Chapter I: Preface

A belief in the increasing importance of Central America, both geographically and politically, has led the writer of the following pages to collect for his own use and print for the use of others, notes made during three journeys in Guatemala and Honduras. He does not pretend to offer a monograph on Guatemala, nor to add to the general knowledge of Central America; but remembering the lack of guidance from which he suffered in travelling through the country, would in some measure save others from the same inconvenience. He seeks also, with perhaps more ambition, to awaken among Americans greater interest in the much-neglected regions between the Republic of Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien.

A land which was the cradle of civilization on this continent, and whose recently explored monuments are most justly claiming the study and admiration of archæologists in Europe as well as in America, has been strangely neglected by the American traveller as well as by the American merchant. Since the Travels of Stephens fascinated the public nearly half a century ago, the people of the United States have paid very little attention to Guatemala or its commerce. Even now there are thousands of square miles of wholly unexplored territory between the low Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Lake of Nicaragua.

No country on the northern half of the American continent has a finer climate or more beautiful and varied scenery, or is a more attractive field for the genuine traveller. Valleys rivalling the paradises of the islands of the Pacific; uplands not unlike the plateau of the Indian Neilgherries; forests as dense and luxuriant as those of Brazil; lakes as picturesque as those of Switzerland; green slopes that might have been taken from the Emerald Isle; glens like the Trossachs; desert wastes that recall the Sahara; volcanoes like Ætna; and a population as various as in that land whence comes the Indian name,—all these features make but the incomplete outline of the Guatemaltecan picture. Then there is that charming freedom from conventionality which permits a costume for comfort rather than for fashion, accoutrements for convenience rather than for show. No dangerous beast or savage man attempts the traveller’s life, no lurking danger or insidious pestilence is in his path. The hair-breadth escapes, more interesting to the reader than pleasant to the explorer, are rare here, and the rough places and the irritations from which no land on earth is wholly free, seem softened and vanishing to the retrospective eye.

Old travellers know how soon the individuality of a country is lost when once the tide of foreign travel is turned through its towns or its by-ways; and when the ship-railway of Eads crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, when the Northern Railroad extends through Guatemala, when the Transcontinental Railway traverses the plains of Honduras, and the Nicaraguan Canal unites the Atlantic and the Pacific, the charm will be broken, the mule-path and the mozo de cargo will be supplanted, and a journey across Central America become almost as dull as a journey from Chicago to Cheyenne.

In the sober work to which this Preface introduces the reader, first impressions have been confirmed or corrected by subsequent experience, and flights of the imagination curbed by the truth-telling camera; from the published maps the most correct portion has been selected, and the statistics are from the Government reports. Many hundred photographic plates made by the writer during a period of three years have contributed to the illustrations of this book, so that accuracy has been secured. Where the plates are not direct reproductions from the negatives, the ink drawings have been made from photographic prints with care. There are no fancy sketches.

W. T. B.

BOSTON, _June 16, 1887_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. THE KINGDOM OF GUATEMALA 1

II. THE ATLANTIC COAST AND ITS CONNECTIONS 25

III. ACROSS THE CONTINENT WESTWARD TO COBAN 66

IV. FROM COBAN TO QUEZALTENANGO 103

V. FROM QUEZALTENANGO TO THE PACIFIC 148

VI. GUATEMALA CITY 171

VII. GUATEMALA TO ESQUIPULAS 190

VIII. ESQUIPULAS AND QUIRIGUA 201

IX. IN THE OLDEN TIME 228

X. THE REPUBLIC OF GUATEMALA 281

XI. VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL PRODUCTIONS 323

XII. EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES 377