A Glimpse at Guatemala/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
CAJABON AND THE NORTHERN FORESTS. (BY A. P. M.)
I had passed the last two months of the year 1886 in an interesting journey through the Altos, examining the ruins of Indian towns which were known to have been occupied at the time of the Spanish invasion; then crossing the main range I found myself, in January 1887, in my old and comfortable quarters at Coban in the Alta Vera Paz. I had no settled plan of work before me, but was prepared to do a little amateur map-making about the headwaters of the Rio de la Pasion, and to examine into the truth of some rather vague rumours concerning important Indian ruins which were said to exist in the Northern forests near the frontier of British Honduras. Carlos Lopez was sent ahead to the village of Cajabon to engage Indian carriers for the forest journey, and as it was still early in the season which in these parts is by courtesy called "dry," I decided to spend a fortnight, in mapping the track between Coban and Cajabon, a distance of about sixty miles, and fixing the position of the latter village, which I felt sure was placed too far north on the published maps. I had already spent some days taking angles and counting my steps in the direction of Cajabon when we met Carlos Lopez returning to Coban in company with a deputation of Cajabon Indians who were going to the Jefe Político to protest against the orders they had received from him to accompany me into the forests. Carlos told me that he had met with no success whatever in his mission, and that the reason most frequently given for not accepting service with the expedition was that it was unsafe to go with me, as "Los Ingleses comen gente" (the English were cannibals!). I had never met with this objection before, and as it was urged quite seriously, I can only suggest that it is a strange survival of the stories told to the Indians by the Spanish priests and officials in the days when buccaneers infested the coasts and English smugglers were thorns in the side of Spanish authorities.
The expected dry weather would not arrive, and owing to the prolonged rains the track, which threaded its way between innumerable conical limestone hills from one to two hundred feet in height, was almost ankle deep in mud and was often broken into great mud holes which I had no wish to fathom. Now and then we passed a solitary Indian rancho, and our nightly resting-place was in one of the sheds or "Ermitas" which are to be met with every four or five leagues, and which if not peculiar to this part of the country are certainly more noticeable here than elsewhere.
The Indians have their headquarters in straggling towns, such as Coban, San Pedro Carchá, and Cajabon, but in order to secure new ground for their plantations of beans and corn, they spread out all over the country, moving their ranchos every few years to a new clearing in the forest, or returning to some old plantation which has long lain fallow. When they are thus abroad the Ermita becomes the temporary meeting-place of the families settled round about. It usually consists of a thatch roof set upon about a dozen posts with little or nothing in the shape of wall or enclosure. At one end of it, or on one side, is a rough wooden altar supporting an open wooden box, some times protected in front by a cracked glass, which holds a crucifix or a Madonna, or the figure of the Saint after whom the Ermita is named—a figure which is sure to be tawdry and mean-looking even when one has grown used to the style of art which the Spaniard has carried with him to the West. Behind the altar usually stands a collection of wooden crosses varying in height from one to eight feet—the smaller ones the individual offerings of the pious, and the larger ones brought there by the company which assembles on the feast day of the Saint; for it is in these Ermitas that the Indians hold their fiestas, meet to transact local business, get drunk, and bury their dead. I had several times noticed the unevenness of the hard mud floor when I was setting up my camp bed, but it was not until I was trying to get the bed level above a more than usually distinct mound, that I asked a question and found out that I was about to sleep above the last addition to the majority.
The third night out was the worst we experienced; the rain had held off during the day, and we worked on until sundown. Then, as there were no Indian houses to be seen, we cooked our supper and prepared to sleep in a little walless rancho perched on the hill-side close by the path, which could hardly be dignified by the name of Ermita, for it had no altar in it, although my Indians called it by the name of a Saint. We stacked our baggage as well as we could on logs and stones, then I set up my camp-cot, Gorgonio slung his hammock between the posts, and the Indians, who for some unknown reason had brought no hammocks with them, rolled themselves up in their blankets, and fitted their bodies into the depressions in the uneven mud floor, through which protruded knobs of limestone rock, and were soon snoring. About nine o'clock down came the rain again—at first it only sprayed through the thatched roof, so that an open umbrella sufficed to protect my lamp and the book I was reading; then it began to fall in drops on the rug which covered the foot of my cot, and I had to rig up a waterproof sheet over it, which made the heat stifling; then it ran in little streams over the sloping floor, and the Indians began to shift about in hope of finding dry spots, but the rancho was very small and we were twelve in number. By midnight the streams broadened and increased until the whole floor was a watercourse. Then one by one the Indians rose solemnly from the ground and squatted on logs or stones or anything that raised them above the flood, and covered themselves over with their leafy rain-coats. As they squatted there, looking just like a group of little haystacks, I wondered whether they were inwardly cursing their folly in not bringing their hammocks with them; if so, they certainly showed no outward signs of mental disturbance, but sat solemn and silent all the night through patiently waiting for the dawn.
To the north and west of Coban the land is fairly level, but it is dotted over with innumerable more or less conical limestone hills, usually standing apart from one another, or more rarely clustered together in groups. As we neared the village of Lanquin a high range of hills rose to the north of us, and our track lay down a narrowing valley, through the middle of which one might have looked for a fair-sized stream; however, it held no more than a small rivulet, which finally disappeared altogether. Then the track dropped down suddenly between high mountain walls and we saw the pueblo beneath us, and there to the left of it was our lost stream bursting out of a cave in the rock, a full-grown river. A large track of the porous limestone region to the north and west must be drained, sponge-fashion, to supply this swift-flowing Rio Lanquin. Just above the cave from which the stream flows out there is another stalactite cave, much talked about in the neighbourhood as one of the wonders of the world, but very seldom explored beyond the first hundred yards.
From Lanquin we rode on to Cajabon without stopping, leaving this part of the track to be surveyed at our leisure, as we intended to make Cajabon our headquarters, whilst the mozos were being collected for our journey to the north. On our way we crossed an affluent of the Cajabon river by means of a hammock bridge, one of those wonderful structures of twisted creepers and natural ropes for which the tropical American Indian has always been famed. From Coban (which stands 4280 feet above sea-level) the track had made a continuous descent, and at Cajabon we were again in a hot country only 704 feet above the level of the sea.
The Lopez family has long been connected with Cajabon, and although my companions Gorgonio and Carlos Lopez and other brothers had wandered away and settled in Coban and Salamá, the eldest, Cornelio, still remained in his old home and held the office of "secretario" to the municipality, the officer who is appointed by the Government to counsel and guide the Indian officials, for, with the exception of the Lopezes and one other half-caste family, the community is purely Indian. As we neared the town Gorgonio 
A HAMMOCK BRIDGE.
told me that he did not think I should be comfortable at his brother's house, as the house was small and his brother's family numerous, and suggested my seeking a lodging at the "Convento," where the Padre was known to be hospitable and a good fellow. So we rode on through the straggling Indian town, winding our way round the bases of many small hills on which the Indian houses are perched; and then up the side of the large central hill which is crowned by the church and the remains of an old convent of the Dominican monks. Passing through the gate into the great walled square, where stands a weather-beaten stone cross, I dismounted from my horse at the foot of the steps leading to the Convento, and was greeted with "Come in, come in! I very glad to see you. I do speek de Engleesh very well." Looking up I saw a small, sandy-haired, grey-eyed man dressed in blue-and-white-striped cotton trousers, a spotted cotton shirt, and a pair of rough brown native shoes; he ran down the steps, grasped my hand, patted me on the back, roared with laughter, and kept up a stream of greetings in the most delicious broken English. I had looked for the usual sallow-faced, half-baked ladino padre, and here, in this out-of-the-way Indian village, I chanced on, of all people in the world—a Dutchman!
"Yes, I speek de Engleesh very well. I go to school at Mill Hill: you know Mill Hill! Very good place. Cardinal Manning he my friend. Queen Victoria she one very good woman." And so he rattled on, cracked small jokes, dug me in the ribs, and laughed continuously. How often during the next week I wished that some one had been with me to enjoy him. He was perfectly delicious—always laughing; he let off innumerable little jokes and told interminable stories, and told them again and again with the same delightfully quaint phrases. His favourite reminiscence was of the day when the Prince of Wales went to Saint Paul's to return thanks after recovery from illness. Apparently the pupils of the Roman Catholic College of Mill Hill were allowed a holiday, taken to the City to see the show and given a good dinner afterwards. But this was not quite the Padre's view of it; he never seemed to tire of telling this story, and always told it to me with much detail, as though I could not possibly be expected to know anything about the matter, and always prefaced it with "Queen Victoria she one very good woman." "Well, I will tell you her primogenito what they call him, Prince o' Wales, he very sick; the Queen tink he go die, everyone say he go die; but Queen Victoria, she one very good woman, she give plenty of money, and she say everybody must pray very hard; and dey all pray very hard, everybody; and Prince o' Wales he get well again: it one miracle sabe Usted? because dey all pray so hard. Queen Victoria, she one very good woman, she say now we make one gran fiesta; and Queen Victoria and Prince o' Wales and all de people, oh plenty people dey all go to San Pablo, de gran Catedrál in London, and say prayers. And de Queen she say everybody have pray very hard, very hard; now everybody have good dinner, everybody, Catholic, Jew, Turk, everybody and oh what good dinner we had." He was always kindly, and I learnt that he was constant at his duties and at everyone's service; and the Indians had a great liking and respect for him, although they looked on him as a being altogether beyond their comprehension. When he laughed and cracked his jokes and dug them in the ribs they stood round in solemn and open-mouthed wonder. "Ah!" he turned to me one day from a group who had come to him on some business, "Indian very good people, and it one very good ting to be parish priest. Every Indian man he marry, oh very young!—dat two dollars; den every Indian woman she get baby, want him baptize—dat one dollar. Oh it very good ting to be parish priest! Den I make Coffee Finca; Indian very good, he come and help. Den I keep plenty cattle: when cow break into Indian plantation, Indian he make much cry out, he beat cow very hard, he say you pay money for milpa; but when Padre's cow eat milpa, Indian he say, dis Padre's cow, he lead him out very quiet. Oh it one very good ting to be parish priest!" And then he roared with laughter at his own worldly wisdom.
I asked the Padre about his past career, and learnt that he had left Holland as a young man to take a position as teacher in a college—I think in San Salvador. Soon after his arrival a revolution broke out, and during the anarchy which followed there was no money forthcoming to pay teachers, the college ceased to exist, and he found himself penniless and destitute. Then someone suggested his taking orders, which was done without loss of time and apparently without much difficulty; since then he had found it "One very good ting to be parish priest." He owned that he had not written home for years; and I fear my efforts to persuade him to write and regain touch with his friends were of no avail, for when I asked after him two years later, it was only to learn that he was dead and that the Consul who had his affairs in hand could find no trace of his family in Europe.
The Convento was a thick-walled, large-roomed building, in rather a tumble-down condition, and contained little in the way of furniture. Two or three women servants lived in an outbuilding at the back, and cooked the Padre's food for him, brought in the water, and occasionally swept out the big room, which was all the service he needed. Having heard something of the ways of native padres, I ventured to ask one of my men if my host had any "companera" attached to him: he said, "No, not one"; and added, with delightful simplicity, "And, you see, that is so strange, as a padre often has three or four"!
Cornelio and the Padre, as the only "gente de razon" in the place, generally spent their evenings together. I asked the Padre if they had any books to read, and he said that he had none, but added, with some pride, that Cornelio possessed a 'History of the World,' in two volumes, and that they had often read that. My offer to see if I could spare him any books did not seem to arouse much interest; apparently he had never read a novel, and hardly seemed to know what it meant. However, I looked through my boxes and found a copy of 'El Niño de la bola' and 'Pepita Jimenes,' and these I handed to him; he thanked me listlessly and put them aside. That evening I said good night to my host early, as I had some writing to do, and later on spent an hour or two shooting stars with a sextant and working out our position. It was past one o'clock when I was ready to turn in, and to my surprise I saw a light under the Padre's door and heard the sound of a voice. I called out, and hearing no reply, pushed at the big wooden door, which swung open. The feeble rays of light from one small 
CAJABON.
By the 18th of February the work of plotting the traverse from Lanquin to Cajabon was finished, and, after almost endless bother, the cargadores for the forest journey had been engaged and their loads arranged; so, bidding farewell to the Padre and Cornelio, with many handshakes and mutual expressions of goodwill, we set out on our way. My party consisted of Gorgonio, Carlos, José Domingo Lopez, and about twenty Indian cargadores. We had arranged to take with us one horse and three mules, although many years had passed since anyone had attempted to take animals over the track we proposed to follow, but we knew how necessary they would be to us when the dense forest was passed and we should emerge on the savannah lands of Peten. Until we were clear of the forest neither corn nor pasture would be met with, and unluckily neither the horse nor the mules were accustomed to feed on the leaves of the Ramon tree, which is the food usually given to animals employed in forest journeys. Ramon is not a fodder which either horses or mules take to readily, and it is in some cases only after days of starvation that they will eat it at all; but having once fed on Ramon they seem to like it as well as any other food, and it keeps them in excellent condition. These trees are seldom very numerous, and when there is much traffic along a forest-path they are so systematically stripped of their branches by the muleteers that it is often difficult to find an untouched tree within a mile of the track.
The first few days of our journey are pleasanter to think over than they were to go through. Twenty unwilling overladen Indian carriers in a damp and mosquito-haunted forest would try the temper of an angel. They dawdled along and made every sort of excuse to stop and readjust their packs, and we had to keep a sharp look-out to see that none of them wandered off to their milpas and gave us the slip altogether. The loads I had given them to carry were not too heavy, and included food enough to last a fortnight moreover, arrangements had been made for further supplies to overtake us on the road. However, the men had not been satisfied, and each one had thought it necessary to bring with him an extra thirty or forty pounds' weight of food on his own account. As a rule, it is no doubt the better plan to let Indians cater for themselves, but then there is always the danger that at the end of a few days they will tell you that all their food is finished, and propose a halt whilst they send to their homes or hunt round for supplies; and as time is of no importance to them, the delays may be endless. On the other hand, if you undertake to cater for them they never quite believe that you mean to go on doing so, and look on your supply of food as something to be feasted on at once, and the capacity of an Indian's stomach for holding totoposte (parched corn cake) is a marvel to any white man.
Some years ago, when starting on a ten days' journey through the forest from Coban to the Lake of Peten, I took a large quantity of totoposte with me, not to be eaten on the way, as each man carried his own food for the journey, but to enable me, when I reached the lake, to push on at once to the ruins of Tikál. The loads were most carefully arranged, and I set out feeling confident that no one was overburdened; but never in all my experience was there more growling and groaning. I began to think that in some unaccountable way we must have made a mistake in the weights, and I felt obliged to pick up some more carriers on the way to ease my men of part of their burdens; nevertheless the groaning and the grumbling did not cease. After a long and wearisome march we arrived at the village of Saclúc, and set about re-arranging our cargoes for the journey to Tikál. Then only did I find out that the totoposte had been secretly taken out of the packs and eaten during our march, and that the bulky burdens under which the mozos had been groaning were half made up of sticks and dead leaves. So skilfully had the change been made that even Gorgonio had been deceived, and there was no avoiding a delay of three or four days whilst a fresh and far more expensive supply of totoposte was being baked.
I was not going to be taken in by the same trick on this journey, and made sure that the reserve stores of totoposte should not be tampered with; but there was no doubt that the mozos had really overburdened themselves with the extra food they had chosen to bring with them, and the result was that at first we only crawled along, and the best part of each day was spent in resting and eating. One mozo in particular, named Domingo, absolutely appalled me with his prodigious appetite. I had brought him with me from Coban, because he stated that he knew of some stone idols in a cave close by the track we were to follow. His account of the discovery was that, some years previously, whilst travelling through the forest from San Luis to Cajabon, he had shot at and wounded one of a herd of wild pigs which had run across the track in front of him, and that after following the wounded animal through the bush for half an hour or more he had lost all trace of it, but found himself in front of a cave in which there stood some great idols carved out of stone. He told the story in a way that impressed one with his truthfulness, and I could not help believing that what he called a cave was the ruin of a temple, and that it would be worth while to have a good hunt for it. Domingo was more intelligent than the other mozos, and he spoke Spanish fluently. He had brought a younger brother with him, apparently to help minister to his voracious appetite, for on our way from Coban this brother was always disappearing down by-roads, only to return again an hour later laden with food. As we were then travelling very slowly and in an open country, I let them do as they liked, but now that we were on a narrow track in the forest, and it was necessary to keep the men together, Domingo and his brother gave me great trouble with their frequent halts and everlasting meals, and they helped to demoralize the other mozos.
We had risen to a height of over two thousand feet in crossing the hills to the north of Cajabon, and on the third day we began to descend again, and crossed the headwaters of the Rio Sarstoon—here a stream which one could almost jump across. It probably flows for about thirty miles towards the north-east, and, making a short bend to the south, reaches the Falls of Gracias á Dios, whence it flows for about twenty-five miles in an easterly direction to the sea, and forms the boundary between Guatemala and the colony of British Honduras. We followed down the course of the stream for some hours, crossing and re-crossing it several times, and then turned again over the limestone hills, whose rough surface I can only compare to that of a gigantic fossil bath-sponge with innumerable pits, sharp edges, and projecting points. We had frequently to use the backs of our axes to break away the points and edges of the rock before it was possible for our animals to pass, and many hours were spent in cutting away the great loops of roots and lianes which formed a dangerous entanglement across the narrow track even the sure-footed Indians had much difficulty in picking their way, and how the horse and mules escaped accident during the first part of our journey has always been a mystery to me.
About midday on the 21st, after a slight rise and fall, the track became clearer, and we passed an abandoned raft now high and dry, which had been used a week earlier, when the flood was higher, by two Indians whom I had met and talked with at Cajabon. We were now in the valley of the Chimuchuch, another branch of the Rio Sarstoon, and for two hours we waded through flood-water from ankle- to knee-deep. At last the water became so deep that I had to strip off my clothes and carry them on my head. The mozos managed their cargoes most skilfully, shifting them up as high as they could go on their backs, and in this way we crossed a deep backwater, walking along a sort of underwater bridge which the Indians whom I had sent on the day before had prepared for us. A few yards beyond this we had to cross the river Chimuchuch itself, which was still a deep stream, although in the middle of the dry season I am told it is a mere muddy-banked brook. The Indians, with great judgment and skill, had felled two trees from opposite sides of the stream, whose branches interlaced, and along this rough bridge the cargadores carried their loads in safety, whilst Gorgonio, Carlos, and I swam the animals across where the stream was clearer of trees and branches. We were already pretty well wet through with the wading and splashing, and we fared no better when we were across the stream and on rising ground, for the rain came down in torrents and completed our discomfort. We were intending to sleep in a small ermita not far from the river bank, but here we were met by an Indian who told us he had a rancho on a hill about a mile distant, where he begged us to come and pass the night. The rancho was small and dirty, with no partitions in it, and its human occupants were two women (one of them the wife of the Indian who had welcomed us) and a dying baby. It was in the hope that I could do something to recover his child that the poor Indian had been so insistent on our passing the night beneath his roof; but the little I could do was of no avail, as the poor little mite was in the last state of distress and racked by a croupy cough.
The rain and the darkness had come on together, and my long train of mozos crowded in under the scanty covering of the roof and disputed with the pigs and chickens for shelter from the storm. It was all I could do by appeals and threats to keep the men tolerably quiet and prevent them hustling the poor woman who hung over the rough hide bedstead which held her dying child; almost every hour she broke out into fearful shrieks and wails as she thought it had drawn its last breath. At one time some of the mozos, who seemed absolutely indifferent to the woman's trouble, began to make the night more hideous by playing on the wretched toy instruments which they had brought with them from Cajabon; but I got up and raged at them until they really seemed scared, and then one by one they rolled themselves in their blankets and dropped off to sleep. Before dawn the poor child died, and the wretched mother sobbed and groaned until morning.
The rain was still too heavy for us to make a start, and, strange to say, our Indian hosts did not show any anxiety to get rid of us, but seemed rather pleased to have someone to talk to in their trouble. Their satisfaction was greatly increased when they found out that I had a saw with me some rough planks were soon produced, and Gorgonio and I spent the morning making the child's coffin. In the afternoon the rain ceased, and the body was carried off to be buried in the small ermita in the forest. I did not go with the burial party, but could hear in the distance the report of my gun, which had been borrowed to fire a last salute over the grave. The Indian told me that he and his wife belonged to Cajabon, and returned there for a week once or twice a year, but that they spent all the rest of the year in this rancho, where they kept their live stock and planted their milpa. However, they had found the situation to be very unhealthy, and this was the third child they had lost within a year of its birth.
We were obliged to spend another night in the overcrowded rancho; then, as the weather had cleared, on the 24th we went on our way, and this day crossed a small stream flowing to the westward towards the Usumacinta. This great river, which, after a course of nearly five hundred miles, eventually pours its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, rises within the frontier of British Honduras as the Rio Santa Isabel or Sepusilhá and flows for some distance in a south-westerly direction. After crossing the boundary-line of the colony it receives the water of numerous streamlets and becomes known as the Rio Cancuén, and at the end of its sweep to the south it is joined by the Rio Chajmaic, a stream which rises in the mountains to the north of Lanquin. After its junction with the Chajmaic the river is named the Rio de la Pasion; it then takes a northerly direction and is joined in its course by two considerable affluents from the east, the Machaquilá, which rises on the British frontier, and the San Juan. On reaching the latitude of 10° 40′ N. the Rio de la Pasion makes a sharp bend to the westward, and about thirty-five miles down stream is joined by the Rio Chixoy, a large river which drains the northern side of the great backbone of Guatemala mountains, and is the same stream which under the name of the Rio Negro we crossed near Uspantan in the year 1894. Below the junction of the Pasion and Chixoy the river flows in a north-westerly direction and is known as the Rio Usumacinta, and after a course of about twenty miles is joined from the south by the Rio Lacandon, which drains a considerable portion of the State of Chiapas.
Throughout the whole of its length the Rio de la Pasion must be a very sluggish stream. In its westerly course before its junction with the Chixoy there are reaches of the river where during the dry season hardly any current it is perceptible, and after heavy rains the flood-waters extend for so many miles through the forest that one is almost led to think that this region from the mouth of the Chajmaic northward may at one time have formed the bed of a great lake. Where we crossed the Cancuén, at a distance of not more than forty-five miles from the Gulf of Honduras, and with four hundred miles of its course to run, the height of the stream above sea-level did not exceed 600 feet, and it is said to fall considerably before the mouth of the Chajmaic is reached.
After its junction with the Chixoy the current of the river slightly increases and it becomes still swifter when joined by the Rio Lacandon. A few miles below the junction with the latter a low range of hills almost bars its course, and for a short distance the water with its surface slowly twisted in great oily-looking swirls, swings through a narrow pass between cliffs not more than forty feet apart. During the heavy autumn rains the flood-water rises rapidly above this narrow passage and tears through it with tremendous force. When I descended the river in a canoe from the Paso Real to the ruins of Menché Tinamit in 1884 I saw huge mahogany logs lying stranded thirty or forty feet up the banks, and my companion Mr. Schulte (who was in the employ of a large mahogany-cutting firm) told me that during one great flood he had tied up his canoe to the posts of a deserted rancho, which, at the time we passed the night in it, stood a good fifty feet above the surface of the water. Below the barrier of hills the river broadens out again. In 1883 Mr. Rockstroh followed down its course for a few miles below Menché; beyond this it is still unmapped, but for some distance it is known through a deep gorge choked with boulders, where it is broken into rapids in which no canoe could live. The gorge ends in two falls a few miles above Tenosique, whence the river is navigable by small steamers to the sea.
But I must go on with my journey. For two days we travelled on over low ground drained by small muddy-banked streamlets, affluents of the Cancuén. The only incident worth recording is that on passing a small recess in the limestone rock, measuring not more than three feet in height and depth and in no way remarkable, each one of the mozos took off his hat as he approached it, crossed himself, and deposited a small dab of copal on the rock. It was, they told me, the "Mouth of the Hill." As one may learn from old records of the journeys of the Dominican monks through this part of the country, the Indians have a curious reverence for localities, and Gorgonio tells me that in some places they will not kill snakes because they belong to "the hill," and "the hill" might do them harm in return.
On the morning of the 27th I sent some of the mozos on ahead to clear the track towards San Luis, and as we were now at a place called Chichajaé, near to the spot where seven years earlier Domingo had seen the three Idols in a cave, we determined to camp there, and have a thorough good search for them. Gorgonio and I set out along the track under Domingo's guidance, until he came to a spot which he seemed to recognize as the place where the wild pigs had crossed his path, and we turned off through the forest in the direction which he supposed the wounded pig had taken. I took a compass bearing and then we spent hour after hour cutting our way with our machetes, making casts across and across this line without any success, for we saw no trace either of buildings or caves. After the first two hours of fruitless search Domingo came to a halt and proposed that we should make an offering, so we all three squatted down facing one another and solemnly burnt small pieces of copal so that the scented smoke might rise into the air and propitiate the spirits of the hills. This offering was made almost every hour during the rest of our search and seemed to inspire Domingo with renewed confidence, but he told us that there were times when the hills were "muy mañosos" (very cunning), and would give up nothing one desired to find. Once Gorgonio asked him why he did not pray, but he answered at once that there was no use whatever in saying prayers when one was in the forest. Possibly he thought prayer to belong to the Christian side of his faith, for use only in church and in the neighbourhood of the priest, and that propitiatory offerings alone were of avail with the ancient hill spirit. Certainly in this case the Spirit of the hills was more than usually ill-disposed; perhaps it resented the presence of a doubting stranger, for neither that day nor the next did it vouchsafe to show us those images of the ancient gods of which we were in search. On our way back to camp, quite close to the track, we came upon some "cimientos," rough stone foundations of ancient Indian dwellings, and Domingo at once said that the cave had stones round it just like that, so that we felt more than ever convinced that he had chanced on the ruins of an ancient temple.
It rained nearly all night and we felt the cold much more severely than I could have imagined, for the thermometer did not go below 60°. Next day I took Carlos and some of the other mozos with me to clear and examine the "cimientos" we had found the evening before, whilst Gorgonio and Domingo and all the rest were employed on a further search for idols. The search was again fruitless, and, from something in his manner, I began to think that Domingo was haunted by some superstition and was unwilling to take us to the idols even if he knew where they stood. The "cimientos" did not prove to be very interesting. Some of the stones used in the principal foundation-mound were large, but they were poorly worked and had been merely flaked off from the quarry. The front of the mound was formed into three broad steps or terraces, but I could find no trace of walls or building on the flat top. A trench dug through the mound showed it to be made of rough pieces broken off the neighbouring limestone rock, and of small stones mixed with a few shreds of coarse pottery. Towards evening I ascended a steep limestone hill about 400 feet high, rising a quarter of a mile to the west of the camp. Gorgonio had caught sight of it the day before and mozos had been sent up to clear the top. We had a splendid view from S.W. to N.W. across the great forest-covered plain of the Rio de la Pasion and its branches, and could distinctly see on the far horizon some clear-cut hills which we took to be the Nueve Cerros (bearing 119°-122°) on the Rio Chixoy. To the N.W. were the distant hillocks of Peten, and right across the N.N.E. a long range of abrupt hills, but all very far distant. We could not have chanced on a better point from which to get a view over the country, for we were standing on the last of the range of hills which projected into the plain from the direction in which we had been travelling.
Isolated black storm-clouds heavily charged with rain were passing over the country to the north of us, and just as I was putting away the prismatic compass, a heavy shower struck us and in a moment we were all drenched; we hastened to make the best of our way back to camp, the thinly clad mozos shivering with cold. Here bad news awaited us the mozos who had been out with Carlos clearing the track were returning from work in single file, when one who had a load on his back put his foot out of the track into the low herbage at the side and trod upon a "tamagás," which bit him in the foot. Luckily the snake was a small one, but the two little round blue-edged marks left by his poison-fangs were not to be mistaken, and the mozo's foot and leg were already greatly swollen.
In the matter of a snake-bite, Indians are best left to their own devices;they almost always carry a supposed antidote with them or know where to look in the forest for some medicinal herb in the efficacy of which they have the firmest belief. In this case the remedy was a smooth seed like the kernel of a brazil-nut, called Cedron, which is excessively bitter and astringent and which comes, I believe, from Mexico. An infusion was made from the scrapings of this seed and given to the patient to drink, whilst the skin of the foot around the bite was scarified with a knife and a strong infusion of the seed was rubbed into it. It is not always on drugs alone that the inhabitants of the country rely for protection against death by snake-bite; during one of my earlier journeys, whilst travelling through the forest on the way to Peten, a Ladino came into camp who had been following on our tracks for two days. After he had rested and had some supper I told Gorgonio to find out what he wanted. He was rather mysterious in his replies; but at last it came out that he had heard that I was the fortunate possessor of a unicorn's horn, and he wished me to sell him a piece of it. I was utterly mystified, for at that time I knew nothing of the virtue of unicorn's horn, and my statement that I could not possess any, as no such thing existed, was not too well received, and evidently looked upon as a dodge to raise the price. Later in the evening I talked the matter over with my men, and learnt that unicorn's horn was firmly believed in as a charm or protection against snake-bite. Next morning my visitor returned to the subject. He told me that he had long been looking out for a piece of horn, that he knew that I had some, and that he would pay me a good price for it. He added that only a few months before he had nearly succeeded in buying a piece from an old negro woman in Belize, but that at the very last she refused to part with it, as she had made up her mind to keep it for her son who was then at sea, but who would have need of it when he returned and went wood-cutting in the forest. Clearly nothing that I said to the man affected his belief in the charm, and he left me to ride home in a very ill-humour at his bad luck. This superstition cannot be of Indian origin, but must have come through European sailors, who thought there was virtue in a narwhal's tooth. The snake-bitten mozo suffered greatly during the night, but by the next morning the swelling was somewhat reduced and the pain seemed to be lessened; however, all chance of our making a start for San Luis was out of the question, as the man could not put his foot to the ground.
All this time our mules had been without any proper food, as unluckily no Ramon trees could be found. The poor beasts had nibbled at all the green things around them, but there was nothing to satisfy their hunger. After making many experiments we found that the leaves of a certain palm were most to their liking, and with these they were liberally supplied. It had been raining during the night and the day was dull and cold, so I stayed in camp to write up my notes and compute some sextant observations, and sent off two parties of men to hunt through the forest for ruins. About five o'clock the men began to return and reported that they had met with no game and seen no ruins; before dark they were all in except Gorgonio, his brother José Domingo, and four mozos who had parted company with the others early in the afternoon. As the sun was setting I sent a mozo to fire shots from the limestone hill to the west of the camp in the hope of guiding their steps, and continued to fire occasional shots from the camp until an hour or two after dark, but no answer came to the signals. However, I knew that the men had matches and some biscuits with them, and that if they were lost for the night they were bound to strike the track when the sun rose to guide them. Before noon the next day they all turned up and owned that they had lost themselves, in spite of the compass which Gorgonio carried, and had wandered away further than they intended. They passed a cold and comfortless night in a cave, making their supper off a monkey which they had shot by the way. We had doubtless been feeling the effects of a late "norther" in the Gulf of Mexico, for during all our stay at Chichajác the weather was dull and chilly. In the evening two Indian hunters on their way to Cajabon came into camp; this was my opportunity, and I asked them if they would accept payment to see the injured mozo back to his home, for by this time he had so far recovered as to be able to put his foot to the ground. We soon came to terms; I then called the men together round the camp fire and asked the mozo if he felt well enough to return home, and as he answered "yes," I then told him what arrangements had been made for him. "Now," I added, "we must settle about your wages; you have received payment in advance for two months and have only done ten days' work for it, the money must of course be returned to me." The man made no objection, and one of his companions brought the little pile of dollars and placed them in front of me. Then, in my best manner, I made an oration, which Gorgonio translated into Quekchi. They might have already found out, I said, that Englishmen were not man-eaters, and that the particular Englishman whom they were serving was anxious to take every care of them, and pay well for their labour, and I held up my many other shining virtues to the light of that camp fire. This man, I said, has met with an accident whilst in my service, therefore in no way that I can help shall he suffer for it. Let him come forward and take up the money again—he is thus paid for two months in which to recover his health; and to this pile of dollars will I now add another pile, so that during the time of his feebleness he may pay some neighbour to work in his milpa. The man gathered up the extra dollars without a word and there was absolute silence in the circle. As this was not broken for some moments, I asked Gorgonio if anyone had anything to say. This was translated to them, and at last someone grumbled out, "If Pedro was fool enough to put his foot on a snake, of course we know that was not the doing of the Patron." That was all the thanks I got, and perhaps it was all I deserved, for in truth I was only posing, and had a very shrewd idea that the man would be all right again in a week's time; but I had a grumbling, discontented set of mozos with me and could not afford to miss a chance of showing them that I was ready to treat them liberally when an opportunity offered. However, time and fair treatment were already doing their work, and we were on much better terms than when we started and they had alluded to my probable liking for human flesh.
My chief difficulty now was with one of the mozos who had declared himself to be a "brujo," or wizard; he told the others that he could do anything he pleased with me, and he was of course the leader in all the grumblings and insubordination. However, I knew that I was getting on well when I found that I could raise a laugh at the "brujo's" expense, and I never missed an opportunity of chaffing him about his mysterious powers, and offered to drink any potion he might prepare for me, provided he drank half of it himself.
On the 3rd of March we left the injured man in charge of the hunters, and were all delighted to get out of our damp and gloomy camp and to make a start again. After five days of slow travelling through the forest, crossing the numerous streamlets which go to make up the Santa Isabel or Cancuén branch of the Rio de la Pasion and the muddy intervals between them, we arrived at the deserted village of San Luis, where the horse and mules were at last able to find food more to their liking, as the clearing round the houses afforded some scanty pasture.
Nearly all the houses in the village were empty and fast falling into decay. About two years before my visit the inhabitants of San Luis, worried and wearied by the constant interference of the Government in their concerns, and especially resenting the extra tax which was levied in support of President Rufino Barrios's pet scheme of a railway from the capital to the Atlantic coast, determined to abandon their homes and seek shelter in British territory. In all about one hundred families fled across the border and founded the village of San Antonio between the frontier and Punta Gorda. The Colonial Government did not interfere with them and they lived on in taxless peace but even so their happiness was not complete, for had they not left the sacred images of the saints behind them, and had not their own chosen Alcalde, fearing the long arm of the President, refused to accompany them? The loss was intolerable and a council was called to discuss the matter, when it was settled to make an attempt to recover their saints and their Alcalde whatever the risks might be. A number of the younger men then recrossed the frontier, seized the church bells and the images of the saints, and called to their Alcalde to follow them; but he, wise man, knew the value of forms, and refused to leave unless they would first bind him with cords. This was soon done, and then conscience being satisfied he cheerfully marched off to join his family on the other side of the frontier.
The fate of the bells of San Luis was very nearly becoming an international question, but, fortunately for the peace of the world, after a few despatches had passed between the Governments interested, the matter was allowed to drop.