A Glimpse at Guatemala. Anne Cary Maudslay
her bare neck and arms in the cool of the evening, and both men and women wear coloured handkerchiefs knotted round their heads. We made many efforts to buy some of the good huipils, but without success, and the women quite frightened Gorgonio by the vehemence of their indignation at being asked to sell their garments. This is hardly to be wondered at, for we learnt that their stock of clothes usually included only one huipil in the wearing and one in the loom, and it must take a long time to work the elaborate patterns in cross-stitch with which they are embroidered.
SPECIMENS OF NATIVE TEXTILES AND EMBROIDERY (No. 1)
SPECIMENS OF NATIVE TEXTILES AND EMBROIDERY (No. 2)
Whilst we were watching the groups in the Plaza our attention was attracted by the sound of music, and three shabby-looking fat ladinos came in sight, playing violin, trombone, and drum, and heralding a procession of gaily-dressed Indians. Some of the men wearing long gowns trimmed with red, with turbans wound round their heads, bore on their shoulders a platform supporting the image of a Saint, which was being carried round the town on its way to the church, there to be deposited for the night in readiness for the fiesta on the morrow. Then followed others who may have been priests or were perhaps only officials of a “cofradia” or brotherhood, for their costumes were not orthodox priestly garments, and then a number of women dressed in clean huipils and enaguas, and wearing long white veils, with the part covering the head thickly embroidered in white silk. Each woman carried a lighted candle in her hand, wrapped round with a green canna-leaf to shade it from the wind. We followed the procession through the streets to the church, where the image was deposited, and the women (still candle in hand, but each with the canna-leaf placed on the top of her shawl, neatly folded by her side) knelt in a circle and sang a hymn before the procession dispersed.
We returned to find our room swept but hardly clean, and after a very bad supper were not sorry to turn into our comfortable camp-beds.
A BARRANCA.
Early next morning we went on our way to Godines, and soon began the descent of a great barranca, where the path was so exceedingly steep and bad that we were glad to dismount and scramble down on foot. It was a beautiful walk, winding down through thick woods, but, alas! nearly all the trees by the roadside, within reach, had had their trunks burnt or scorched by camp-fires or been otherwise maltreated, and many of them had fallen and lay rotting where they fell. Here and there a general clearing, or “roza,” which spares nothing, was in progress, preparatory to planting corn, and it seems as though within a few years all the fine timber will have disappeared from the lake region unless some better mode of cultivation is introduced. At present the Indians merely scratch the surface of the ground with a hoe, or, on the level plains, with a primitive wooden plough, and they abandon a plantation after a few crops have been taken off of it. In the Altos, where the population is large, the cultivators have to return to their fallows after a short interval, but wherever there is woodland near at hand they attack it recklessly, sacrificing all the timber trees without scruple. This system of shifting their cornfields has received the sanction of immemorial usage; and although I am told that the Government has repeatedly attempted to prohibit the wasteful “rozas,” the local authorities are too indifferent or too partial to enforce its commands; and the conservative Indians fail to see that whilst in olden times the forest was protected by the enormous amount of labour which had to be expended in felling a tree with a stone axe, nowadays, with cheap machetes and American axes, the growth of ages disappears in a few hours.
We were three hours riding and walking through this beautiful green barranca, including a halt for breakfast, beside a charmingly clear stream, from which we gathered the freshest and crispest of watercress. Then the path made great sweeping turns up the steep side of the valley, revealing to us as we rose new and lovely views with Agua and Fuego in the distance; and early in the afternoon we arrived at Godines, where we were met by Mr. Audley Gosling, the son of the British Minister, who had ridden from Guatemala to spend a few days with us at the lake.
The village consists of a small cabildo and half-a-dozen Indian huts, and stands about two thousand feet above the lake of Atitlan; but as the rising ground to the west cuts off the view of the lake, it did not suit us as a camping-ground, so after consultation with the alcalde, we rode on in search of a more favoured spot by the roadside, where he assured us there was a good supply of water. On turning the hill the sight of the lake burst suddenly upon us, and, stopping by a wayside cross around which the Indians had strewed sweet-smelling pine-needles and floral offerings, we drank in the marvellous beauty of the view, which later on we saw in so many changing moods and learned to love so well. A further climb up the steep path brought us to a small level patch of ground, where there was room enough to pitch our tent beside a spring of water slowly oozing up into a natural basin about two feet across.
A HIGH ROAD.
The land fell away in front of us in steep slopes and precipices to the edge of the lake between two and three thousand feet below, and the view over this beautiful sheet of water, about twenty-two miles long and twelve miles broad, with its background of grand volcanoes, was one of surpassing loveliness. The conical peak of San Pedro, wooded to its summit, rose opposite to us on the far side of the lake, and to the left stood the double cones of Atitlan, the lower peak rounded and forest covered, and the higher rising above the vegetation in a perfect cinder cone. Almost all round the lake the hills rise steeply, but here and there by the water’s edge the Indians have found room for their villages, and have planted their “milpas” wherever corn will grow, often on hillsides as steep as the roof of a house. We rather reluctantly turned our backs on this lovely scene, and gave our attention to pitching the tents and sweeping and clearing the ground round the camp. The tiny pool was half full of dead leaves, rubbish, and mud, and had to be thoroughly cleaned out, when it soon filled again with an abundance of good clear water. Then the site for the kitchen was chosen, tables were unfolded, the canteen opened, and before long a kettle of soup was boiling merrily, and we enjoyed a good supper sitting out in the clear moonlight. Mr. Gosling slept in the small tent on the other side of the roadway, and the men made themselves quite comfortable behind a wall of pack-saddles and boxes, a covering of waterproof sheets, and a good supply of blankets: for at nearly eight thousand feet above the sea the nights are cold and the mornings frosty.
LAKE AND VOLCANO OF ATITLAN.
Next day we set to work to build a rough roof over the kitchen as a shade from the midday sun, to put up tables and shelves made of straight sticks bound together, and generally to make ourselves comfortable for a week’s stay; and never have I enjoyed a week more thoroughly.
CHAPTER VII. THE LAKE OF ATITLAN.
Our tent was pitched so close to the precipice that even from my bed I had a grand view over the lake, and could watch the black masses of the volcanoes looming clear cut and solemn in the moonlight, or changing from black to grey in the early dawn; then a rosy flush would touch the peak of Atitlan and the light creep down its side, revealing for a brief half-hour every detail of cinder ridge and chasm on its scarred and wounded slopes, until with a sudden burst of glory the sun rose above the eastern hills to strike the mirror-like