# A Glimpse at Guatemala/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV.
COPAN IN 1885. (by a. p. m.)
I was at Copan for a few days in 1881, and returned there again in 1885, determined to make a more thorough investigation of the ruins, and the result of my work has been published at length in the pages of the 'Biologia Centrali-Americana.'
The earliest description of the ruins is found in a letter addressed by Diego Garcia de Palacio, an officer of the Audiencia of Guatemala, to King Philip II. of Spain, dated 8th of March, 1576. Palacio was an acute observer, and his description of the ruins shows that they were in much the same condition when he visited them in 1576 as they were when I began to work at them in 1885. It is, however, not to Palacio's letter, which has only comparatively recently been unearthed from the Spanish archives, but to the charming pages of Stephens and the beautiful drawings of Catherwood that the world in general is indebted for a knowledge of the wonders of Copan. But delightful as their great book is in every other respect, it does ​not suffice for a detailed study of Maya art and inscriptions, and my object in returning to the ruins in 1885 was to gather together and publish such a collection of accurate copies of the monuments and inscriptions as would enable scholars to carry on their work of examination and comparison, and to solve some of the many problems of Maya civilization, whilst comfortably seated in their studies at home.
I had already gained some experience during an expedition to the ruins of Quirigua for the same purpose in the spring of 1884, and the reader of the foregoing pages will have learnt enough about the state of the roads and the means of locomotion to appreciate the difficulties met with in transporting from the Port of Yzabal to Copan the articles which I knew to be necessary to the carrying out of my plans, of which the following is a rough list: axes, machetes, pickaxes, spades, crow-bars, wheel-barrows, surveying and photographic apparatus, dry plates and chemicals, a barrel of lime, four tons of plaster of Paris and some four or five hundredweight of moulding-paper, in addition to food, personal baggage, and camp kit. The plaster of Paris was shipped from England to Livingston in tin-lined barrels; at that port it was landed and re-shipped in a small steamer which carried it up the river and across the Golfo Dulce to Yzabal; there the barrels were opened and the plaster put into water-proof sacks, which we had brought with us from England for the purpose, and it was thence carried on mule-back over the mountains to Copan. I remember making a calculation at the time which showed me that the plaster for which I had originally paid fifty shillings a ton in Carlisle had cost £50 a ton by the time it had reached Copan.
We built a rancho among the ruins to accommodate Gorgonio Lopez and his brothers, and Mr. Giuntini, a skilled plaster-moulder, whom I had brought out from England to make plaster moulds of the monuments, whilst I took up my quarters in the village, in a small mud-walled hut which served as the cabildo. The particular attraction of this place of residence was the prison cell attached to it, measuring about 7 feet by 4 feet, which was speedily turned into a dark room for developing photographs.
Through the courtesy of the Foreign Office I had been recommended to the care of the English Minister to the Central-American States, and it happened, luckily for me, that a few weeks before my arrival in the country there had been held in the city of Guatemala a conference of the Presidents of the five Republics, and during its session the English Minister had been thrown into frequent communication with General Bogran, the President of the Republic of Honduras. It was a time of political ferment, and I strongly suspect that during the official visits and social courtesies which the conference entailed, a subject free from all the political dangers of the moment, such as my expedition to Copan, was eagerly seized upon for friendly ​discussion. The result was not a little to my advantage, but as at the time I knew nothing of the cause, my astonishment may be imagined when, on arrival at Copan, I entered the village under triumphal arches, and was received by a guard of honour of barefooted soldiers, and by an ex-Minister of State and a professor from the Government College, who presented me with an official-looking document addressed to "El Sabio," which informed me that they had been appointed by the President of the Republic of Honduras as his commissioners to assist me in my labours. These gentlemen had already been awaiting my arrival for more than a week, and it was an evident relief to the villagers when, at the end of another week, I was able to impress upon them the value of the work they had accomplished, and recommend them to rest from their labours and return to their homes. Of General Bogran's good intentions and really sympathetic interest in my work I had afterwards ample proof, but pleasant and genial as were his commissioners, they were not persons altogether suited to carry out the task entrusted to them. After the departure of the commissioners it needed some tact to get on good terms with the villagers, who had learnt to look on me with suspicion; but at the end of a few weeks we became the best of friends and remained so ever afterwards.
The sketch map at the beginning of this Chapter will give a fairly accurate idea of the site of the ruins. The surrounding hills are somewhat sparsely clothed with pine-trees, but the level land of the river valley has long been used as planting ground by the villagers, and, where it is not actually under cultivation, is covered with an almost impenetrable growth of scrub. Our first task was to clear away this scrub, which completely hid from view the monuments in the Great Plaza, and the next task was to mark out and carefully measure a base-line for the proposed survey. The beautiful grove of trees which covered the principal group of mounds and terraces had been left untouched by the natives, as the ground on which it stood was totally unfit for cultivation, and we did not find it necessary to do more than remove the undergrowth and clear the surface of the ground, leaving the great trees undisturbed to afford us their grateful shade.
It must be remembered that up to the time of this expedition in 1885 no trace of any house or temple had been discovered amongst the ruins at Copan; but I found it difficult to believe that the great masses of masonry could have been built up unless they were intended to serve as foundations for temples such as I had already seen crowning the great pyramids at Tikal. As the work of clearing proceeded and we gained a better view of the great stairways and the outlines of the mounds my hope of finding some trace of temple buildings was strengthened by seeing that each of the higher mounds had usually a marked depression running across its summit, which ​might be accounted for by the falling in of a central doorway. Judge, then, of my delight when, on digging into the top of the mound on the north side of the eastern court, I came on unmistakable signs of the sides of a doorway and the remains of an elaborate cornice running along the top of the interior wall of a chamber. Digging on with the greatest care we finally unearthed the fine ornamental doorway between the two chambers of the temple, of which a drawing (with the fallen stones restored to their places) is here given.
After this successful beginning we set to work on other mounds, where we unearthed more interesting sculpture, and succeeded in proving, as I had hoped to do, that almost all the pyramidal mounds at Copan had been raised to support temples, probably built at different epochs, and possibly set at different angles on account of astronomical considerations.
The accompanying plan shows the remains of the principal structures as they would look denuded of their covering of vegetation and cleared of some of the debris. Those mounds on which we found the remains of temples are marked with a red cross, and the shape of the chambers is roughly shown. The river has eaten into the east side of the largest group, leaving exposed a cliff-like face of masonry and rubble, which in one place is over one hundred feet in height.
THE EAST SIDE OF THE SCULPTURED DOORWAY
Whilst I was at Copan the village was visited by a General in the Honduras army. I am told that in the army of that Republic Generals are plentiful, and that the Government find it well to keep them harmlessly employed, lest the devil should find some mischief for their idle hands to do, in the shape of drawing up "pronunciamientos"; and this particular general was in the employment of the department of excise—that is to say, with the aid of a somewhat ragged following of soldiers, he was hunting through the country for illicit stills. Of course we paid one another formal visits and I had some very pretty speeches made to me about Progress, and Liberty, and Science, which, had they been printed with a free use of Capital letters, would have read like a leading article in a Spanish-American newspaper. The General thanked me formally for the distinguished service I was rendering his country, and accepted with effusion my offer to take him round the ruins and show him what discoveries had been made. On the next morning he appeared with note-book and pencil in hand, and we set off for the ruins, where I did my best in the capacity of showman. We examined all the excavations, and then returned to have another look at the monuments in the Great Plaza; but throughout our walk, although the General's fingers played caressingly round his pencil, he never took a note. At last we stood looking at the back of Stela A, which is covered with a particularly well-preserved inscription inclosed in a flat undecorated margin, on which some former visitor had rendered himself conspicuous by deeply carving his distinguished name, J. HIGGINS, in letters about three inches long. I was holding forth, in my best Spanish, about the probability of an interpretation being found to the hieroglyphics, and pointing out some glyphs which I had also met with on monuments in Chiapas and Peten, when the General opened his notebook, as I thought to make a drawing of the glyphs in question. When his pencil bad been at work for a few moments I glanced at the sheet to see how proficient he might be as a draughtsman, and found that he had got down J. HIG, and was carefully printing the second G, when he turned round to me and said "Senor Don Alfredo, after all, these hieroglyphics are very much like the characters we use now!"
During the early months of 1885 the difficulty in engaging labourers to work at the ruins was even greater than usual, owing to two causes: first, an epidemic of smallpox, which devastated the neighbouring villages, although Copan itself luckily escaped its ravages, and, secondly, the war which broke out between Guatemala and Honduras on the one side, and Salvador and Nicaragua on the other. On our way to Copan we had ridden through some villages which had been so completely devastated by smallpox that every house stood empty, and the few survivors from the disease had fled, leaving the long row of mounds and hastily-made crosses by the roadside to tell their own tale. Then, when the war came, the few labourers I had been able to engage were drafted off as soldiers, and I was left with none but cripples and those who were past the fighting age.
At one time matters really began to look serious. I had made arrangements when in the capital for a supply of silver coin to be sent me from time to time with which to pay the labourers; but at the end of a few weeks the supply suddenly ceased, and my correspondents sent a telegram to Zacapa, which was forwarded on to me, to say that owing to the disturbed state of the country it was unsafe to send a messenger with the money, that the tide of war was surging my way, and it was advisable that I should make a speedy retreat to the coast.
I walked about for an hour with that telegram in my pocket, trying to think out the chances of our being left unmolested; I knew by this time that we had won the goodwill of the villagers, and I was loth to leave the work which was daily growing more interesting, so finally I tore up the telegram and said not a word about its contents to anyone. But my silver was nearly at an end, and some of the workmen who had come from a distance, and were naturally perturbed at the rumours of war, wanted to get back to look after their own homes, and they had to be paid off. It was then that the Niña Chica came to the front. "When she was boiling my kettle for me that evening I told her some of the difficulties I was in, to which she listened attentively and then left the hut without expressing any opinion. An hour or so later she returned and placed a small bag of silver on the table. It seemed that she had gone the round of the village and had borrowed every cent she could scrape together, and to this she had added her own little store of dollars, and then handed it over to me. It was done with such perfectly good grace that it was impossible to refuse her help, but I had to explain that she had not altogether caught my meaning. I had enough silver to pay all the workmen up to date, but if I stayed on there was not enough left to pay such labourers as I might be able to engage in the weeks to come. "Don't you trouble yourself, Don Alfredo," she replied, "those that are left in the village will go on working for you just ​the same; we know well enough that you will pay us when these troubles are over."
I went to sleep that night in a happier frame of mind, but was careful, before turning in, to bar the door and place a revolver handy, and repeated these precautions every night until the war was over. I did not think that the so-called regular troops would molest me; but in these Republics, and especially near the frontiers of the States, marauding bands are liable to crop up in war-time and exaggerated reports of my doings might lead them to think that I was worthy of their attention.
I asked the Niña Chica what chance there was of the villagers standing by me in case of a night raid; perhaps I did not express myself as though I had sufficient confidence in their courage, for the old lady's eyes flashed and she cried "What! do you think all my boys wear petticoats? You fire a shot for warning and just see if we don't all turn out and give the rascals a good drubbing."
If all the villagers had been Niña Chicas no doubt any marauders would have had a bad time of it, but as it was I had some misgivings. However, their courage was never put to the test; every now and then a report would come that troops were marching our way, and then most of the villagers took to the bush with such valuables as they possessed and left the village to the care of the Niña Chica and a few other old ladies. After a time news came that a battle had been fought about thirty miles away, and the men who had gone as soldiers began to straggle back again; but no one could tell me what had really happened, and the wildest rumours were afloat, and it was not until I sent to Yzabal and got my letters and the newspapers from New Orleans that I heard a true account of the battle and of the death of President Barrios in action.