# A Glimpse at Guatemala/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.
ACROSS THE ALTOS.
Our journey began again on the 25th January, along the road by the lake shore and round a bluff headland which divides the delta of Panajachél from a much smaller plain of the same formation. Then the track rose rapidly and we gained a view over the lake, and glimpses of little Indian towns nestling beneath the lofty headlands and at the foot of the distant volcanoes. The beauty of this view under a canopy of the deepest blue flecked with billowy clouds, the charm of leafy lands through which we passed, and the pleasant sound of the little mountain rivulets leaping over the rocks and then hiding themselves with a sullen murmur in impenetrable thickets, have together left on my mind an impression of grandeur and charm not easily to be effaced. As we rose higher, more mountains came in sight, and in all their magnificence our old friends Agua and Fuego stood out upon the horizon. From one point in the road I could distinctly see the peaks of five of the great volcanoes which tower over the distant coast-line. We continued to rise until we reached the town of Sololá, 2000 feet above the lake and 7000 feet above the sea, and the temperature at that altitude was delicious.
Naturally our steps turned towards the plaza, but we found it uninteresting and almost deserted. After some questioning we were directed to a small posada, or inn, in a back street, where a good breakfast was served to us in a sort of outhouse, on a dirty cloth covering a table standing on stilts. As the legs of the chairs were as short in proportion as the legs of the table were long (and I afterwards learnt from experience that the ratio was nearly constant throughout the country), the distance between the food and one's mouth was short. However, the little garden of the inn was pretty enough to compensate for all inconveniences, and I was allowed to take as many violets and roses as it pleased me to gather.
Sololá is a centre of the weaving industry, and is also famed for the fine embroidery with which the women decorate their garments. We had been fairly fortunate at Panajachél in securing samples of the fabrics woven there, as the women were willing to sell when a good price was offered them; but here we met with no success whatever. Gorgonio, who had gone out in search of "trapos" for us, returned almost blushing after having been exposed to a fire of invective from the women whom he had approached on the subject; they not only refused to sell him anything, but scorned his offers of money, ​and finally ran him out of the plaza. We then tried the "estancos," where native garments are almost always to be found left as pledges in payment for liquor, which the estanquero can sell if not redeemed within a stated time; but here again we failed, as the municipality of Sololá had very properly put a stop to this miserable practice and forbidden the estanqueros to receive pledges of any kind.
The "patron" of the posada had become interested in our search, and did his best to induce an Indian girl who was sitting in his patio to sell us the beautifully embroidered huipil which she was wearing; but she stoutly refused the money he offered her, and was evidently so unwilling to part with her garment that we told him not to trouble her further. However, his blood was up for a bargain, he evidently despised our scruples, and paying no attention to them went on pestering the girl until she held her head down and blushingly owned that the garment she was wearing was the only one she possessed.
In the afternoon we rode on over the hills to the northward until we reached Los Encuentros, a station on the diligence-road between the cities of Guatemala and Quezaltenango. This road here runs at an altitude of 10,000 feet above the sea along the ridge of the range of hills which divides the plains of Chimaltenango and Patzum from the valley of the Motagua River. Here we halted for the night at the rest-house and in company with five other hungry travellers sat down to a meagre supper. I forget what the first course was, but it was not attractive, and the "piece de resistance" was a very diminutive chicken. I watched that chicken, as it was brought in, with hungry eyes; but, alas! it was handed to our native companions first, and the free use of their unwashed knives and forks in its dissection took all my appetite away. Two of our companions were Englishmen, old acquaintances of my husband's, so we made ourselves as comfortable as was possible in the verandah, had a cosy cup of tea together, and satisfied our appetites on strawberry-jam and "pan dulce."
The next morning we made an early start. Our way for about three leagues lay in a more open country on the downward slope towards the Rio Motagua, through maize-stubbles, and dried-up pastures, where a few miserable black-and-white sheep were being herded by wild-looking Indian urchins. About mid-day we caught sight of a group of red-tiled roofs in front of us, and soon afterwards rode into the large Indian town of Santo Tomas Chichicastenango—a brown, dusty-looking place, lacking even the relief to the eye one might have expected from the presence of the chichicaste or tree-nettle, from which the town takes its name. The chichicaste is a tree with which we had already become familiar, as it is so ​commonly used for fencing round the Indian dwellings, and is one of the most picturesque features of the Indian villages. This is not perhaps the view taken by the native children, as a whipping with chichicaste-leaves is very commonly threatened by Indian mothers when their little ones are unruly. It had occurred to us that the comparative antiquity of the sites of the villages might almost be judged from the condition of the chichicaste-hedges alone. In their youth the stems stand apart, forming an ordinary-looking live fence, and although in the course of their growth they are pollarded and hacked about without mercy, yet as time goes on they build themselves up into a continuous wall, broken here and there by the still more solid stems of gigantic Yuccas, which branch above into a dozen spiky heads. In extreme old age decay eats holes through these living walls, and the breach is as often as not patched up with rough stones, or even in some cases with masonry and cement; but nothing seems to kill the trees altogether, and the hacked and patched stems often present an appearance of hoary antiquity.
Santo Tomas boasts of no inn, but we found something to eat at a dirty little house, where we were attended to by an old crone, who spoke no language intelligible to us. After breakfast we strolled into the picturesque plaza, bright with the gala costumes of the Indians. The women wore heavy chains of beads and coins round their necks, and were clothed in the most elaborately embroidered huipils we had as yet seen. Almost every man carried a blue- or brown-striped rug on his shoulder, and some queerly-dressed old men wandered amongst the crowd, with distaff in hand, spinning woollen thread. A grand fiesta was in progress in the church—probably a preparation for "Candelaria," which falls on 2nd February—to which, as usual, the Ladinos appeared to be supremely indifferent; indeed, they never seem to trouble themselves about the customs of the race so nearly allied to them, and look down on the Indians as inferiors, only fit to be human beasts of burden. It is useless to ask them what an Indian ceremony may mean: the only answer one gets is, "No se, Señora, es costumbre de los lndios." Even Gorgonio, whom I delight to look upon as an exception to the rule, on this occasion showed no desire to enlighten my curiosity, so we mounted the steps and entered the great bare church to learn as much as we could for ourselves.
At the top of the stone steps in front of the open church-door a large pile of wood-ashes smouldered and flickered faintly in the sunlight; the man who tended this fire every now and then threw on the embers small pieces of copal, which scented the air with its heavy perfumed smoke, whilst around the fire groups of women knelt to pray before entering the building. We found the interior to be charmingly decorated with flowers. The floor ​had first been strewn with fragrant pine-needles, and on this carpet the flowers were arranged in the shape of a huge cross, extending almost the whole length of the church. In some parts the lines were traced in green and coloured leaves, and filled up with scattered rose-petals; in others with clusters of all the flowers that could be found in bloom, edged with little groups of lighted candles. Picturesquely dressed Indians, singly or in couples, were dragging themselves on their knees the whole length of the cross, stopping at intervals to repeat prayers. No priest officiated, and none but Indians were in the least interested in the service, if such it could be called. As we were leaving the church, we stopped to watch a funeral procession coming across the plaza. The men ascended the church steps, carrying the ugly black catafalque on their shoulders, but to our surprise, instead of entering the church with their burden, they turned the catafalque round three times in front of the fire where the copal was burning, fired off a rocket, and then went away again. While this ceremony was being rapidly performed the friends and relations of the dead man stood some distance away in the plaza crying and weeping loudly.
To anyone not already used to the ways of the Spanish peasantry one of the first things that strikes one as curious in Central America is this constant firing of rockets in the daytime. No ceremony is complete until the swish and report of a rocket have been heard. The pilgrim when he reaches his native village fires a rocket to announce his arrival. It is the expression of joy at a fiesta, and it is the last rite necessary for the repose of the dead. A story is told of an Indian cacique who was taken to Spain to the Court of Charles V. As the emperor passed through the corridor after the morning levée, he caught sight of the cacique and addressed him with a few words of welcome, and then added: "Tell me, my friend, what would your countrymen be doing at your own home at this hour in the morning." Now, it had been most strongly impressed upon the cacique that should the Emperor ask him any questions he should say nothing in reply which was not strictly and accurately true. This oft-repeated counsel had sunk deep into his mind, so after a pause he raised his head and said, "Señor, mis paisanos estan tirando cohetes" ("at this hour my countrymen are firing rockets"). The Emperor smiled and passed on, but meeting the cacique again at midday he repeated the question and received the same answer. Again in the evening he called the Indian to him and said, "Now that the sun has set and the work of the day is done, how are your countrymen amusing themselves?" "Señor," replied the cacique, "my countrymen are still firing rockets."
For about two leagues beyond Santo Tomas the country was much the same as that through which we had passed in the morning. Then came a ​gradual descent through a forest of small trees, followed by a steep dip into the barranca through which the Motagua flows. It is here only a shallow swift-flowing rivulet, easily fordable, and giving little promise of the great volume of water which, after a further course of about 250 miles, it pours into the Gulf of Honduras. We scrambled up the other side of the barranca and soon reached a small tableland on which stands the village of Chiché. Just before arriving at the village we passed through a group of artificial mounds which mark the site of what must in old times have been a town of considerable importance. The original stone-facing of the foundations was probably carried off to serve as building-stone when the Spaniards first occupied Chiché, and the mounds, some of which are 20 to 30 feet in height, are somewhat indefinite in outline owing to the many times they have been worked over by the Indian cultivators of the soil when planting their milpas.
Gorgonio examined the mounds the next day and brought us some fragments of obsidian knives and stone implements which he had picked up, and he told us that on the summits of the higher mounds the Indians had placed rough stone crosses, or heaped together a few stones to form a sort of shrine in which to burn candles or offerings of copal. When in order to examine the surface of the mounds Gorgonio used his machete to cut away some of the scrubby bushes growing on the summits the Indians were almost ready to go for him—so valuable has anything which can be used as firewood become in this dried-up neighbourhood.
The village itself is an uninteresting collection of houses built of adobes and roofed with tiles. The cabildo was under repair and roofless, and there was no school-house; but we found shelter in a room in a new half-finished house, where, after removing the remains of the building-materials, we made ourselves fairly comfortable. Gorgonio lighted a fire outside in the village street and, gazed at by an admiring crowd of children, I cooked the supper. Luckily there was plenty of good bread to be bought, and a neighbour supplied us with excellent coffee.
We were now going altogether out of the beaten track and should have to take our chance of shelter for the night in cabildo, convento, or schoolhouse, and when these failed we could take refuge in our tent (which last proved to be the most comfortable lodging of them all), but it was to be used only as a last resource, so as to avoid the trouble of setting it up at night, when wearied with a long day's ride, and the extra packing which would delay the start in the morning. Our plan was to travel a short distance to the northward and crossing the Rio Negro to reach Uspantan, an ancient stronghold of the Quichés, then to recross the river lower down and make our way to Cubulco and the Rabinal valley. It was all new ground to ​my husband, but Gorgonio had been through the country before and had long been anxious that his "patron" should visit and examine the sites of old towns with which it abounds. As the road was known to be a very rough one, we sent the heavier part of our baggage direct to Rabinal to await our arrival, and only carried sufficient food for ourselves and half rations for the men should tortillas and frijoles perchance fail us.
We tarried at Chiché for a day whilst our arrangements were being made, and on Sunday morning rode out on our way to Uspantan. For the first league we travelled up hill through bare and uninteresting country and then dropped down to Chinic, a village of much the same type as Chiché, but having the advantage of shelter and a good supply of water, which enabled its inhabitants to turn the land round about into a garden of bananas and oranges. After breakfasting in the verandah of the cabildo we set out again, our saddle-bags filled with fresh fruit from the market, which we devoured on the way with an enjoyment only to be felt during a long and dusty ride under a tropical sun.
Our road lay over the range of hills which bounds the Motagua valley on the north side. It was a steep rise and we finally attained a height of 7000 feet, about 2000 feet lower than the pass which we crossed at Los Encuentros on the southern side of the valley. On the hill-tops we passed through some groves of the beautiful small-leaved oaks which are usually met with at this altitude on the Pacific slope, but we could not find any of the yellow calceolarias which my husband had once seen in bloom when he crossed this same range further to the east. Looking down from the hill-tops one is able to appreciate the great extent of the river valley. It is a level-looking plain, thinly covered with pine-trees and seamed by steep-sided barrancas cut by the Motagua and its affluents. The hills on either side were cultivated in patches to their summits, and above the southern range we could still see the peaks of Agua, Fuego, and Atitlan. The day was so enchantingly lovely that we lingered to enjoy the views, to pick the abundant wild-flowers, to rest in the grateful shade of the woods, and generally to drink in the charm of our surroundings, and forgot to fulfil that never-ending task of hurrying up the loitering cargadores, who knew the length of the journey before them much better than we did, but who were more than willing to take advantage of a halt, as they had only partly recovered from the effects of the aguardiente imbibed during a fiesta the day before. When at last we began to urge them on they baulked us at every turn in the track, and were always halting on one excuse or another, so that during two hours we hardly made any progress at all; then about four in the afternoon, when we had hardly commenced the descent on the north side of ​the range, our Indians went on strike altogether and refused to go any further that day. Neither persuasion nor threats moved them from their purpose, and down they sat by the roadside and settled themselves for the night. We were still three or four leagues from our destination, and as the mules with our camp kit had pushed on ahead we could not possibly pass the night on the mountain. So making the best of a bad business, and trying to avoid the futility of losing one's temper with an obstinate Indian, we abandoned dressing-bags and the other useful things which they were carrying, and pushed on as fast as our animals would travel in hope of reaching San Andres Sacabajá before dark. Lofty mountains fenced us round, and the little river which ran down a narrow valley towards San Andres was fully 3000 feet below us. The descent was without a break and the track which zigzagged down the spur of the hill was rough beyond description. Before we were halfway down the sun had set, the short tropical twilight faded, and night overtook us whilst we were groping our way through a thick wood. Gorgonio on his clever old mule led the way, I came next, and my husband, whose iron-shod horse was never too sure-footed even in the day, brought up the rear. It soon became so dark that I could not see my own mule's head, but I felt sure that she was walking along the edges of precipices and I could feel that she was picking her way amidst boulders and stepping in and out of holes; sometimes she would stop, draw her feet together, and slide clown the smooth surface of the rock. This sounds like a perilous feat, but it was all done with such extreme care and such perfect knowledge of what she was about, that although anxious I felt little real fear. The horse floundered about terribly; several times his rider dismounted and tried to grope his way on foot, but found the track so difficult and dangerous in the pitchy darkness that each time he was unwillingly obliged to mount again and trust to the guidance of his horse, whose stumbles continually startled me.
About halfway down the mountain, the lights of San Andres appeared, as we thought, just below us; but never were lights more deceptive and illusive, for even after reaching the level of the valley we rode for at least two hours, crossing and recrossing the broad but shallow river several times. The night continued very dark, no stars came out, and only the light of glow-worms cheered us along the path, while the flashing sparks of the fire-flies frequently deluded us into thinking that we were near to houses, and the air resounded with the harsh humming song of innumerable cicadas, broken now and again by the cry of some night-feeding bird.
It was nine o'clock when we arrived at the cabildo of San Andrés de Sacabajá, tired and hungry and with but small prospect of any supper, as our ​food-boxes and canteen were left behind with the mozos. The villagers were nearly all asleep, and we were told that there was no water to be obtained without scrambling down in the dark to the river 200 feet below us. However, Gorgonio was sent on a foraging expedition, and after a prolonged search returned in triumph with bread, eggs, and half a kettle full of water, so we made our coffee and ate our supper on the verandah surrounded by a pack of half-starved dogs.
Supper over we looked about for a room to sleep in. The cabildo was under repair and the only habitable room in it was occupied by the half-caste "secretario," who most politely offered to share his bed-room with us! On our refusal to put him to such inconvenience he suggested a visit to the convento on the other side of the plaza; so we all marched across to examine it by the light of a single candle. After passing in a ghostly procession through the huge empty rat-infested close-smelling rooms, we declined that lodging also, and finally put up our beds in an unfinished room in the cabildo, which was half-full of scaffolding, where the floor was inches deep in sand, the door refused to shut, and bats flitted in and out at their own sweet will; but even these discomforts and the howls of a drunken Indian locked up in the prison next door could not keep off sleep after our long day's ride.
I was awakened the next morning by a brilliant sunshine, and lay for some minutes staring up into the newly thatched roof which stretched like a great umbrella over the cabildo, and was really an attractive piece of work, so skilfully are the great beams adjusted and tied together by lianes, those ready-made ropes which abound in tropical forests. The rooms were divided from one another by partitions, but all were open to the roof, so that, with the advantage of a current of fresh air, one has to put up with the free passage of sound from the neighbouring rooms and the visits of birds by day and bats by night.
The hills around San Andres were brown with sun-scorched grass, and the village itself was not saved by the sparkling atmosphere and brilliant sunshine from an appearance of hopeless desolation. There was not a green thing to be seen, saving one huge Ceiba tree standing solitary in the middle of a great wind-swept plaza. We were told that the foolishness of a former Jefe Politico had created this dreary waste by ordering all the trees in the village to be cut down, because in his enlightened opinion trees near houses were unhealthy. As far as we could see, there was only one redeeming feature in the view, and that was the old dead stump of a tree, whose solitary branch stretching out like a withered arm supported a cluster of orchids covered with the most splendid purple blossoms. No one cared for this lovely plant and we were sorely tempted to carry it away branch and all, but ​the thought of its great weight and our troubles with the cargadores made us abandon the idea.
The Indians whom we had left behind on the road came in while we were sitting on the verandah drinking our early coffee and surrounded as before by scores of half-starved pigs and dogs, who rejoiced over the capture of a piece of greasy paper, and poked their noses into the hot ashes of the fire in search of scraps of discarded food. It is impossible to appreciate the ravenous hunger of these animals until one sees them licking an empty sardine tin for the twentieth time, long after every drop of oil has disappeared, and apparently almost ready to devour the tin itself.
Before we were ready to start a high wind arose, sweeping every movable thing before it and carrying the blinding dust into every hole and corner, so we could not help reviling the memory of the Jefe Politico who had divested the village of its natural shelter of trees.
QUEZALTENANGO.