# A Glimpse at Guatemala/Chapter 17

CHAPTER XVII.
COPAN TO QUIRIGUA.
Towards the middle of March the heat at noonday became excessive and the weather looked threatening. It was early for rain, but ominous thunderclouds had hovered about for several days, and finally, after an oppressively hot morning and afternoon, the storm burst.
We had just finished our dinner when the rain began to fall. With all speed the men dug a trench round the tent, and drove the tent-pegs deeper into the ground, whilst we hastened to cover our possessions in the house, the roof of which leaked like a cullender, with waterproof sheets and every available macintosh and umbrella. When this was done we took refuge in the tent. It was none too soon, for the floodgates of heaven were opened on us, and the rain came down in a perfect deluge. I had grave doubts whether such a frail shelter as a canvas tent would protect us from the downpour, or resist each wild gust of wind as it swept howling and wailing through the trees, threatening destruction to everything in its path. However, the tent held out splendidly, and after an hour of wild rush and fury, with vivid flashes and mighty crashes of thunder, the tempest passed, and left us in the serenity of a still and moonlit night.
We had made our arrangements to leave for Quirigua about the 21st March, forgetting that that day fell in Holy week, when no Indian will work, so Easter Sunday found us still at Copan awaiting the pleasure of our cargadores. The day broke clear and lovely, but excessively hot, and before night a second thunder-storm, of much greater violence than the first, overtook us in the midst of our preparations for departure. This time it was no ordinary passing thunder-shower, but a complete break up of the weather and later on we learned that during this week a fierce "Norther" had raged in the Gulf of Mexico, and that cutting frosts and heavy snow-storms had destroyed the crops all along the coasts of Texas and Mexico. The sudden fall in the temperature was so severe that we were glad to put on our warmest garments, and the thinly-clad Copaneros fell ill with chills and fevers.
On Tuesday we bade good-bye to the ruins, and started on our journey to Quirigua in a downpour of rain. It was a melancholy leave-taking, but I was less reluctant to go than I should have been had the weather shown the brilliant laughing mood which had so long entranced me. The village and its inhabitants were in a pitiable condition of wet and mud, and as we rode past the houses, shivering figures with pinched faces came to the doors to ​bid us farewell, and on all sides we heard complaints and groans at such unusual weather. It was indeed cold and thoroughly uncomfortable, and Gorgonio alone of all the party kept up his spirits, and assured me that the rain was "mucho mayor que el sol"! My taste favours sunshine and dry clothes, but perhaps, after all, we were lucky in accomplishing the five days' journey under a cloudy sky instead of the grilling rays of a March sun. We were able to travel only five leagues during the first day, for the greater part of that distance retracing our steps on the Zacapa road, and at night pitching our tent in a great pine wood. The rain fell heavily all night long, and the next morning we made slow progress up and down hills by an execrable track that seemed even to tax the patience of the mules. By noon we arrived at a dirty ill-kept rancho, deserted by the responsible members of the family, and left in charge of three small children, who had locked themselves into the house and were not to be tempted out. We found a seat on a big log in the farm-yard, where the animals looked neglected and half-starved, and we ate our breakfast in the company of a "chumpipe," better known as a turkey and her brood, the friendliest little family imaginable, which clamoured for our food, and ate indiscriminately ginger-bread nuts and oil from the sardinebox, and drank all the coffee we could spare them. The rain now fell only in occasional showers, and during the afternoon the track improved, although it was still too rough to be pleasant, and we were not sorry to find at the end of the day's journey a well-built house at the rancho of La Ceniza. Our hostess told us, with no little pride, that we could have a room to ourselves; it proved, however, to be a passage-room, but the members of the family passed so stealthily through it on their way to bed, and were so thoughtful not to disturb us in the morning, when they again passed through before we were up, that we were hardly conscious of their presence.
At the time of our arrival the whole household was in a state of excitement over a shooting affray which had taken place just outside the enclosure, and which accounted for the unusual appearance of a man we had met on the road, whose torn and blood-stained garments had attracted our attention. The victim of the affray lay in the room next to us, groaning from the pain of a bullet-wound, and we learnt through Gorgonio that the unfortunate sufferer was ordered to appear before a neighbouring judge that same night. This seemed to be such an inhuman act that we ventured to remonstrate, and to suggest that if the case were so urgent the magistrate might come to the suffering man's bedside; but although there was a general murmur of approval, no one ventured to disobey the order which had been received, and the groaning creature was dragged from his bed and forced to walk off to the judge. ​The next day we followed a rough path winding up the face of a bare hill, and from the summit gained a view over a fertile valley in front of us, and a distant glint of the white houses of the village where we were to halt for breakfast. The morning had been pleasant, with fitful gleams of sunshine and soft cloud-shadows sweeping over the landscape. A pleasant path through a wood lay before us to the village, but before we could enjoy its sylvan charms a drenching shower overtook us, and sent us in a thoroughly bedraggled condition to the shelter of the nearest house. Later in the afternoon we rode on through a park-like country with fine trees to the village of Iguana, where a glance at the "posada" showed it to be unendurable even for one night, and, preferring damp to dirt, we pitched our tent on the grass by the roadside. A ride of three leagues through the rain brought us by noon the next day to the village of Barbasco, which straggles along the bank of the Rio Motagua. The water's edge was fringed with washerwomen, who plied their trade with great energy and small regard for the fabrics they were hammering and beating out with sticks and stones. We were ferried across the river with our luggage in a huge dug-out canoe, as the river was too deep to ford, and the mules were driven into the water to swim after us.
The weather showing signs of improvement, we determined to push on to the rancho of Quirigua, where we were sure of comfortable quarters and hoped to find our letters awaiting us. At the little village of Palmilla we came upon the first signs of the railway in course of construction from Puerto Barrios, on the Atlantic seaboard, to the capital, destined no doubt soon to absorb all the traffic of the old and much-used track connecting the capital with the ancient port of Yzabal on the Golfo Dulce, along which we were travelling. As the track wound upwards over the pine-clad hill-side, we caught beautiful views across the valley to the Sierra de las Minas, whose lofty sides are richly clothed with extensive forests, which have as yet escaped the machetes of the natives and the axes of the foreign coffee-planter. These forests are still the home of the howling monkeys (Mycetes villosus)—"Monos," as they are here called; and the sound of their melancholy cries reached us across the valley like the rhythmic roar of surf beating on a distant shore.
On reaching the summit of the hills we had been ascending, a still more striking landscape lay spread out before us, for the great forest-covered plain stretched to the N.E., through which the Motagua winds its way to the sea. The misty outlines of the hills on the far side of the river closed the picture on the right, whilst on the left the bold outlines of the Sierra de las Minas, ending in name only at the hardly distinguishable gap through which the road passes to Yzabal, run on under the name of the Sierra del Mico, until ​their beautiful overlapping slopes are lost to sight where they sink in mist towards the sea. A short ride brought us to Quirigua, which a few years ago was the site of a village of twenty or thirty houses, but now contains only the comfortable homestead of the cattle rancho belonging to Don Carlos Herrera. The ruins of Quirigua, about six miles distant, are included within the limits of the estate, which since the time of our visit has passed into the hands of President Barrios, and it is to be sincerely hoped that he will take measures to guard the monuments against depredations likely to occur by occasion of their proximity to the new railway.
Next morning we set out for the ruins. Riding first through a grove of pine-trees, and then gradually descending to the plain, we followed a narrow track into an almost impenetrable forest of coroza palms, mahogany and cedar trees, and all that marvellous tangle of creepers and climbing plants which go to make up that great wonder of nature—a tropical forest. After about an hour's ride through the forest, we crossed the line of the new railway, which was as yet innocent of rails, and half an hour later we emerged on the bank of the Motagua, about a mile distant from the ruins, and were welcomed to our new camping-ground by Mr. Hugh Price, my husband's companion and assistant in an expedition to Palenque in 1891.
The great river had shrunk to its summer limits, and had left bare long—stretches of sand strewn with the leavings of former floods, reminding one of the dumping ground of some great city, and no more picturesque than such a receptacle of rubbish. A little settlement of half a dozen houses had lately been formed on the river-bank, and a hundred yards beyond it Mr. Price, who had arrived a fortnight earlier, had built a rancho for us at the cost of about £2 sterling. With our tent pitched beside it for use as a bedroom we were well accommodated; but the situation was not a pleasant one. The herds of cattle roaming through the forest would draw down of an evening towards the river-bank, when rival bulls made night hideous with their bellowings, and we were forced to get up again and again to ward off attacks on the rather frail fence which protected our homestead, and to drive off those animals who came stumbling among the tent ropes and threatened to bring the canvas down on our heads. The poor beasts meant no harm to us, but they were searching wildly for something salt, and they would return again and again to lick and scrape the earth on the spot where we had thrown the small ration of salt which we daily gave to our mules. Woe to the man who left his garments overnight hanging on the fence to dry; nothing would be left of them in the morning but a chewed unrecognizable mass.
QUIRIGUA, STELA F.
The climate at Quirigua in April is, I am told, usually clear and dry, but we had chanced on one of those exceptional seasons which it seems to be the usual fate of travellers to meet in all parts of the world, and the inevitable heat was made the more disagreeable by sudden deluges of rain, which, falling on the sun-baked sands, turned the air into a great vapour-bath. Two or three times, however, during our stay, a strong breeze of an evening was followed by a bright and lovely day; then I hurried through my housekeeping with all possible speed, and rode off to spend the day at the ruins. On such a day the forest was beautiful and interesting beyond description, and seemed to be laid under a spell of enchantment. Nothing could exceed the wondrous beauty of the sinuous motion of coroza palms as the breeze gently stirred their splendid leaves and waved them lazily together in a lingering embrace. The forest resounded with the calls of birds, the gurgling note of the oropendula, the cries of parrots, and the screams of brilliant macaws, to which the hoarse roar of the monos, hidden in the highest tree-tops, formed a monotonous accompaniment. The perfumed breeze shook down flowers from invisible tree-tops and showered them in the path, and the sun's rays, forcing their way through every break in the almost impenetrable canopy of vegetation, danced merrily through the forest. What a marvellous place it was! What a fearful restless struggle for existence was going on in the vegetable world before one's very eyes! Everything was fighting its way upward towards the air and sunlight; straight, slim, branchless stems shot up to an incredible height and buried their heads in the canopy above, giving one no chance of distinguishing the shape of the leaves they bore. Numberless creepers and climbers used these shafts as supports on their way upward, their flexible stems being turned around them and hanging in great cable-like loops from the distant branches. One after another the great trees, even the forest giants with monster boles and huge buttress-shaped roots, seem to fall a prey to the insidious attacks of parasites, and what at first sight appeared to be the shaft of a mighty forest-tree, would sometimes prove to be only the interlacing stems of the Matapalo, a parasitic fig, which still held the dead and rotting trunk of some monarch of the grove within its embrace. The parasite had conquered in the struggle, but its triumph would not last long; the gale which would have failed to bend its victim's stem will send the ​hollow impostor crashing to the ground, and a hundred rivals will fight for its share of the sunlight.
I must own that it was a very great disappointment to me never once to catch sight of a monkey; their cry was often to be heard in the surrounding forest, and they were especially noisy about sunset; but they have become shy of the neighbourhood of clearings, and I could not bear the heat and toil of a scramble through the thick and thorny undergrowth to reach a spot from which they could be seen. However, one's eyes never failed to find animals and insects well worth the watching, and, amongst them all, the parasol-ants were perhaps the most fascinating, as they passed along their well-worn tracks, each with a piece of green leaf or coloured flower about the size of a threepenny-bit held over its head. I had read Mr. Belt's interesting description of their habits, and had learned how the leaves they so carefully cut from the trees are stored in subterranean galleries and used to form a sort of mushroom bed on which to grow the fungus which forms their principal food. We traced one of their pathways for some distance through the undergrowth until we reached their nest, a low mound three or four yards across, formed of the earth which had been thrown out when digging the galleries beneath, and a few blows on the ground with a stick soon brought out the fierce-looking hall-porters who guard the mouth of the burrows. My husband had on one occasion to place his camera on the top of one of these nests, as the only place from which a certain view could be taken. Going about his work as quietly as possible, he managed to get the focus adjusted before his presence was discovered, but whilst he was putting in the slide the ants swarmed up over him. He jumped away as soon as the plate had been exposed, and managed to brush them off his neck and hands, but fifty or sixty of the ants had fixed their strong nippers into the flannel of his shirt and trousers and refused to be shaken from their hold, and when he attempted to pull them off, the small body always came away between his thumb and finger, leaving the big head and nippers still fast to the flannel.
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QUIRIGUA. STELA D. NORTH FACE.
QUIRIGUA. STELA D. EAST SIDE.
Plan of the Ruins at Quirigua
Scale 1 Inch-200ft.
We slept only one night in the forest, and I cannot give a better instance of the denseness of the vegetation than by saying that I cleared a space for my camp cot on the south side of the monument marked A in the plan; yet it was only by chance that late in the following afternoon I became aware of the existence of the splendid Altar (marked B) within twelve yards of my sleeping-place. It was the unexpected magnificence of the monuments which that day came into view that led me to devote so many years to securing copies of them, which, preserved in the museums of Europe and America, are likely to survive the originals. In 1882 I spent a fortnight amongst the ruins and cleared enough of the forest to enable me to take a good set of photographs of the monuments, and returned again in 1883, accompanied by Mr. Giuntini, Mr. Charles Blockley, and the Lopez brothers, more thoroughly equipped for the work of exploration, and remained camped in the ruins for over three months. The following extract from a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society gives an account of the expedition:—
The ruins, which are completely hidden in a thick tropical forest, stand about, three-quarters of a mile from the left bank of the river Motagua, and about five miles from the miserable little village of Quirigua, from which they take their name. They consist of numerous square or oblong mounds and terraces, varying from six to forty feet in height, some standing by themselves, others clustered in irregular groups. Most of these mounds were faced with worked stone, and were ascended by flights of stone steps.
The interest centres in the thirteen large carved monoliths which are arranged irregularly round what were probably the most important plazas. Six of these monuments are tall stones measuring three to five feet square, and standing 14 to 20 feet out of the ground; the other five are oblong or rounded blocks of stone shaped so as to represent huge turtles or armadilloes or some such animals. All these monuments are covered with elaborate carving; usually on both back and front of the tall monoliths there is carved a huge human figure standing full-face, and in a stiff and conventional attitude. The sides of the monuments are covered with tables of hieroglyphs, most of them in fairly good preservation. In addition to these tables of hieroglyphs there are series of squares or cartouches of what appears to be actual picture-writing, each division measuring about 18 inches square, and containing usually two or three grotesque figures of men and animals. The design of these picture-writings shows considerable variety and freedom of treatment as compared with that of the large-sized human figures, in the execution of which the artist seems to have been bound by conventional rules.
is covered with the most elaborate and curious ornament, and with tables of hieroglyphics and cartouches of picture-writing. The greater part of the ornament throughout these carvings is formed from the grotesque representations of the human face or the faces of animals, the features frequently so greatly exaggerated that it is most difficult to recognize them, but a careful examination enables one almost invariably to trace back to this facial origin what, at first sight, appears to be merely conventional scrollwork. Forms derived from leaves or flowers are altogether absent; occasional use is made of a plaited ribbon, and a very free use of plumes of feathers, which are often most gracefully arranged and beautifully carved. The fifteen monuments are divided into two groups; in one the figures are all those of men, in the other of women. It might be rash to argue from this, that women had attained a high place in the social arrangement of the people who raised these monuments; but there is one other feature that certainly may be admitted as showing an advanced and peaceful condition of existence, and that is the entire absence of any representation of weapons of war.
The work of examining and copying the carvings at Quirigua was one of no small difficulty; it was necessary, after clearing away the thick undergrowth, to fell the forest trees, and after an interval of about ten days, to run fire through the clearing.
The earth round the monuments had to be cleared away usually to the depth two or three feet, as, probably owing to floods from the river, the level of the ground had considerably altered since they were originally placed in position; a scaffold had then to be built round each monument and the carving subjected to a careful and thorough cleaning. This cleaning proved to be the most tedious part of the work, as the stone was always covered with thick and adhesive growths of moss and lichen. Two of the animal-shaped monoliths were almost completely buried under huge forest trees, which had grown exactly on the top of them, and it was only by a chance notice of some carved stone appearing between the roots that I became aware of their existence. I had one of these trees felled, but found the stones so much crushed and destroyed by the pressure of the roots that nothing remained worth moulding.
All provisions and all materials for the work, including such things as photographic dry-plates, moulding-paper, lime, oil, and nearly four tons of plaster, had to be carried in small quantities, sometimes on mules, but more usually on men's backs, from the port of Yzabal, about 24 miles distant, over a range of hills, along a track which proved almost impassable in bad weather.
We commenced work early in February, which is usually the beginning of the dry season, but unluckily during that whole month the rains continued and work was carried on under the greatest difficulties; excavations were filled with water as soon as made, and no moulding could be done unless a water-tight roof was first built over the monument which was to be worked at. At one time the floods covered all but a few feet round the knoll on which we had built our palm-leaf shanty, everything in the camp turned green with mould and mildew, and snakes and scorpions were very troublesome, and mosquitoes were innumerable. Worse than all, the sick list increased, until at last twelve Indians were ill with fever on the same day, and the sound ones all ran away home. After a long and tedious search I was able to engage other labourers, and from that time matters began to mend; the Indian labourers suffering from fever
QUIRIGUA, THE GREAT TURTLE.
and the weather became so hot and dry, that we were able to work on steadily until the first week in May. By that time I had secured a complete set of photographs of each of the monuments; Mr. Giuntini had finished a plaster mould of the great turtle—a mould of over six hundred pieces—and he had also moulded the most interesting portions of two other monuments. In addition to this, with the aid of my half-caste companions I had taken a mould in paper of one entire monument, and of every table of hieroglyphics and picture-writing which could be found, and Mr. Brockley had made a careful survey of the site of the ruins. The work of packing and transporting the moulds to the port was one of even greater difficulty than bringing the material, for there were over a thousand pieces of plaster moulding of all shapes and sizes with delicate points and edges which had to be protected from the slightest jar, and large paper moulds, some of which measured nearly five feet square. The last loads were not over the mountains when the rains commenced again with tremendous thunder-storms, and the mountain tracks were again an alternation of mud-holes and watercourses. A few of the paper moulds were damaged by damp on the passage home, but, on the whole, the result of the expedition has been very satisfactory.
Since 1883 one other fallen monument has been discovered, and we have learnt that the stone-faced mounds are the foundations of temples similar to those at Copan, but much more completely ruined. It was mainly with the purpose of more thoroughly examining these foundation-mounds and correcting the survey that we revisited the ruins in 1894. During our short stay we took a number of moulds and had finished all the clearing and made the necessary preparations for the survey, which Mr. Price was to carry out after our departure. But, alas! a very few days after we left the ruins both Mr. Price and Gorgonio were prostrated by a very bad type of fever, and it was with much difficulty that they succeeded in reaching Yzabal, where, owing to the kind attention they received from Mr. and Mrs. Potts, to whom many a traveller owes a debt of gratitude, they recovered sufficiently to start, Gorgonio for his home at Coban, and Mr. Price for England.
The survey was necessarily left unfinished, and the plan here given is taken from Mr. Brockley's survey, amended as far as possible from Mr. Price's notes. As both Mr. Price and Gorgonio were too ill to attend to the packing of the moulds, that work was perforce left to the local carpenter at Yzabal, with the result that more than half the moulds were found to be in a hopelessly ruined condition, when, after some unexplained delay, they arrived six months later in England. I spent an unhappy day at the Museum opening the packing-cases and rescuing the less-injured moulds from the evil-smelling mass of mildewed paper, and returned home only to be sent to bed for what the doctor first of all called an attack of influenza, but on the next day declared to be undoubtedly malarial fever, whether caught from germs conveyed from the tropics in the rotting paper, who shall say?