, are in dispute.[3]

I have endeavored to give most briefly the chief matters of importance relating to the four republics that, with Guatemala, constitute Central America. I am well aware that I have turned, that I can turn but little light on the darkness; too little is known of the country, beyond its trade and political relations to the rest of the world. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and revolutions have popularly been associated with the whole region, and public taste has been turned away from such unpleasant outbreaks of subterranean fires or human passions. The time will come when these regions, far more fertile and accessible than those African wilds that for a score of years have interested, strangely enough, both explorer and capitalist, will claim the attention due their natural merits; and the fertile plains will be the garden and orchard of the United States,—not necessarily by political annexation, but by commercial intercourse. All our sugar, all our coffee, all our rice, all our chocolate, all our india-rubber ought to come from Central America, where these products can be raised better and cheaper than in any other country; and next to these staples, the subsidiary fruits, as oranges, plantains, bananas, pines, limes, granadillas, aguacates, and dozens of others now unknown to commerce, ought to come to us from Limon, Puerto Cortez, and Livingston. These are to be obtained in Guatemala of better quality and in better order than in the West Indies. Louisiana would then perhaps give up the unnatural cultivation of sugar, and Florida cease her useless striving to raise really good oranges, and both States turn to the products they are better fitted for raising.

I will ask you to go with me through the republic of Guatemala, and to see it, so far as you can, with my eyes; and until that journey is ended, we will leave the story of the old times, the present system of government, the ethnology, the volcanoes, the flora and fauna, to chapters by themselves, even if the unsystematic arrangement should savor strongly of the irregularity of the land we journey through.

Luciano Calletano (Captain at Chocon).

CHAPTER II.
THE ATLANTIC COAST AND ITS CONNECTIONS.

As the steamer anchors far from the shore at the port of Livingston, the traveller sees almost exactly what the Spaniards saw,—earth, sky, and sea, so little change have four centuries wrought on the outer shores of Guatemala. Northward are the picturesque hills of British Honduras, backed by the blue summits of the Cockscomb range; southward the majestic San Gil, bearing like another Atlas the clouds on his broad shoulders; eastward the low Cays, covered with the feathery coconuts; before him the shore, here marked by a long limestone cliff crowned by the palm-sheltered houses of the Caribs, while farther to the westward rise the Santa Cruz mountains. The yellow waters of some great river lave the vessel’s sides; but no break is visible in the landward horizon.

For a while all is as it was when Hernan Cortez, in the year 1525, came to this shore after his terrible march from Mexico. There was even then a little village on the high bluff; and he found two of his countrymen gathering sapotes (Lucuma mammosa) to save the little colony of Spaniards, a few leagues farther south, from starving. Waiting in the early dawn for the landing-boats, I cannot but recall the ancient times; imagination sinks the great steamer into the little caravel, and the feelings of the conquistadores are mine for the time. Soon the white sails drop out from the foliage, the canoes are seen rapidly approaching, and the chatter of Caribs, both men and women, banishes all daydreams.

The “Progreso,” once a Buzzard Bay racer, sails rapidly out and takes on board her cargo,—my friend, his mother, and myself, and traps of no light weight. Her bows are soon turned landward, and as she glides along, all the features of the shore unfold,—the coco-palms of marked luxuriance, the thatched houses with shining white walls, the limestone cliff almost covered with convolvulus and other foliage, the narrow beach, the canoes of various size and shape. We turn a point, and the town of Livingston is before us, and we are in the mouth of the Rio Dulce.

On the shore the only prominent building is the custom-house, built before Livingston was declared a free port; and in front of this is a low, dilapidated wharf, at which our tender landed us, the water being not more than fifteen inches deep. The tides here are less than a foot, so that shoal-water keeps boats of any size at a distance, making landing difficult. It was comforting to know that a charter for a wharf had been obtained, and that our successors may land with greater ease.

We did not find the heat greater than on the steamer in the offing, and even the necessary bustle and trouble in getting luggage transferred to the backs of men did not cause discomfort. The custom-house and a few offices occupy the front of an amphitheatre with very steep sides, above which is the town. Springs burst from the gravel and furnish pools for the washerwomen, whose sturdy, yet graceful forms, barely concealed by their scanty garb, are very attractive. Some stood in the clear pools, others bent over the washing-stones, some played with their children in the water, while others climbed the steep path to the town, carrying a head-burden of great weight.

Barrack Point, Livingston.

Our abode was on the Campo Santo Viejo, the burial-hill of former days, and right across our path lay the empty tomb of a son of Carrera, the former President of Guatemala; as we passed this we noted the admirable mortar with which its bricks were laid,—so strong that no brick can be cut out whole. On this resting-place of perished Caribs the foreign inhabitants of Livingston dwell. It is the west end of the town, and overlooks both the river and the native town, where are also the stores and the hotels.

All descriptions of a growing town must be unsatisfactory, so rapidly does the population and topography change; and a few words may convey all the geographical knowledge needed. Rolling ground, which might easily be drained, but is not; streets generally at right angles, none paved, and most of them exceedingly muddy in wet weather; fences of the rudest form, mostly sticks bound together with vines; houses with walls of adobe or of wattle, in both cases covered with mud plaster and whitewashed, none of them over one story, but with high roofs thatched with palm; yards, but no gardens; stores here and there built of boards from New Orleans, and occupied by foreigners,—French, Germans, Italians, Americans (del Norte); a dilapidated chapel on or among the neglected foundations of an intended church; beyond this the barracks on a beautiful point; children of all ages playing in the dirt and merrily greeting the passer-by with their black, shiny, healthy faces; palm-trees, mangoes, sapotes, bread-fruit, oranges, anonas, bananas, and coffee-trees scattered without order, and wholly uncultivated,—make the external features of this place. No vehicles are in the streets, though a few horses roam untethered through the town. Every burden is carried on the heads of men or women. The house-doors are all open; but the interior is generally too dark to disclose much of the inner mysteries to the stranger. Westward from the town lies the new Campo Santo, and beyond this the almost impenetrable forest.

A STREET IN LIVINGSTON.

The situation of Livingston is good,—at the mouth of one of the finest rivers of the Atlantic coast of Central America. The climate is very healthful and agreeable, and the frequent communication by two lines of steamers with New Orleans, one line with New York, and another with Liverpool, make it an important business-centre. All the fine coffee from Alta Verapaz and the fruit from the plantations on the Chocon and Polochic is shipped here; and the product might be indefinitely increased. The drawbacks are a bar with only a fathom of water at the mouth of a river navigable otherwise for many miles by the largest steamers, no wharves, little enterprise on the part of the native inhabitants, and a frequent sea-breeze in the afternoon, which sometimes makes landing through the rough water on the bar unpleasant. The population is about two thousand, chiefly Caribs; and long inaction and complete lack of enterprise have produced a people poor and careless of riches if obtained at the price of labor. As in all similar places, there is no lack of adventurers of the lowest character.

All this matter is not, however, learned at once, and observation must be depended on rather than report; for the merchants of Livingston see the prospects of their town in very different lights when talking with a mere visitor or with a possible rival in the small but very profitable business. As a stranger, I was told that the place was an el dorado; that limitless crops grew without urging from a soil of unequalled richness; that the climate was salubrious, and eternal summer reigned; that business was brisk, and constantly increasing under wise laws and a favoring government. As a settler, the song was sung to me in a minor key: labor was not to be had; no good lands could be obtained; the steamers were the tyrants of the place, and all earnings were eaten up by freights. Then there were the warning cries of those unfortunate men who wanted to make money in a newly opened country, but had not the necessary courage and endurance for a pioneer. They had not met success, and they had not grit enough to seek it. Micawbers far from home, they waited for something to turn up.

The process of finding out about the place was not an unpleasant one; it was what we had come for, and we began it the first day at breakfast. While we lodged in our house on the hill, we took our meals—with the exception of early coffee and rolls—in the town at the house of Señor Castellan; and they were in genuine Hispano-American style. Eleven o’clock is the hour for almuerzo, or breakfast, and thus the time for ceasing work and taking the needed midday rest. Late in the afternoon came the comida, or dinner,—differing from breakfast only in the occasional provision of dulces, or sweetmeats. The menu was constant; an oily soup, beans black or white, beef or chicken stew with chillis, fish, bread, and coffee, formed the almost unvarying round. Our waiters were two little boys,—one the son of our host, the other his ward. With our coffee we generally had fresh milk; but when the supply of this failed, a can of condensed milk took its place. Not infrequently the sugar also failed; and then one of the boys ran to the nearest store and bought half a pound of a coarse brown kind, and replenished the saucer that did duty as sugar-bowl. No supply of anything was ever kept in the house.

INTERIOR OF A CARIB HOUSE.

Our dining-room was dark,—the only light coming from the open doors at either end. There was but the earth, hard trodden, for the floor, and the furnishing was simple enough,—a rough table and half a dozen rickety chairs. A tablecloth served also for napkins, and the dishes were of many patterns, colors, and degrees of dirtiness. It seemed absurd to call for a clean plate; but we did so, to see what would happen. Besides our own party of four, we had a padre and an Italian as fellow-boarders; and a little observation of the habits of these polite friends helped us much in our new circumstances.

A large tame duck used to waddle under my chair, and at last would take bits of tortilla from my hand. Several mangy dogs and cats had to be driven out whenever we sat down to eat; but the hens were not disturbed, for they contributed so much to our larder that they were privileged, and one nested in an old felt hat on a corner shelf, while another came cackling out of one of the dark bedrooms that opened on either side. In spite of all these drawbacks, we liked the cookery, and did ample justice to it.

As the ancient Romans in their luxury had entertainment for the eye as they reclined at meat, we in our simplicity had a constantly moving panorama at our street door. Stout Carib women, straight as one could wish, walked by, with every burden, however insignificant, balanced on the head. Half a pound of sugar or a dose of salts would be placed above the turban as surely as would a heavy jar of water or a house-timber. Some fine forms, both of men and women, made part of this procession; and the latter wore garments short at either end, fastened over one shoulder only, and displaying the bust perfectly. A soldier came along once in a while, but only his cap and musket told his class. Boys wrestling but seldom fighting, dogs fighting for a bone,—all helped us to prolong our meal. It was difficult to make the boys understand that they must not spit on the floor as they handed us the dishes. A large brick oven in the courtyard furnished bread for a number of families, and good bread.

In our walks about the town we were often politely invited into the houses, and so had a chance to see the cassava bread making. The tuberous roots of the manioc (Manihot utilissima) often attain a weight of twenty or thirty pounds, and are full of a poisonous juice, deadly when swallowed. A mahogany board is provided, into which broken crystals of quartz are inserted, and this serves to grate the root into a coarse meal, which is washed carefully (the starch is partly removed, and settles in the water as tapioca), and is then placed in a long sack of basket-work, called very appropriately serpiente. This ingenious press is fastened at one end to a house-beam, while on a lever placed through the loop at the other end all the children of the family sit in turn, or together if they are small; and the squeezed mass is dexterously made afterwards into flat loaves about three feet in diameter, and not more than a quarter of an inch thick, dried, and then baked. The result is a wholesome and very nutritious bread, which keeps a long time and is capital on an excursion. Later on, when our own housekeeping was in order, we found it made excellent puddings, and was better than crackers in soup; while in the woods it was indispensable. It is also a capital diet in dyspepsia, can be eaten in sea-sickness when all other food is rejected, and serves to fill out the bony outlines of an emaciated human frame better than anything else. The clean white loaves can be easily exported, and are very attractive. Fine oranges we bought from a tree in the yard of our cassava-maker at ten for a medio (five cents).

GRATING CASSAVA.

The fine view from the fort can be seen in the illustration; but as Frank and I stepped over the low wall and set up the camera to photograph it, we attracted the attention of the officer in charge, who at once ordered us to come to him. A convenient temporary ignorance of Spanish delayed us until the view was secured and a squad of soldiers sent to arrest us, when the officer wanted to know what we were “telegraphing in the fort for.” With a very few words I exposed his ignorance to his soldiers, who laughed as heartily at him as if they had not been quite as stupid as he; and he begged us to leave at once. Of this same garrison it is related that some years ago a French corvette anchored off the point and fired a salute. The first gun was all right; but the second astonished the valiant soldiers, and at the third they all threw down their guns and fled to the bush, fully convinced that an attack on the village was intended. After a while boys were sent out into the woods to tell these warriors that it was safe to come home. The lighthouse here, which all incoming vessels are taxed to maintain, consists of a stout pole; but the lantern has been broken, and not replaced.

Below this military post is the usual landing-place for canoas. These are nearly all dug out of single mahogany or cedar logs, and are not only well made, but of good form. Some are forty feet long and six feet wide. The paddles were of mahogany, and the women paddled as well and powerfully as the men; both, indeed, seemed to be quite at home on the water.

Some of the incoming canoes were laden with coconuts, others with bananas and plantains from the little fincas along the coast, and yet others with fish. The last we noted more carefully, as there is no fish-market in Livingston, and the fish are always interesting to a stranger; for odd and various as may be the fruits of a new clime, the produce of the sea generally surpasses that of the land in curious forms. There were some of the oddest of the Central American waters; and the man who first ate them must have been very brave or very hungry. One of them had flesh resembling beef in color, and good and substantial when cooked.

Paths about the town are narrow and grass-grown, and the hooked seeds of a Desmodium cling to the clothes, and the thorns of the sensitive-plant (Mimosa pudicans) scratch the bare feet of the passer; but worse than all these, in the grass are tiny insects called coloradía, which bite the ankles and other exposed parts, causing red spots and an intolerable itching,—easily allayed, however, by salt-water or bay-rum applications. Mosquitoes were not troublesome, and we used no nettings; nor did we see any house-flies.

A bath in the Rio Dulce was tempered by the dread of sharks; and refreshing as the sweet water was, there was a self-congratulatory feeling on getting safely back to the huge square-hewn mahogany logs that served for dressing-room.

To the outward world Livingston is principally interesting as the free port of Guatemala,—the outlet of the coffee of Alta Verapaz and the fruits of the Atlantic coast-region. In its early history it was a settlement of Caribs,—those splendid negroes who were driven from the islands of the sea, which still bear their name, when the Spaniards enslaved or destroyed their fellow-owners of the land. Its situation at the entrance of the chief waterway to the interior and the capital soon marked it for a Spanish post; but the buccaneers were too powerful, and before their advance the port of entry was moved far up the Rio Dulce to Izabal, on the lake of that name,—the fort of San Felipe blocking the way to these lawless enemies. Not only pirates, but the Home Government hastened the decay and disuse of this port, and the banks of the Rio Dulce were of little importance, except to the mahogany-cutters and sarsaparilla-gatherers, for two centuries.

An enlightened Government, in fostering the immense agricultural wealth of Guatemala, turned the attention of foreign capital, first to the rich coffee-lands in the neighborhood of Coban, and later to the even richer fruit-lands of the valleys east of the high table-lands of the interior. The outlet for all the produce was by the Polochic, and the shipping-port was Livingston; so the little village built by the exiled Caribals (cannibals) has been gradually occupied by business men of various nations, until now the population may be nearly two thousand. The shores are high and healthful, and the anchorage within the river is secure. Dredging would easily open a channel, and jetties like those placed in the Mississippi by Captain Eads would doubtless keep the way open; for the current is frequently very strong, but now wastes its strength over a mile of shoal-water. At present all the ocean steamers lie at anchor outside; and consequently the lighterage is an important business.

In the immediate neighborhood of this port, and accessible by water, are lands pre-eminently adapted for sugar or cotton cultivation; although now, owing to the smaller capital required, and speedier returns, bananas and plantains are the chief products. The Government determined to develop these lands,—which have hitherto been left to the solitude of their dense forests and the occasional intrusion of the mahogany-cutter,—and in 1882 declared Livingston a free port, including in its territory a large triangular part of the eastern coast. The public lands were then offered for sale at reasonable rates; and in consequence, several capitalists from the United States have purchased large tracts, and are cultivating soil perhaps the most fertile on the continent.

Climatic changes are insensible here, and it may truly be said that the one season is summer. Never has yellow fever or other dangerous zymotic disease visited Livingston, and the death-rate is about one quarter that of Boston. The rapid increase of its population and commercial importance will make imperative the demand for improved harbor and wharf facilities.

Ten miles to the south of Livingston is the fine harbor of Santo Tomas, where in 1843 a Belgian colony was established; and as this unfortunate attempt has given an ill reputation to all Central America, it is well to state that failure was by no means due to the insalubrity of the climate, but to the want of foresight of the projectors and the abject ignorance of tropical trials on the part of the immigrants. Landed in an unaccustomed climate, in the wet season, without shelter, and inadequately provisioned, they lost heart, health, or life itself.

WEAVING A SERPIENTE.

Pioneers and frontiersmen should not be recruited from shops and counters. The pluck and caution needed for a struggle with untried conditions, the determination to be content with slim comforts and undaunted in the face of every discouragement, looking always to the final result, experience shows cannot be found in this class. They do well enough as eleventh-hour assistants, when the strong men have felled the forest and broken the ground and built houses and shops for these weaker but still useful brothers; but the first colonists must be of sterner stuff. Probably, had shelter and good food been provided for those inexperienced Belgians, there would have been at Santo Tomas something more to-day than the memory of their visit.

In 1881 the little town contained but one hundred and twenty-nine inhabitants, mostly fishermen; but the construction of the Ferro-carril del Norte, to connect the capital with the Atlantic, changed for a time the sleepy hamlet into the busy haunt of contractors and laborers. The exigencies of the railroad calling for the deepest water, however, the new town of Port Barrios has been founded, some three miles to the eastward of the ancient village. Curiously enough, the Bay of Santo Tomas has no river; but it lies between the Rio Dulce and the Motagua.

From Livingston to New Orleans the distance is 900 miles; to Belize, 125; to Kingston, Jamaica, 800; to Puerto Cortez (Caballos), 55; to Izabal, 45; to Pansos, 90; and to Guatemala City (water to Izabal, and mule-path thence), 120. The usual steamer time from New Orleans is six days, including a stop of two days at Belize; from New York, ten days, including stops at Kingston and Belize; and three days should be ample to New Orleans, seven to New York, and eight to Boston. A glance at a map will show that the course as well as the distance between Livingston and New York is much in favor of that route over the better-known one from Aspinwall to the metropolis; and when to this saving of time and avoidance of the dangers of navigation is added the greater facilities for raising and shipping fruit which Livingston is now developing, there is great probability that New Orleans will not long be allowed to absorb all the bananas, plantains, and pines, or England all the coffee and mahogany, shipped at Livingston.

The natural advantages of a port and the conveniences of trade between that and other countries are of small moment if there is nothing beyond the port; and one must look well into the interior of the country to see its poverty or richness. Before crossing the republic, the fruit-lands of Livingston are worthy of exploration. The little plantations at Cocali, on the coast northward, and those along the banks of the Rio Dulce, are easily seen, and in their present condition offer nothing new or especially interesting. Bananas and plantains are almost the only product of commercial importance; for the pines grow wild, cassava, bread-fruit, mangoes, and sapotes are not exported, and the coconut is native on the shores.

No systematic cultivation is known in this region, and the crops grow very much as they did in the Garden of Eden. Plantation-work consists of clearing the land of forest (which is done in January and February), allowing the felled trees to dry, burning in May, and planting in June. No plough ever furrows the rich ground, and the hoe is sufficient for the planter’s needs, while most handy for the laborers. As may be supposed, the labor of keeping the crops clear of weeds is considerable, but not so great as on our Northern farms; for although the vegetable growth is very rapid, the country is as yet free from foreign weeds. With us the most rapidly growing and pernicious weeds have all been imported; and on the Hawaiian Islands the vegetable growths that have laid waste thousands of acres of the best pasturage are the lantana, verbena, and indigo, not one of them indigenous. In the course of years cultivation may bring these agricultural curses; but at present the Guatemalan planter in Livingston has only palms, canes, ferns, ginger, and other easily eradicated plants to contend with.

Indian corn (maiz) is planted in slight holes made with a stick and covered with the foot, and seed planted on Thursday has been found four inches high on the following Monday. The stalks are sometimes seventeen feet high, and average three ears each; only ninety days are required to mature the crop, which is gathered three times each year. Upland rice is scattered broadcast on the soil, and the straw grows six feet high, with generous heads, yielding the finest rice known; two crops can be raised each year. Sugar-cane has been found to yield three tons of sugar per acre for twenty years without replanting,—a result unknown in any other sugar-country. At present there are no mills in eastern Guatemala, and only enough cane is planted to supply the demand for eating, or rather chewing.

Bananas have within the last ten years become very common all over the United States, and every one is familiar with the imported varieties; but few are aware that the varieties grown in the tropics exceed two hundred, many of them too delicate to bear transportation, and as far superior to the common sorts as a choice table-apple surpasses the cider-apple of our New England pastures. The kinds of banana most raised near Livingston are the same as those of Aspinwall; but the quality is superior. Plantains are grown even more commonly than bananas, and the domestic consumption is much greater. Among Northern fruit-dealers the banana and plantain are frequently confounded; but they are as different as pears and apples. To grow either, simply requires planting of suckers, which in nine months should bear a bunch of fruit. The stem is now cut down, and from its base sprout several suckers, all over three being removed for planting elsewhere. It is only necessary to remove the finished stem and extra suckers to insure crops for a long series of years. No attempt has been made to use the valuable fibre, of which there is an average of three pounds to a stalk.

When we turn from what is done here to the consideration of what may be, the interest vastly increases; and to this end let the reader join us in an exploration of one of the rivers flowing from a valley of great extent and unrivalled fertility, but covered with forest, and unknown save to the mahogany-cutters and an occasional huntsman. The Rio Chocon is almost unnoticed on the maps, and its source unknown; but it probably rises in the Santa Cruz mountains.

In the middle of October, 1883, the “Progreso” was manned and provisioned, and in the early afternoon we were on board waiting for the sea-breeze to help us up the river. The light wind served to carry us across the Rio Dulce, but no more; and anchoring, we sent three men ashore to lay in a supply of plantains, bananas, coconuts, and sugar-cane. Travelling in the tropics is usually far from luxurious; and our present outfit was no exception to the rule. Our captain had provided a Jamaica negro for cook, Santiago, a half-breed, for montero, or guide in the forest, and our crew consisted of Guillermo, an attractive looking but bad boy, who was always singing about his corazon (heart), Francisco, and two other men, whose exact ethnological classification was a puzzle. Our cook, his oil-stove and canned provisions filled the little cabin; but the cock-pit was large, and Frank shared with me one side, while the captain occupied the other, and at night we had a canvas awning over the whole. Folding-chairs served for beds as well, and our traps were put into the capital water-proof baskets called petácas.

Entrance to the Rio Dulce.

Later than usual the breeze freshened, and we were sailing apparently for the spur of San Gil, which stretches northward right across the river. As we advanced, the walls opened, and we entered a gorge far finer than that of the Saguenay; for the savage cliffs of the wild Canadian stream are here replaced by white limestone precipices jealously covered with palms and vines, until only here and there could the rock be seen under or through its richly colored mantle. The river is deep, in places eighteen fathoms, and, except in the overhanging trees, there was no place to land on either side for some distance.

Frank shot at a fine pelican, but only broke a wing; and although he pursued the wounded bird rapidly in a little cayuco that we had in tow, he did not gain on the powerful swimmer until a shot from the “Progreso” killed the fugitive, whose remains measured seven feet across the wings. Other birds tempted us, but the fast-waning daylight warned us against delay; and as darkness fell upon us with tropical rapidity, we came to the lake-like Golfete, nine miles from Livingston, and anchored for the night off Cayo Paloma (Dove Island), the only inhabited spot on the river. Our crew went ashore for shelter, and we retired under our substantial awning, which protected us from the rain which fell in torrents during the night. We had found no mosquitoes at Livingston, and there were none here; so our sleep was not broken until our boys came on board before daybreak. Where we had entered this beautiful lake we strangers did not know; and even when the direction was ascertained, the opening of the river was invisible. Coconut-palms and bananas will give a charm to any landscape; yet the little Cayo Paloma hardly needed them, so beautiful was it in itself.

Grand San Gil brushed the clouds from his forehead and looked down smilingly upon us in promise of a fair day as we sailed up the Golfete. A short league brought us to a curious limestone rock on the northern shore,—a regular cube, rising from deep water, and capped with a pyramid of foliage. So unusual a formation could hardly have failed to attract the aboriginal mind; and there may be on the summit some remains,—a sacrificial altar, or stele. We did not go near enough to see any way of access; but the branches seem to hang low enough on one side to promise an entrance to an active climber, and we determined to try it some other day when we had more time.[4]

If the entrance to the Rio Dulce was well concealed, that to the Rio Chocon was still harder to find; and but for the rock island, one might try several apparent openings in the hedge-like border of the stream before entering the canal that sweeps in a semicircle into the actual river. Two alligators sat, like the porters at an Egyptian palace, opposite each other at the entrance, but dropped incontinently into the stream before our rifles were ready,—giving us an unpleasant reminder of what we might expect should we take a bath in the cool river. From animal to vegetable was but a glance; and the musky odor of the reptiles faded into the fragrance of a large purple passion-flower, which hung so low that we slipped into the cayuco, Frank and I, and paddled from bank to bank in the little mahogany dug-out, pulling down branches and vines, shaking out lizards and beetles, while humming-birds of almost every bright color, and butterflies of hues seldom seen in cooler climates, would hardly leave the fragrant flowers we gathered. Nothing could be seen beyond the river, for we were in a green lane bordered by all the tropics can produce of vegetable life; and as the day wore on we felt the weariness of seeing. A little white passion-flower (P. Brighami), with curiously clipped leaves, three kinds of morning-glory, a crimson abutilon, and a host of plants whose family alone was known to us, had been consigned to the plant-press. At first there were no palms; but as we ascended the stream, which was in flood, the banks at last appeared, growing gradually higher, and only on solid ground could the palms find foothold. The cohune (Attalea cohune), with its long clusters of hard oily nuts, came first; then a small pinnate-leaved, graceful, but unknown species; then an astrocarya, with dreadful spines and hard but edible nuts; and finally, on the rocky banks, slender, long-stemmed species, and a climbing palm that, like the rattan, attained a length of several hundred feet. Our first glimpse of the family in full force was at the junction of the two mouths of the Chocon. Here there is an enlargement of the river into a lagoon, and the eastern branch looks as large and easily navigable as that we had entered. At another time we found this was the case. Bambus bent their graceful stems in clusters over the water, and here and there tall reeds in blossom waved their light plumes against the dark-green trees behind them.

With the drift floating down stream we noticed queer green things which were evidently vegetable; but what else? At last we came to some sapoton-trees (Pachira); and it was their fruit, now ripening,—like in size and appearance to a husked coconut,—that furnished our puzzle. The fruits split while on the tree, and drop the nuts, which are about as large as a hen’s egg, into the water, where they soon germinate, and float about with expanded cotyledons until caught on some shoal, or at the bank, where they take root.

EL RIO CHOCON.

Not once all day did we see a place to land; indeed, until we had ascended the river several miles there was no land, so high was the flood. Dense foliage, suitably defended with spines of palm and the no less unpleasant thorns of the guilandina and sarsaparilla, hid what might be disagreeable of animal life along shore; and as we could not land, neither could we plunge into the cool river,—that was already engaged by the alligators.

As the sun dropped behind the trees we made fast to a large post in midstream, starting a whole family of little leaf-nosed bats out of a woodpecker’s hole in this dead tree; and as our comida was being laid, I explored more carefully this curious mooring. Water-logged and stranded on the bottom, some twenty feet below us, it was a perfect image of life in death; for every part above the water was covered with a luxuriant growth not its own, and yet perfectly in place. On one side clung three different orchids in seed, a cluster of peperomias in blossom, and a fine cereus, while mosses and ferns quite covered the interstices. We did not at that time know the naughty habits of the bright little bats,[5] or we should not have slept so quietly; as it was, the mosquitoes were very thick, and only our veils protected us.

It was a strange bed-chamber. The river, black beneath and around us, was silent enough; for the current hardly rippled against our boat, no wind moved the leaves, and only our own voices broke the stillness while we waited for sleep. Suddenly a sound between a shriek and a roar burst almost over our heads. “Tigre,” muttered Frank as he felt for his rifle. It was only a lion-bird; but its terrible cry was repeated until it seemed to awake all the nocturnal noises of the forests that stretched for fifty miles around us. Howling monkeys (Mycetes ursinus), a shrill water-bird, hooting owls, were all easily distinguished by our montero; and we slept more tranquilly after his explanation, even though we thought we felt the rough back of an alligator scrape the bottom of our boat. I have heard the real tiger’s howl in the Sumatran jungle; but it was not so terrible as this wretched bird, nor are the tropical nocturnal noises so loud and various in any other place where I have been.

So far the country through which we passed was worthless for agricultural purposes; but early the next morning we came to an elevated limestone ridge, and beyond this outwork the banks grew sensibly higher, until they were some twelve feet above the present high water. With the higher banks appeared the iguanas; and I made my first shot,—a large female,— which was picked up, while three others fell into the water and sank before we could reach them. It was some time before I learned to distinguish these reptiles; for they are nearly of the color of the branches on which they bask, and until they move, are to the unpractised eye only a part of the bewildering foliage. I did not like to be told where to look, so before the day was half gone I could see an iguana as soon as a native.

Female Iguanas.

A mouth like a toad’s, green, glittering eyes, a large pendulous dewlap, a row of lancet-shaped spines down the back, slender claws, and a long, pointed tail, certainly are not features to make the iguana an attractive pet; and yet it is gentle, easily tamed, and there are people who enjoy its company. Let not the Northern ladies shudder as they look on this picture; for do they not know, are there not among their number those who fondle and kiss(!) even the deformed pugs and lap-dogs? Unlike the worthless curs, the iguana is a most excellent food-animal; its delicate white meat is not unlike chicken, and the eggs—of which the female lays five or six dozen—are all yolk, and very delicious.[6] Being good swimmers, they drop from their perches over the river when alarmed, and after a fall sometimes of sixty to eighty feet the splash is suggestive of broken ribs, or at least a total loss of wind; but they scramble nimbly up the banks under the overhanging shrubs, and are lost in the forest. Like the chameleon, they change color, and from green of various hues become greenish gray when taken from the trees. We had much less difficulty than Columbus and his companions experienced in adding these “serpentes” to our cosmopolitan bill of fare.

In the afternoon a boom across the river showed the neighborhood of mahogany-cutters, and a short row above this brought us to the head of navigation for our large boat, and we made fast to a tree on the right bank, where there was no clearing nor any easy way to land, although we could see that the banks were some ten feet above the water, and steep. Leaving the “Progreso” in the cook’s charge, we continued up stream in the little cayuco until we broke a paddle and had to return,—not, however, until we had made two landings.

Once up the steep and slippery bank, we found the land level, and in the dense forest there was no undergrowth. It always seems odd to a stranger in the tropics,—this entire absence of sod; but so dense is the upper foliage that there is no chance for small plants below, except such as can, like the sarsaparilla, climb up into the light above, or orchids, like the vanilla, which cling to, if they do not draw a part of their sustenance from, the tree-stems. The cohune palm (Attalea cohune, Martius.) was abundant, and by its presence confirmed the testimony of the dark chocolate soil to the exceeding fertility of the land. This palm seems to have three names applied to as many stages of growth. When young and stemless, it is manàca; in middle age, when the bases of the old leaves still cling to the trunk, it is cohune; and when age removes these scales, the smooth stem is corozo. I have never seen the manàca in flower or fruit, but I believe the three are but one species. Other palms were intermingled with these,—some in blossom, some in fruit,—but none so common nor so large, both in stem and leaf. Later on we shall see a picture of the cohune and its very valuable fruit.

In one place along the bank I measured fourteen feet of soil of the best quality; nor was this surprising, since the valley through which the Rio Chocon flows is a catch-basin for the detritus of the limestone ranges of the Sarstun and Santa Cruz mountains, and its form guards against torrential floods which might wash away the rich deposit. When the summer rains flood the banks, as we found later, the water subsides in a few hours, owing to the wide-open lower course of the river.

Barbecue at Benito.

A gigantic ceiba-tree (Eriodendron) stood not far from the river, and two of its great buttresses enclosed a semicircle thirty feet in diameter, while the projections themselves were not half a foot thick. Trees of very various kinds throw out these supports. I have even seen a goyava (Psidium), which usually has a rather slender trunk, expand most astonishingly into these buttresses when growing in a rich loose soil. It will, not unnaturally, occur to the reader that this must greatly increase the difficulty of felling such trees in clearing land. The difficulty is met by the woodmen in this way. A platform—called, strangely enough, a “barbecue”—is built of slim poles, often to a height of fifteen feet; and balanced on these frail supports, the cutter swings his long-handled axe. Of course he leaves a stump as high as his barbecue; but the ants (comajen) soon reduce this to dust. I have since then watched the cutters, and have wondered how they so speedily fell (they call it “fall”) a hard-wood tree, with no better vantage than two poles for their bare feet to cling to.

All through the forest there was a close, damp feeling, and in some places there was little light. We saw sarsaparilla, india-rubber, vanilla, and cacao growing wild, and every step brought some new thing to view; but it was less oppressive on the river, where there was sky above us of the true blue,—so much better to our tastes than the green canopy that met our eyes as we looked up on land. While on the river, we saw some curious long-legged spiders, seemingly plastered against the white limestone; and they were very unwilling to move their legs, which were two inches long. The vejucos from the over-hanging branches were very interesting, as these long, slender rootlets, if rootlets they be, hung sometimes a hundred feet, ending close to the water, but not touching it except in flood-time, nor do they, like subterranean roots, have branches or fibrous ends, although sometimes they seem to be unravelled into separate strands, like a cord whose form they imitate and whose use they usurp. We often pulled them and shook the branches from which they spring, without detaching them. The water was now clear and cool, and everything was enticing us to loiter; but the day was closing, and comida awaiting us on the “Progreso.”

The moon that night was full; and with no mosquitoes in the air, we hardly cared to creep under our toldo. The light filtered through the palm-leaves and sparkled on the black river as it glided around the bend. We could see but a few rods either up or down stream, and we almost wondered how we came there, and should we ever get away. Far in the distance the howls of the monkeys and the cries of the night-birds broke the stillness around us; but we slept unconscious of the shower that poured on our toldo before morning.

A very bright, warm morning in the middle of October is not unpleasant in the temperate zone; but here it seemed almost too warm to be seasonable, although the thermometer persisted in indicating 83°. Five of us were in our little cayuco at early dawn on our way down stream. The cayuco was not especially crank, but it was loaded to the water’s edge with five solid men; and as my hands grasped the gunwales, my fingers dipped in water on both sides. It was impossible for me to restrain the attempt to balance, which of course kept the cayuco in a constant quiver, alike unpleasant to myself and my companions. Add to this the consciousness that alligators were ready for us if we did upset, and it will be supposed that the voyage was not altogether agreeable.

We landed at last, and had a hard scramble up the steep, muddy bank, as many of the palms were armed with spines like needles (Acrocomia sp.), and there was little else to catch by. I was on the watch for snakes, and had my machete in my hand; but the first living denizen of the forest that met me was a fine blue butterfly (Morpho), nearly eight inches across. I could not, and Guillermo would not, catch it, because he said it was mala por los ojos (bad for the eyes). It was a “sight for sair e’en.” I found this curious superstition about butterflies common all through the country, and I confess that following their brilliantly colored wings in their rapid flight, under a blazing sun, does give one’s eyes a very tired feeling that may explain the origin of the popular belief. I will not compel any one to follow me through the forest, nor up the steep limestone ridges where the corroded rock was worn into fantastic forms and partly covered with begonias, lycopodiums, and other plants. We found several circular valleys among those ridges drained by sink-holes, and often I heard water running beneath my feet. In some places were little wells, like the cenotes of Yucatan, containing fish, which pass from one to another by underground aqueducts. Again and again I mistook for serpents the huge, green, scaly creepers that flattened themselves against the trees or swung from the branches. Sluggish and insignificant centipedes were not uncommon on the trees; but nothing except tracks of wild hogs, peccaries, jaguars, and tapirs indicated that the forest was the resort of troublesome animals. The entire absence of any fallen or decaying trees or dead branches was a marked feature of this forest. The insects had eaten all this unpleasant matter; and in one place we saw a cavity as large as a barrel, where the ants had eaten a palm-stump, leaving only the fibrous roots to keep the earth in place about the large hole.

Towards noon the air, loaded with moisture and unmoved by any wind in the forest, became almost unbearable, and we were parched with thirst. Santiago came to our aid; and selecting a rough-looking vine, of which we could not see the leaves, cut from it a length of some three feet, and from this trickled a tumblerful of clear, cool, tasteless water. This vejuco de agua was as large as a man’s wrist, of tender substance and very porous. The mozos declared that if the vejuco was cut only once, the juice would all run up from the pendent end; so it was necessary to cut at once above, and block its retreat. On the palm-trees were often found clusters of nuts of various sizes, some with such hard shells that even the parrots must have been baffled. We cracked several kinds, and found them more woody and less oily than the coconut. Several mahogany-trees came in our way, and they impressed me more than the sequoias of California or the banians and baobabs of India. Rising with a straight and uniform stem far above the surrounding trees, they then spread their dense foliage like a massive oak above the tree-top plane. Rosewood, palo de mulatto, sapodilla, ironwood, and many other kinds were recognized, and our exploration ended for the day with a bath on board the boat, in which we dashed the cool river water over each other. The air was 86°, while the water was 78°. Our men who had been sent up stream to build a champa, or native house, returned to us at sundown in true monkey style, swinging down on to the boat from the branches of the tree overhanging the “Progreso.” The absence of mosquitoes puzzled us, as it had the night before.

Section of Vejuco de Agua.

Dragon Rock, Chocon.

After the rain ceased, the next morning about seven, we paddled up stream in the cayuco. I have never seen rocks so curiously corroded; in some places they were like fossil bones of mammoth size, then like battered capitals and fluted columns, always of rather smooth surface, sometimes quite perforated. In the hollows were ferns, selaginellas, and sometimes curious spiders; one rock was just like some monster crawling into the river. On the right bank several small springs trickled in, and on the other side a swift-flowing creek added materially to the volume of the river. Still we were getting into shallower water, and after passing in one way and another fifteen rapids or corrientes, we came to a huge tree that completely blocked our way. With a satisfied feeling, we declined to drag our heavy cayuco over, but beached her on a sand-spit, and waited for the return through the forest of part of our men whom we had sent to explore inland. Wild figs of good size came tumbling into the stream from the trees above; but they were not to our taste, although Guillermo said they were eaten when ripe. While we waited, a large canoe came down from the mahogany region miles above, and the three Caribs in it dragged it over the log with great labor. Besides their petácas, they had mahogany mortars for rice-hulling, and mahogany platters. In the forest their work is task-work, and they often have half the day to themselves; in this leisure time they carve the rejected butts into various useful articles, which they sell at the Boca, or mouth of the river. As we returned, we saw another use to which the ever-present machete is put; it is in turn knife, axe, adze, hammer, spoon, back-scratcher, shovel, pump-handle, door-bolt, blind-fastener,—and now a fishing-rod! Guillermo actually split the head of a large fish that was in the shadow of a rock,—a fish weighing some five pounds!

In the afternoon we inspected the champa our men had been building. The building process was certainly a novel one. On receiving our orders, the Caribs held a brief consultation, chattering in their very unattractive language; while we knew no more of their talk than we knew of the intelligent ants, who are equally black, and hold their consultations unbeknown to us. The result was, however, that they separated and disappeared in the forest. Soon we heard the blows of the machetes; and then they came straggling back, two with the aucones or main posts of the house, others with side-posts, rafters, coils of vejucos, and bundles of manàca-leaves. In an incredibly short time the frame was tied together. The thatching with the palm-leaves took longer, as it was necessary to split each of the immense leaves, which were quite thirty feet long. These were tied on to the rafters closely, like clapboards, and formed an excellent roof, only surpassed by that made of another palm, called confra, found nearer the sea, which is so durable as to last eight or ten years. Butts of the manàca formed the sides of the champa; and then we had a house large enough for twenty men, with the labor of five men a day and a half, at a cost of $3.75. For our purpose it was better than the Palace of the Cæsars.

One morning I explored the tree to which we were moored. A fine balloon-vine (Cardiospermum) hung in festoons of fragrant flowers from the branches; among them was a humming-bird’s nest fashioned as daintily as usual of the golden down of tree-ferns, and shingled with bits of lichens. It was not the season for eggs; but I have at other times found many nests, with never more than two white eggs of the size of a small bean. The young birds, I may add, are, when first hatched, most amusing little things, all heads and eyes, and without the long bill of maturer days. I found also a green grasshopper (Tropideres), five inches long, and very handsome of his kind. I wondered if he ate sugar-cane, and other things one might want to grow if living in the champa.

One day, going ashore to cut some sticks for an awning on the canoa, I hacked with my machete at a tall, slim tree very common along the banks, and which had often bothered me by its curled, dried leaves, clinging to the tree and looking very much like the doves (qualm) which were so often on the tree that it is named for them. This tree, which is botanically known as a cecropia, one of the nettle family, had a hollow trunk divided transversely by thin partitions, and from this cavity came a swarm of ants. I had here a chance to verify the interesting description given by Mr. Belt[7] of the habits of these remarkable creatures. As he says, they get into the tree by boring a small hole, and then eat their way through the many floors of this vegetable tower; they do not, however, eat the tree directly for sustenance, but import with great care numbers of coccidæ, or scale-insects, to feed on the tree-juices and elaborate a honey-like matter, which the ants eagerly suck from a pore on the back of these little cows. I tried in vain to find the queen ant; but while every cecropia that I touched was tenanted by ants, never a single female came to light. There are several small outer doors, for the disturbed stem is dotted with the pugnacious little ants in a very short time. What first taught the ants to farm these dull, inert coccidæ? Other vegetables are ant-inhabited, but none that I know of afford such spacious accommodations.

Pleasant as this life on the river and in the forest was, the time came when we must return; and it was startling how many things we saw on our way down which we had passed unnoticed coming up,—tall reeds with feathery blossoms more graceful than the pampas-grass; palms with bluish green foliage; flowers of the arum family more beautiful than a calla; blue herons; butterflies of the most attractive colors; fish like glass, that is as transparent, and about a foot long. Frank shot a beautiful grossbeak with scarlet breast and metallic green back, and brought me a fine purple passion-flower; another of the party shot an alligator, who turned over, exposing his yellow belly as he died. Altogether, the voyage down was more agreeable than the hard run up. Trees that were bare a few days before were now covered with white feathery flowers, and others presented masses of greenish flowers on their flat tops. We sailed and floated down the Rio Dulce by moonlight, and at early dawn anchored at Livingston.

San Gil, from Author’s House in Livingston.

Opposite the town are lands fertile and capable of producing fine crops to an enterprising owner. Frank and I rowed over several times, once exploring a neglected finca, where cane, sapotes, cassava, bananas, plantains, rose-apples, and coconuts were all jumbled together; at another time visiting a cacao-plantation farther up the stream. There is certainly room for a wise investment of capital on these lands on the eastern slope of San Gil as far as Santo Tomas. And here let me write of this port, Puerto Barrios, and the Northern Railroad, although I did not visit them until the spring of 1885.

Santo Tomas is beautifully situated; but since the sad failure of the Belgian colony established there by a legislative decree of April, 1843, it has borne a bad reputation, and its inhabitants diminished to the insignificant number of a hundred and twenty-nine by the last census. Its harbor, into which no large river empties, is an exceedingly good one, and a wharf might be constructed on deep water; but the authorities, in selecting a terminus for the projected railway which is to connect Guatemala City with the Atlantic coast, and so unite the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, chose a place some three miles eastward from Santo Tomas, where they must construct a wharf some three hundred feet in length to reach twenty feet of water, and where often ships cannot lie, but must run for Santo Tomas in bad weather. Add to this that the site of the fine city of Puerto Barrios is a swamp at present uninhabitable, although laid out (on paper) in a very attractive way, with castle, theatre, hippodrome, and all the elements of a Centro-American city of the first rank. The splendid mango-trees, with their dark, dense foliage, are abundant in the old village, while here even the palms are dwarfed.

Puerto Barrios.

Arriving at Puerto Barrios late in the afternoon, we were kindly received by the contractors, and after an exceedingly good supper allotted comfortable beds in the large storehouse. We had heard of the cruelty practised towards the workmen on the railroad, and wished to know the truth. I of course understood the circumstances under which men were induced to go there to work, and knew that agents in New Orleans and elsewhere might and did make unauthorized promises to the shiftless adventurers who sought to better their fortunes in a new land. Men from the North cannot do hard manual work in this climate unless they are very careful in regard to diet, clothing, and general sanitary conditions. If they get wet, and sleep in their wet clothes, they will have a malarial fever in a newly cleared country. If they eat improper food, or proper food at improper times, their bowels will certainly protest. Now, I was convinced that the contractors did not take these precautions with their men, that in consequence of this negligence a large amount of sickness resulted, and that complaints printed in the newspapers of the United States from the sick men were justified. I have seen the men who left the railroad and took service on plantations, and have talked with them, although I have never mentioned the subject to the several contractors and overseers I met; my opinion is therefore formed from what these unfortunate men told me.

In the morning we were provided with the only hand-car the road owns, and began our explorations. I will not mention the builders of that car, for it was a worthless article, and had it belonged to me I should have run it off the track and down a steep place into the sea. The road, of thirty-six inch gauge, was graded (in March, 1885) some six miles, and rails were laid four miles; but the thirty-ton locomotive, which had to do the work one of half the size could do, could run only over three miles, the track was so uneven. Men were cutting sleepers in the adjoining forest, and we saw many of mahogany. The grade is also being pushed from Tenedores, on the Motagua River, to meet this end. No great engineering is here visible, and the main difficulty seems to have been in getting suitable foundations for the bridges over the numerous small creeks. Along the track we saw two large snakes of the boa family which had been killed by the workmen. Some five miles from Puerto Barrios we came to the hot sulphur-spring. It is a pool, fifteen feet in diameter, close by the track, and pours out a considerable volume of clear, hot water, pleasant to drink when cooled, but while in the pool too hot to put one’s finger in. Bubbles, probably of hydrosulphuric acid, escaped freely; but vegetation extended to the very borders of the pool, and all around the forest was dense. A cool brook ran near at hand and gave a fine bathing-place as the hot water mingled with it. We were assured that the men who drank the sulphurous hot water never had fever.

Sulphur Spring.

From Tenedores the surveyed line of railroad extends up the valley of the Motagua to Gualan, thence up the ascent to the high plateau on which stands Chiquimula, and thence to Guatemala City, where it will connect with the road now in operation from that city to San José, on the Pacific, five thousand feet below.

Before leaving the Atlantic coast we must again mention the numerous steamship lines from Livingston to New Orleans, New York, Belize, Puerto Cortez, Jamaica, and England. Communication may thus be had with the best markets for all tropical products. The lowlands are amply able to supply New Orleans, New York, and Boston with bananas, plantains, pine-apples, and coconuts, the latter growing most abundantly at Cabo de Tres Puntas on Manabique. The climate is healthful and not too hot, averaging for the year about 80°; and as there is no marked change of season, a perpetual June seems to exist. Capital alone is wanted to develop this Atlantic coast into the great fruit-producing orchard of the United States. Sugar-cane grows rapidly; and so strong is the soil that rattoon crops have been cut for twenty years without replanting, and no diminution of the saccharine yield has been noticed. Sugar can certainly be raised much cheaper here than in Cuba or in the Hawaiian Islands.[8] One day carries the crop to Belize, four days to New Orleans, and eight to Boston or New York. Yet, notwithstanding all these advantages, the Northern farmer wears out his life in the consumptive fields of New England, where his crops grow only four months of the year, instead of settling here, where he can plant any day of the year (except saints’ days, unless he employ coolies), and reap a rich harvest in due season. He sometimes goes to Florida, which is neither tropical nor temperate, which is nothing but a raised coral reef with a veneering of soil, and where frosts cut off his crops every few years. We often hear of the extreme unhealthfulness of the tropics; but is it generally known that more persons die of consumption in Massachusetts than of the most dreaded tropical diseases in Central America? The last time an official census was taken, Livingston had a population of a thousand, in round numbers, and the deaths of the year numbered seven,—one a centenarian, and two youths who fell from coconut-trees and broke their necks; while in Boston the rate for July, 1885, was 28.1 per thousand.

The objection to being among a strange people and under a foreign government and strange laws may best be met by following me through the country, where my object was to answer these very objections for myself; and if my readers will patiently follow me, I will tell what I saw, and they may form their own opinions.

Paddle and Machete.

CHAPTER III.
ACROSS THE CONTINENT, WESTWARD TO COBAN.

The last days of October, 1883, promised good weather for the hill-country, and Frank and I again left Livingston in the only way one can leave it,—by water. Our route was as before,—up the Rio Dulce; but this time we had no comfortable but heavy “Progreso.” We had, however, a better craft for our voyage,—a fine native canoa, cut from a single log of a wood they called cedar (which it is not); its length was thirty feet, and its beam five and a half. With two masts and triangular sails, this canoa could show good speed with a fair wind; but we cared little for her sailing qualities on the present voyage. As there were no ribs, and the thwarts were easily removed, we made the after part, which was floored, quite comfortable with a temporary roof, or toldo; our luggage was stowed amidships, while our captain and two men had their quarters forward when not rowing or paddling. We had our coffee-pot (as necessary a travelling companion in Central America as an umbrella in England) and a supply of food for a week; although we hoped our voyage might last less than five days.

The cliffs on the Rio Dulce were as beautiful as ever. Theirs is a beauty which never fades with the fading year; and yet the changes are very marked. I never saw such a river,—a very Proteus, it presented a new form every time I saw it; and Frank, who is far more familiar with its face, tells me I have never seen it in its glory, which comes in July, when the brilliant orchids are all aglow. Now a cereus with crimson blossoms was prominent; so were the bromeliads, parasites on almost every tree. But among roses I saw the thorn. Our Caribs discovered a huge serpent asleep on a white cliff far above us. Frank, with a laudable blindness to all that was not pleasant, could see nothing but a fallen tree. I saw only a few feet of the head end, which had a diameter of about six inches; and I obstinately refused to fire at the reptile, since he was quite as near as it was desirable to have him, and should my bullet wound but not kill him, it was quite possible that he might wriggle down into the river below. Porpoises were common far up into the Golfete, where they were pursuing the abundant freshwater fish. A light sea-breeze helping us, we anchored for the night far above Cayo Paloma. Our mozo, Santiago, slept on one of the thwarts, which he exactly fitted, being slightly less in stature than the average New Englander.

Our anchor was up betimes; and before six o’clock in the morning we came to San Felipe,—a place we both had great curiosity to see; for in the absence of any definite account of the old Spanish fort, we allowed our imagination to build a very imposing, picturesque, and, withal, strong castle.

We found that Spanish castles in Guatemala were almost as unsubstantial as châteaux en Espagne; and it was some time before we distinguished the Castillo de San Felipe through the morning mist. At the outlet of the Lago de Izabal the shores approach each other closely,—indeed, the channel is hardly a stone’s cast broad; and on the northern point stands the fort built in 1655 to protect the then important commerce of Izabal from the buccaneers.[9] It is well built of round (uncut) stone, and the waves of the lago dash against the walls, which are gradually yielding to the insinuating roots of many plants,—even a delicate blue commelyna joining in the attack that the seventeenth-century pirates began in vain. The van of this vegetable scaling-party was led by a fine papaya (Carica papaya), which now towered far above the walls with its head of ornamental leaves, but which perished soon after; and we saw only the bare stem on our return, three months later.

Passing this mediæval ruin, we came to a slight wharf of stakes, where we had to undergo a rigid inspection by the guarda, who insisted on opening our trunks, in spite of a slight shower that was wetting us. But we submitted with better grace on reflecting how little amusement of any sort the custom-house men could have in this sleepy looking place; and when the nonsense was over we sent Santiago with the coffee-pot, which he was told to have boiled over somebody’s fire. He was also told to get all the food he could find; and this useless wretch brought back, as the total result of his foraging, three eggs! Coconut-trees and goyavas were abundant, but no fruit could be found. After this very frugal breakfast,—in which we did not ask Santiago to join,—we walked to the little Comandancia; but the officials were not visible, and we entered the old fort, as the only other sight in the dirty little town.

Castillo de San Felipe.

The plan is rather peculiar, but doubtless well suited to the defensive warfare of those days. The doorless entrance-ports invited us to enter, and we found a courtyard of paved and level surface occupying almost the entire area. At the outer end, commanding the channel, the bastion was higher than the main portion, approached by narrow and winding steps, easily defended; and here was the most curious part of the whole edifice,—the gun-deck. There is a law in the Guatemaltecan code forbidding photographing in military works; but I have since wished that I had broken that law then and there, so that my readers might see for themselves the clumsy guns, the carriages with wooden wheels, the magazine roofed, indeed, but doorless,—the whole business as dangerous to the gunners as to any enemy outside. Some fine orange-trees were growing up through the pavement, and their hard green fruit would be suitable ammunition for the ancient guns.

There was nothing whatever to attract the most curious traveller in San Felipe, and we sailed and paddled on with frequent calms and showers. We were completely in the hands of our boatmen, whose knowledge of the lago proved to be very limited; but as ours was even less, we suffered them to coast the northern shore, when, as we afterwards learned, the law directed our course southward to Izabal, the port of entry, where we should have obtained a permit to proceed on our voyage inland. Our map indicated the course we selected as the shorter to the mouth of the Rio Polochic; but the map was, as usual, wrong.

There was not much to see, as the mist and rain hid the mountains and hung low on the shores, driving us frequently under our rubber roof. Whenever the mist lifted we caught glimpses of the far southern shore, with the grand wall of the Sierra de las Minas catching the fleecy clouds on every black pinnacle; and the clearing sky attracted us still closer to the northern shore, where we could see a low wooded country backed by a high range of mountains, with here and there an opening through which some stream reached the lake. At two o’clock we landed at Sauce, on a beach of black sand, evidently volcanic, scattered with fragments of chalcedony and agatized wood,—a formation which puzzled me exceedingly, as all this region is supposed to be non-volcanic. We had no time to follow the beach to ascertain the extent of black sand, but it reached far beyond the few comfortable huts on the shore,—as far, indeed, as we could go into the jungle inland. In it grew luxuriantly limes, bananas, mangoes, and other cultivated plants not recognized. Goyavas grew to a large size, but all the fruit was ruined by worms.

Making Tortillas.

Here first we saw the whole process of tortilla-making. The maiz was hulled in lime-water, washed in the lake, and ground laboriously on a stone metatle into a consistent paste, which is then skilfully patted into cakes from four to six inches in diameter, round and thick as an ordinary griddle-cake. These are then baked on an iron plate or comal, but not browned, and should be eaten hot, and then the tortilla tastes like parched corn. The metatles in Guatemala were all of very simple pattern and unornamented, not so well wrought as those in Mexico and farther southward, but serving their purpose equally well. A woman who cannot make good tortillas is in Guatemala not deemed fit to assume the duties of housekeeping; and yet there are few articles of food requiring more labor in preparation than this unleavened bread. Except the Hawaiian poi (paste of the Colocasium esculentum or Kalo), I can recall no article of diet that demands more physical labor. The inhabitants of the tropics in both these cases lay aside their proverbial indolence and earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. For our men we procured meat in long strips put on skewers and crisped over the fire, while for ourselves we bought bananas, limes, and tortillas. After this we continued our voyage until dark, when we anchored near shore and enjoyed a very quiet night. At early dawn we were again under way. The showers continued, and far away on the Santa Cruz range the rains were heavy, boding ill for our ascent of the river. The lake water, usually quite potable, was now full of a small green alga, and the cast skins of ephemera were so thick on the surface that for miles we could with difficulty get a dipper of clear water.

Twice our Caribs thought they had found the mouth of the Polochic; and at last, at high noon, we discovered it, where we least expected, on a marshy promontory or delta. Masses of coarse floating grass were attached to the banks on each side, almost blocking the way; and the rapid current, which we estimated at five miles an hour, made these grass plots wave as if the breezes were playing over their tops. Pelicans were abundant and tame; so were the iguanas. The air was still, and the thermometer marked eighty-five degrees, while the water was much cooler,—nine degrees. All the creeks in the lowland flowed from the river, so high was the flood, and we found no comfortable landing-place.

At night we anchored in the stream, and the mosquitoes were very troublesome; unlike those on the Chocon, these were black, and had very long and sharp lancets. At three in the morning we could bear them no longer; Orion was in the zenith, and we struck our toldo, the men slowly rowing on until six, when we anchored for coffee. As we were eating, a cayuco, covered with a neat awning of leaves, came rapidly by us on the way down; its occupants assured us that there were many vueltas (bends) and a great current (mucho corriente) before we should be able to reach Pansos.

Ten miles a day was the utmost limit of our propelling power, and in crossing the bends to escape the current we hardly held our own, so strong were the flood-waters. Our creeping pace gave us ample time to see, but no time to stop for, the many curious things on either bank. Close on the shore were red abutilons, and over them crept the long-tubed white convolvulus (Ipomœa bona-nox) and the brilliant yellow allamanda; high up on the wild fig-trees were black, long-tailed monkeys, common and tame, their wonderfully human faces peering down at the intruders, the mothers clasping their hairy little babies to their breasts with one arm, and with the other scratching their heads in a puzzled manner. One of our Caribs shot a little fellow before I could prevent him, and the creature clung, even in death, by his tail. As I had shot an iguana through the head with my revolver in the morning, I was called upon to cut with my bullet the provoking tail, that the Caribs might have a caribal feast. Regard for my reputation as a marksman, and the memory of a taste of roast monkey in India, forbade the attempt, and the poor monkey, like the Tyburn thief, “is hanging there still.” There was foam on the water, but we heard no water-fall,—and indeed the flat nature of the country made falls, cascades, or even rapids, impossible.

We passed another night when the torrents of rain had no effect on the myriads of mosquitoes and black-flies. Still all the brooks ran inland, although, as we afterwards learned, in the dry season these banks are so high above the water that they are hard to climb. All day long we saw monkeys along the banks, though high above us, and the following night we heard the howlers; but in compensation for that evil had no mosquitoes. By Saturday (Nov. 3, 1883) we hoped to be well on our road from Pansos to Coban, but, except the cayuco, we saw no signs of men or the work of men’s hands; on that morning, however, we came to a little finca on the river bank, where a good sized stream from the river flowed into the yard and through the house. The poultry had taken refuge on the roof, and the Indian proprietors waded through the flood. Luckily the oven, or fire-place, was raised on sticks several feet above the water, so that the señora could make us some tortillas,—eight for a real. Eggs were the same price. Slight as the forage was, it was very acceptable, as our food was nearly gone, and we were already dependent on the Caribs for their cassava-bread. The river, these persons said, was falling, so we pushed on with new courage.

A fine spider-lily (Crinum) grew on the bank where we moored our canoa. We noticed that whenever we made fast to the cane-brake, the black-flies bothered us far more than when we had trees overhead; was it not because the cane did not afford roosts or concealment for the fly-catching birds and reptiles? The blossoms of the cane were very beautiful, indeed as attractive as those we had noticed on the Chocon. Mahogany-trees were seen here and there, and we were told that there was much of this fine wood on the Rio Zarco, just at hand. I also saw a goyava-tree, some eighteen inches in diameter and eighty feet high. In the afternoon we passed willows (Sauce), and about five o’clock were startled by an unusual noise behind us, when a huge three-storied structure came sweeping up the stream, as if in pursuit; it was the steamer “City of Belize,” a flat-bottomed stern-wheeler. As the current was very strong and the channel narrow, we hastened to make fast to a large fig-tree overhanging the stream. Before, however, our arrangements were made, the steamer was upon us, and her surge, added to the current, tore us from our mooring and swept us under the tree. Our masts caught in a branch, and we were turned on our beam-ends. For an instant our situation was critical. Our weather-rail was six inches under water, and we were clinging to the other side as the water came pouring in; then the mainmast slipped, and we righted, all hands bailing out eagerly, while Frank held by some branches and prevented a repetition of the disaster. If the canoa had upset, our journey would probably have ended there, as our photographic supplies would have been ruined, and there would have been little chance for us in that deep, rapid river, with no banks, and no trees that offered food, even if they gave us shelter from the alligators; and these too would have shown themselves as soon as the disturbance caused by the steamer had abated. Our Carib captain was as frightened as we were, and with the little English he knew, exclaimed as we anchored for the night: “D—d good boat; wouldn’t sell her for h—ll!” The persons on the “City of Belize” must have seen us filling, but they did not stop to see if we drowned.

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.

In the afternoon we crossed, on an iron truss-bridge covered with a thatched roof, the Polochic, now a shallow but still wide stream. I wished for my camera here,—as I had several times since I left Pansos; but we were effectually parted until our mozos should overtake us at Coban. We had been assured by the blind ladinos that there was no interesting scenery on the road. We were now constantly ascending, and we passed many Indios of the Poconchi tribe,—clean, good-looking, and dressed in white, with fanciful designs of darker colors sewed on.

We arrived at Chamiquin early in the afternoon, and found the hamlet consisted, as far as we could see, of two very inferior houses and as many sheds. A fine grove of mango-trees, but no fruit; a hen-house built in the second story only, and accessible by ladder; palms, with the withered leaves still clinging to the stem (cultivated for the nuts, but dreary looking); limestone cropping out on the neighboring hills,—comprised the distinctive features of the place. Our room was new and clean, lined with banana-leaves, and the hard earth floor was of course uncarpeted. The furniture was simply a table and a bench; but frugal as the furnishing was, our dinner surpassed it,—a few tortillas, four eggs, and some nasty coffee for two hungry men! We had our own candles, or we might not have seen how little it was. Perhaps our hostess did as well as she could, for the twenty-five dogs that besieged our room while we ate were evidently half starved.

All through the country the dogs are very ill conditioned, and I several times remonstrated with their owners for what seemed to me cruel treatment; for although I detest this unclean brute, I do not like to see him suffer. But I was always assured that the dogs were underfed, not on account of cruelty, but to make them good hunters and scavengers. It certainly made them useless for the only purpose besides hunting that dogs seem to have been created for,—human food. Guatemala canines are certainly a contrast to the juicy little poi dogs of the Hawaiians (which are fed only on poi, sweet potato, and milk), or the excellent dogs always hanging in the butcher-shops in China.

Here let me speak of the atrocious coffee that we found in this place and elsewhere as we went on. The berry, which is of fine quality, is burned, not roasted, and when pulverized, boiled for hours, and then bottled. This nasty mess they call esencia de café, and mix it with boiling water at the table. It was generally served to us in patent-medicine bottles, with a corn-cob or a roll of paper for a stopper. It had not the slightest taste of coffee, but reminded one of the smell of a newly-printed newspaper.

We were on our way next morning at half-past five, and found the road much washed by the severe rains of the night before. On our right, across the valley, was a fine cascade spattering over the limestone rocks, and now we came for the first time to home-like pine-trees. Begonias of two species grew in the clefts of the roadside rocks, and in a house-yard was a fine Euphorbia Poinsettii. As my horse had hurt his foot at Teleman, I walked much of the way, so our progress up the hills was not very rapid; and we were by no means expecting it when a turn in the road between two hills brought us abruptly into San Miguel Tucurú.

This interesting town, of some three hundred inhabitants, had no posada; but we found a capital casa de hospedaje, kept by a señora of African descent married to an invisible ladino. The house was of fair size, built of adobe, and well plastered. A black Saint Benedict hung in effigy on the wall,—the forerunner of a host of black saints and holy people whom we saw both in sculpture and painting as we advanced through this ancient domain of the Spanish missionaries. Our señora had a calentura,—the national excuse for not doing anything or going anywhere; but for all that she got us a good breakfast. Our horses were used up, and our boy could get no others. An appeal to the alcalde brought one poor horse; but all our further efforts were answered by mañana (to-morrow),—that word so hateful to an active man, but universal here. As we had a very comfortable house to pass the night in, we made ourselves easy, and started to explore the town. On our way in I had seen an attractive spring a short distance from the road, and I went alone to explore it, taking a calabash I had just purchased for a drinking-vessel. A well-worn path led across a meadow, and a sudden turn brought me upon a party of women in exceedingly slight apparel, bathing and washing in a little pool into which the spring emptied through a spout. These naiads were most of them young; but one old woman, a foul-visaged hag, scowled savagely upon me, while the others giggled as I quietly handed my calabash to the prettiest, and asked her to give me a drink of water, which she caught from the high spout with skill and without hesitation, although the action exhibited her form in all its beauty. How I wanted my camera!

Stuck in the muddy road was a train of ox-carts, and the oxen from seven or eight were yoked to the head cart; and when that was dragged out of the slough to a camping-place, the next and all the rest were treated the same way. We wandered about town between the showers, saw lime-kilns, a lead-mine, and several potteries, and at last came to the church,—a more considerable building than we had yet seen in Central America. The door was tied with a leather shoestring, and there was no resident priest. The images seemed, to our unaccustomed eyes, most horrible; but they must have appeared in holier form to the poor worshippers, for marigolds and amaranths were strewed before them, and votive candles burned on the floor. The ancient name of this town was Tucurúb (meaning “town of owls”); but the Spaniards re-christened it by one of the saints called Michael,—which I do not know, but apparently not that one whose churches in western Europe are usually perched on some almost inaccessible pinnacle, as at Le Puy in France, St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, etc. Only one man in the town could speak English, and he could give us very little information about our road. Indeed, all the way we were in that delightful condition of travelling without knowing exactly what is coming, and constantly meeting the unexpected. The rain at last came down in earnest, and drove us within doors. A Boston boy who has a fine coffee estate in the neighborhood came in as we were at dinner and initiated us into the mystery of tortillas tostadas. Certainly by toasting, the tough, clammy, cold tortilla is made even better than new.

At four in the morning our boy Roberto lighted the candle and waked us up. We had settled our score the night before, and so did not disturb the family, but completed our toilet on the doorstep, as we saw to the saddling of our horses, by the light of the solitary candle. It was so dark as we rode away that we could not see the road, and blindly followed our guide’s white horse. A gate across the road gave us some trouble, as we could only feel it. By daylight the scenery must be fine; but as the noise of rushing waters, and a blacker streak by the road-side, alone indicated the torrents and barrancas at hand, we were troubled rather than pleased by these picturesque properties. We came to an ox-train camped in the middle of the road; and but for the glowing embers of their camp-fires we should have had great difficulty in passing.

As the gray dawn brightened over the mountains, the numerous white cascades attracted enough attention to keep us from the drowsiness we were both falling into from the darkness, cold, and dampness, and the slow gait of our horses. Fire-flies were still sparkling when it was light enough to see the road.

It was quite early when we came to Tamahù; and as we entered the little town (1,517 inhabitants), which is twelve leagues from Coban, we saw a shrine with images as horrible as any of the idols of the ancient Polynesians. Most of the houses had tiled roofs, and looked neat and comfortable. At one of the best we stopped for coffee; and while the preparations for our meal were going on, Frank and I went up to the church hard by. The door was tied with a rope, and we found little of interest within, except images closely resembling East Indian idols, and around all a flavor of mild decay. Our hostess—for always it was the señora who managed the hospitalities and took the pay therefor—gave us rolls and fried plantains with our good coffee, and the table and bench were of some choice wood, darker and harder than mahogany. Fine roses blossomed in the yard (it was November), and cotton-dyeing and weaving, the principal industries of the town, were carried on in nearly every house. Lime-burning and tile-making also employ a goodly number of the people.

As we rode into the country, we passed many clumps of a fine arborescent composite some twenty feet high,—one of the giants of this great and widely spread family. Crimson lobelias (like cardinal-flowers) with red stems, crenulate leaves, and a very unpleasant odor, were common. The road was badly gullied, and the nightly rains had made the Polochic, which still kept at our side, an angry looking torrent quite unfordable. The grades of the road were good, and showed engineering skill and constant care; but for all this my horse broke down before noon, as I had expected, and our boy, after some consultation with the drivers of a mule-train we passed, captured a stray mule for me and turned the horse loose. All the horses here seem so feeble, and many of the mules so sore, that I seriously thought of capturing one of the powerful bulls feeding peaceably by the path, and riding him in true African style; but Frank earnestly dissuaded me, so we had to walk half the time to save our wretched hacks.

Through the mud we rode into Tactic, four leagues farther on, at half-past one o’clock. The barometer recorded 4,650 feet; but this was not high enough to insure dry roads at this season. The town, of some thirteen hundred inhabitants, seemed prosperous; the houses were of a better class than any we had yet seen, and the gardens were full of fruit-trees and vegetables. Tree-abutilons, both pink and crimson, were covered with blossoms, and peach-trees bore both blossoms and unripe fruit. The roads were quite too muddy for foot-travel, except in native undress. The corridors of the houses generally had carved posts and lintels, and the central tile of the ridge was usually fashioned into a cross, with two lambs or doves as supporters. The casa municipal was a noteworthy building. In gardens we saw fine coffee-trees, and were told that here there are three blossomings in May, and as many harvestings in December; the first and third are small, while the second is large. Roses were even finer than at Tamahù; and a little girl gave me a bunch of a kind much like the old-fashioned cabbage-rose. Most of the inhabitants are Indios of the Poconchi tribe.

Roof Tile.

The façade of the church is ornamented with dumpy statues of saints, and the main altar is elaborately carved. We noticed a picture of three men in the flames of Sheol,—whether Hell or Purgatory we could not tell; one wore a tiara, another a mitre, while the third had on a plain four-cornered canonical cap. In front of the church we bought twenty jocotes (Spondias sp.) for a medio. There are several varieties of this plum-like fruit, and the red is larger and better than the yellow. When quite ripe, the rather tender skin contains a juicy yellow pulp around a rough stone. From the fermented juice chicha is made,—much used as a mild intoxicant, not unlike thin cider.

As we rode out of town we saw that the suburban gardens were much overrun by squash and bean vines. Maiz stood fifteen feet high; far up on the hills we saw cornfields (milpas), having in their midst dwelling-houses almost in the clouds, and seemingly built like swallows’ nests against the steep hillside. The campo santo, or cemetery, was surrounded by adobe walls, and seemed utterly neglected. We had seen in the church, and now found by the roadside, a fine red and yellow orchid, and another pure white one, as well as the cardinal-flower. All day there had been showers; and when we arrived at Santa Cruz, long after dark, we were wet, in spite of our ponchos and the water would run into our boots.

There was no posada, so our boy declared, and we had to try the cabildo for the first time. The Escuela por Niños, or “school for ninnies,” as Frank persisted in calling it, was placed at our disposal; but the floor was bare, hard concrete, and we had no mats, while there was no chance to hang our hammocks. It was not inviting; but one of the attendants kindly brought two mahogany settees from the court-room, and this was so hard a couch that one might be pardoned for going to bed with boots on,—and mine were so wet that I feared I should not get them on in the morning if they once came off. We needed food quite as much as a bed, and at last found rolls and coffee at a little shop near at hand. At four o’clock in the morning there was an earthquake, which did not wake Frank, though it jarred my bed as though some one had run against it in the dark. This shock was felt, as we afterwards found, at Coban, San Cristobal, and for miles around. Slight earthquakes are said to be common enough here, but we saw no evidence of severe ones.

In the morning at half-past five, while Roberto was saddling the horses, we visited the church and found many curiously carved and gilded altar-pieces. After performing our ablutions in a puddle in the road, left by the last night’s rain, we got our coffee and hastened on our way, as it was Friday, and we still had twelve miles to ride to Coban.

This city, although at an elevation of 4,500 feet, is surrounded by much higher hills; and from the pass over which the road winds, the view of the surrounding coffee-region is very fine. The streams were in flood, and some of the lower plantations were under water. Near the town we saw the method of raising coffee-plants under frames covered with dried ferns. Crossing a good bridge, we came up a paved street, and soon after ten o’clock rode into the Hotel Aleman, where we had a very comfortable room and two beds with sheets and pillow-cases,—the first we had seen since we left Livingston; and we were not now compelled to sleep in our clothes. Our breakfast was the best we had found since we had been in the country, and consisted of soup, sausages, frijoles negras, wheaten rolls, fried plantains, tortillas tostadas, tomato salad, fried potatoes, and good coffee. The potatoes here are native, seldom larger than an English walnut, and very mealy. In the patio of the hotel bloomed roses and violets.

In Hotel Aleman.

Plan of the Hotel Aleman.

As this Hotel Aleman was the first house of solid masonry we had entered since our arrival in Guatemala, we examined it with some curiosity. Externally it was very plain,—white with stucco, of one story, and roofed with red tile. Windows were few, and the large door of two valves was generally closed in a rather inhospitable manner to an outsider. Once within the portal, however, the scene changed wonderfully. Before us was a courtyard (patio), into which the house opened. Directly in front was a plain building, used as kitchen (cocina) and stable; on the left was the garden (huerto); on the right, the corridor, on which opened the sala, or parlor, an apartment or two, and the dining-room (comedor). In the corner was a large concrete tank to catch rain-water. Our own apartment was at the left of the entrance, and was quite large, with tiled floor and separate corridor. A curtain was suspended between two of the pillars to shade the dining-room, and hammocks could be swung in every direction when needed. Birds hung in cages, and flowers in baskets; and the négligé air of everything, except the neat little Indian women who did the household work, added to the comfortable feeling the place inspired.

The Cabildo of Coban.

We walked up a paved street an eighth of a mile to the casa municipal, and, passing an arched gateway in the clock-tower, entered a spacious plaza, with the cabildo on our left and the foundations of the new palace on the brow of the hill opposite. Directly before us was the church and connected buildings,—once a college of priests, since confiscated by the Government, and now used as a music-school, blacksmith’s shop, and for other purposes. The main part of the Plaza was paved; and here were congregated several hundred Indios, mostly of the Quekchi tribe, buying, selling, and bartering. We bought twenty-five fine granadillas (fruit of the passion-flower) for a medio, and as many jocotes for the same price. Delicate straw hats, woven in two colors, were three reals and a medio; cotton napkins (servilletas) of native weaving, two reals; palm-leaf umbrellas (suyacales), such as every mozo de cargo carries, one real. There was a fair supply of raw cotton, cacao, brown sugar, tallow, soap, and blankets.

Interior of the Church at Coban.

COBAN CHURCH AND PLAZA.

The church was very large and interesting; but the front was disfigured by two distinct main entrances, and the bell-tower was too low for the church. Within, there was the simplest architecture imaginable,—plain timber posts, square, with a slight chamfer, with pillow-block capitals and stucco bases; an uneven tiled floor; and side altars of poor design, sometimes painted to imitate marble. On one of these altars a famished cur was eating candle-ends; on another were the three crucifixes of Calvary,—the repentant thief being a young man of personable form and features, while the other was a bald-headed, bearded villain; a very impressive object-lesson we afterwards saw in many churches. A fair St. Sebastian was the only picture of tolerable merit.

Pattern of Cloth.

We called on the excellent Jefe politico, Don Luis Molina, who received us very politely, although our call must have been a great bore to him, as he spoke no English, and my Spanish was very lame. The Indian women in the streets all dress alike,—in a skirt of indigo-blue cotton, generally figured in the loom; and their long and abundant black hair is carefully bound in red bandages (listones) reaching nearly to the ground. Their stature is below medium; they seem modest and good-natured. The blue cloth is woven in rude looms, several of which we inspected, and the thread is dyed in vats of masonry in the house-yard. The threads are dressed in the loom and dried by a few coals in a potsherd placed beneath the warp. A border is woven at each edge, and also in the woof, at intervals, to mark the length of a dress-pattern. A common design is given on the previous page,—the lines being light blue on dark. The lines of light filling are carried outside the selvage, and of course are easily broken; otherwise the cloth is coarse and strong, in widths of a vara, or thirty-three inches. The weavers were very obliging, and pleased to have us inspect their work.

The soil here is a rich red loam, and coffee grows better than elsewhere in the country. Coffee-trees, well-trimmed and loaded with crimson berries, were in every garden, and violets and strawberries were in blossom.

The domestic architecture was certainly not imposing, but it was substantial, and perfectly suited to the climate. Houses were generally but one story in height, built of masonry and covered with stucco, around a patio towards which the tiled roof inclined, covering a wide veranda as well as the house. The windows on the street projected slightly, and were protected by strong iron grills. Many of the streets were paved, and drains and culverts provided to remove the rain-water. As there is no aqueduct, water is brought from springs or caught from the roofs during the frequent rains. We were told it had rained incessantly for the last ten days, and the wet clouds still rested on the surrounding hills, giving a slightly gloomy aspect to the otherwise fine views in all directions. The meat-market was outside the Plaza, and a single glance was enough; but the general market was so attractive that, after a quiet night’s rest (we were of course far more wearied by sight-seeing than by any day’s travel), we turned our steps thither in the early morning. In our search for mules we came to the blacksmith in the cloisters. He was an American (del Norte); and it was said that when he was drunk he could shoe a mule better than others could in their soberest moments. He had been drinking when we found him; but he gave us some information, took us to his den hard by, where his family consisted of a native wife and a black monkey, and gave Frank the skin of a quetzal (Pharomacrus mocino). This skin was so beautiful that it put us on the search, and we found a señora who had a moderately large collection of these and other bird-skins, which are brought in by the Indios from the mountains of Alta Verapaz.

Quetzal.

The quetzal (pronounced kezàl) is the national emblem, and is decidedly a bird of freedom, as it never survives captivity, even when taken in earliest life. In ancient days none but the royal family could wear the beautiful plumes. At present the Indios bring the skins from the mountains in considerable numbers, their value depending on the length of the tail-plumes, which sometimes exceeds three feet. As the female is very plain, without the beautiful tail of the male, she escapes the hunters, and consequently preserves the species. The wing-coverts and tail-feathers of the male are of a superb peacock-green, changing to indigo, the inner breast scarlet, and the wings very dark.

We went to the campo santo, on a hill westward of the town, which is reached by a flight of a hundred and sixty concrete steps; the whole was built at the cost of one pious man. Several shrines on the way up made convenient resting-places for those who used those steps,—like the Golden Stairs at Rome for knee-worship and penance. In one of these shrines was a lamp of native make, in form of a bird with many necks. The chapel on the top was small, and the doorway so low that I struck my head violently in coming from the dark interior.

Except the noble pine-trees on the top, there was nothing attractive in this last resting-place. Some grave-diggers were making merry over a small and shallow grave they had just finished, and we gladly turned from the calvario to the fine views townward. At night the regimental band gave us some agreeable music (perhaps national airs, certainly unfamiliar tunes); and as the music died away in the distant streets we fell asleep, to be awakened at day-break by the drums and fifes calling the men of military age to the regular Sunday inspection. We were present at the roll-call in the Plaza; and of all absurd military sights, this was the chief! Soldiers in every costume and of all sizes stood in line, much as they arrived at the rendezvous, and solemnly answered to their names. Would that I could present a photograph of this “Falstaff’s Regiment” to my readers!

After coffee Frank and I went to church. The Indian women were all kneeling on the tiled floor, and formed the bulk of the worshippers. A few men stood or knelt, with striped blankets thrown gracefully over their shoulders. Mahogany benches between the side altars gave us an opportunity to sit comfortably and study the interesting scene before us while we listened to the very fine orchestra (consisting mostly of Germans), which occupied benches in the midst of the nave. Far away in the loft, over the door, a bass drum and fife, and still farther out of doors rockets and explosions, accompanied or emphasized the music. The sacrament of the communion was being administered to worshippers,—apparently in both kinds; the wine in a sort of sop, while the wafer was carried by an attendant. All through the long service the women remained devoutly kneeling on the tiled floor.

Indio of Coban.

After church the market was more active than usual, and we spent the time before almuerzo in lounging through it. In the afternoon we were made happy by the arrival of Santiago and our mozos, with our luggage in perfect order; and not long after the Jefe Don Luis called, and assured us that we should have all the mozos we needed to carry our luggage onward. We had decided to take the unusual road to Quiché, about which even the Jefe could give us little information, and we found no one else who knew more; so we decided to send our heavier luggage direct by Salamà to Guatemala City, while we took with us only one mozo to carry those things we needed by the way.

In the evening we turned again to the church to hear the vesper service. The spacious edifice was dimly lighted by the candles on the altars and pillars, and men and women knelt all over the rough floor. A choir of female voices was singing as we entered, and soon the officiating priest was conducted by candle-bearing acolytes to the altar. The responses by the choir and orchestra (organ, violin, flute, and violoncello) were very impressive, the musicians often joining their voices to the music of their instruments. The Indian drum, made of hides rudely stretched over the hollow trunk of a tree, boomed from the remote part of the church, and bombs and rockets exploded outside in a most effective manner. A black-robed young priest entered a confessional near where I was sitting, and a veiled female at once knelt at the side, while others in the immediate neighborhood moved quietly out of earshot. The whole service was very solemn; and the clouds of incense from the swinging censers of the Indian boys partly concealed the tinsel and tarnished gilding of the uncouth altar, and even cast a glamour over the huge doll, which, most gaudily dressed, represented the Queen of Heaven. The decaying church, so painfully out of repair by daylight, was covered with respectability, even with sanctity, by the shadows of night. One cannot but feel with sadness that the offices of a religion held so sacred here in centuries gone by should be so lightly regarded, and that the church buildings reared by so much labor and often unselfish devotion should now be cared so little for, even in this State of Verapaz, where the Church gained an ascendency over the Indios which the iron-clad and iron-hearted Conquistadores had never done.

Monday was spent in photographing views in the neighborhood and hunting for mules. Of these we agreed to take three for our use all through the country at a charge of $150; but when we unsaddled them at our hotel we found they all had sore backs, and accordingly sent them home. In the evening I went with the postmaster (a Kentuckian) to an examination at the Colegio de Libertad. Three ladino lads did most of the reciting in arithmetic, botany, zoology, and history; and a certain doctor took the rôle of chief examiner,—evidently quite as much bent on displaying his own knowledge as that of his pupils. I had to ask a few questions, which were understood and promptly answered.

In the morning we visited the Government storehouse for aguardiente. The inspector wanted us to taste the fire-water, which was so strong that it seemed to blister the tongue. The sale of this liquor is a Government monopoly, yielding a very considerable revenue.[12] A distiller at this place has a license, for which he pays four hundred dollars per month; and he must furnish a minimum of sixty-five bottles per diem, paying twenty-five cents a bottle for all over this amount. All the product is brought to the public store, where it is tested at 50°; and the retailers send in their written orders for the number of bottles they require. The estancas (or drink-shops) pay forty dollars per month. The unfortunates who drink take a small tumblerful at a time.

I bought a mare—yegua colorada—for sixty dollars; and as all bills of sale and receipts must be in Spanish, we, with the help of the postmaster, composed the following simple affair on stamped paper:—

Coban, 13 de Novr. de 1883.

Saben:

Que yo Miguel Reyes vicino de Coban, Alta Verapaz, he vendido y vendo a Don Guillermo T. Brigham una yegua colorada con el hierro del margen en la suma de sesenta pesas en efectivo. En constancia firmo yo el vendidor.

The paper is not only stamped, but also water-marked, and is for sale at the principal shops. As the stamps are changed every two years, the Government has to redeem all stamped paper on hand at the end of each biennial period.

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.