A Glimpse at Guatemala. Anne Cary Maudslay
for the road to a rug rolled up and strapped on the back of his saddle, a Turkish bath towel thrown over his shoulders, and such small articles as he can stow away in his “arganas,” or plaited grass saddle-bags. Possibly he may be followed by a small boy on a second mule, who carries his master’s clothes in front of him wrapped up in a petate or mat. But with us the case was very different, for what with tents, tent-furniture, beds, bedding, photographic cameras and other apparatus, a large store of provisions, a cooking-canteen, and water-tins, as well as our own personal belongings, our baggage-train was a long one, much time was occupied in getting under weigh, and our progress was necessarily slow. We had found it impossible in the city to engage Indian carriers by the month or even by the week, so we had to depend on the village alcaldes to supply us with mozos to carry loads from town to town.
I soon learnt that the alcaldes never hurry themselves to find the mozos, and that the mozos are never in a hurry to come; and when at last they are all assembled, much time is lost in fussing over the size, weight, and general make-up of the cargos. Even when the mules were all saddled and loaded, and we were making a start, one of the mozos was sure to find that the tent-poles were too long, or the camera-legs inconvenient to adjust. This discovery was followed by a demand for more pay, and we had to wait whilst Gorgonio smoothed the ruffled feelings of the mozos to whose lots these awkward burdens had fallen, with the promise of an extra medio apiece if each of them travelled well. As the Indians speak little, if any, Spanish, and our Ladinos, who spoke the Indian dialect, “la lengua” as they called it, of the Alta Vera Paz, could not understand the speech of the Indians of the Altos and the Lake region, we usually found it best to leave to the Alcalde all arrangements with the Indians, and cheerfully ran the risk of an overcharge in order to avoid delay and ensure the proper carriage of cargos.
Our start from Mixco was in no wise different from what experience afterwards showed me to be the rule, and it was rather late before we were under weigh for Antigua; but as we had only twenty miles to travel along one of the best high roads in the country, and were to find an hotel at the end of our journey, the delay was not a matter of much consequence.
The air was fresh and invigorating, and as we wound round the hills along the edge of a great barranca we caught charming glimpses of the capital, with its shining white churches lying in the plain beneath us, and of distant mountains and valleys changing from sunlight to shadow under the passing clouds. The roadside was edged with wild flowers, among them large scarlet salvias, beautiful purple single dahlias, growing to a great height, elder-trees in full bloom, and Wigandia with its magnificent leaves and fine sprays of purple flowers, royal in effect. Besides these were brilliant patches of small sunflowers, and delicate little blossoms of many sorts and colours peeping out between the moss and maidenhair ferns which clothed the rocks and turned the green roadsides into charming rock-gardens.
About midday we arrived at the little hamlet of San Rafael, high up in the hills, but even at an altitude where frost is by no means unknown it was impossible to realize that we were in the midst of winter, for in the well-kept garden of the inn standard roses, banksias, heliotrope, and various other garden plants were blooming, as if it were June and not January. Here we came up with the soldiers, infantry and artillery, who had eaten up all the bread at Mixco, and who were now resting and cooking their food by the roadside, whilst their officers took possession of the hotel. It was rather disquieting to have to follow in the wake of this hungry army, but the innkeeper dispelled our fears and gave us an abundant and well-cooked breakfast.
Soon after leaving San Rafael, a turn in the road revealed the two great volcanoes, Agua and Fuego, towering dark and mysterious above us, and seeming to bar our way. Soft billowy white clouds hovered over and around their summits, now hiding them from view, and now revealing the sharp edges of a crater, then sinking lower and wreathing their slopes in a clinging drapery of mist, sometimes silvery and glowing in the sunlight, then fading to a cold chalky whiteness. Where the afternoon sun touched the beautiful sloping sides of the mountains one could see the great deep furrows ploughed by the rains of centuries, and here and there a yellow patch of maize and the solitary hut of a mountain Indian.
The road led us down through passes wilder than we had seen before, with rugged hillsides covered with forest trees and a cheerful stream bubbling along the bottom of the narrow gully. We passed long mule-trains toiling over the hills on their way to the capital, and then the silence of the valleys was broken and the rocks echoed with the loud harsh voices of the arrieros calling to their beasts by every name in the calendar, with a refrain of “Macho, Mula arré, anda pues”—a useless expenditure of breath and energy, which never seems to affect the pace of the mule-train in the slightest degree, but which is an unfailing and annoying habit of every Spanish-American muleteer. The prettiest party we met on the road was a company of young girls clad in embroidered huipils and bright-coloured enaguas (their upper and lower garments), each with a big flat basket on her head, and a bare well-shaped brown arm raised to support it. They fluttered up the hill towards us laughing and chattering, their well-poised erect figures swaying with a fine freedom of motion. Surely no prettier sight was ever seen, with its sylvan surroundings and the sunlight glistening through the trees.
On nearing Antigua the valley opened out, and we passed some coffee-plantations, the trees loaded with berries in various stages of ripening, and the beautiful leaves shining in the sunlight. Alternating with the rows of coffee-bushes were rows of plantains and bananas, their straight unbending stems supporting a wealth of mellowing fruit and their glorious crowns of leaves giving the grateful shade which the young coffee-tree requires. The open road then merged into a roughly-paved street bordered by walls covered with flowering creepers, and overtopped here and there by flaming heads of poinsettia, which here grows almost a tree in size. Just before entering the half-ruined city we passed a group of women filling their great earthen “tinajas” with water at a picturesque old fountain, and lingering in the sweet evening light to gossip with their neighbours and stare at us as we passed.
Gorgonio led us to our hotel through long streets paved with cobble-stones, and between high walls, which, of old, enclosed well-kept convent gardens, now in ruins and unkempt, but still sweet with the scent of orange-blossom and other flowers. Sometimes through a gateway one caught a glimpse of palm-trees and bananas, bowers of yellow and white roses, peach-trees in full bloom, great bunches of crimson hibiscus, and over all a tangle of yellow jasmine and bignonia. I must own that a great longing came over me to rest here in this dilapidated old town, with its balmy delicious climate and lovely skies, its exquisite views and charming wildernesses of gardens, and here, far from the noise and bustle of steamships and railways, to live the life of Arcady!
CHAPTER IV. ANTIGUA.
My dreams faded away for a time when we reached the Hotel Rojas, which had been recommended to us as the best in Antigua. Probably it is the best, but it certainly is very bad. The rooms are small and ill-kept, and the dreadfully dirty maids seemed to consider their duty done when they had swept the dust from our room into the corridor on which all the bedrooms opened, and thrown the bath-water across the corridor into the courtyard beyond.
The table was provided with an abundance of beef, poultry, fresh eggs, vegetables, and fruits; but it was untidy beyond description, and almost all the food was ruined in the cooking by a too free use of greasy lard. However, it was evidently the style of cooking most appreciated in Antigua, for numbers of townspeople as well as travellers took their meals at the hotel, the “comedor” was seldom deserted, and the dirty attendants were kept at work from before six in the morning until after ten o’clock at night. Our tempers were not improved by being obliged to eat with, or after, so many people, whose methods of feeding were not the nicest. However, the Hotel Rojas, with all its drawbacks, was the best we came across during our travels in the Republic.
When once outside the house, the charm of the surroundings banished all