THE CITY.
[Illustration: CITY OF GUATEMALA, FROM THE CERRO DEL CARMEN.]
The city of Guatemala occupies a beautiful position in the middle of a
broad plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains and volcanoes. Hill
after hill rises to the north until the view is shut in by the distant
Sierra Madre range. To the south-east is a volcanic group crowned by
the peaks of Pacaya, and above the nearer hills to the south rise the
giant cone of Agua and the triple craters of Fuego.
The streets of the city are laid out at right angles, and they gain
an appearance of breadth from the lowness of the houses. Two-storied
houses are as scarce as earthquakes are frequent, and the long low
lines of buildings are broken only by the stumpy bell-towers and squat
cupolas of the churches.
Churches and houses alike are white-washed, and the general effect
is cheerful and even dazzling in the bright sunlight of the tropics.
Street tramways, telegraph and telephone wires, and electric lights are
there to keep us up to date; but in spite of their intrusion, it is Old
Spain--the Spain of the Moors--which comes uppermost in one's mind when
wandering about the city. The deep-set windows, barred with the heavy
iron "reja," and the broad "zaguan" or porch, through which one catches
a glimpse of the arches of a colonnade round a patio bright with
flowers or chequered with the grateful shade of trees, take one back at
once to the sunny plains of Andalusia. Nothing in the whole city was so
attractive to both of us as the great market-place, and there we spent
many hours. Every morning the broad streets leading to it were thronged
with gaily-dressed ladinos (half-castes) and Indians, and we were even
driven by frequent collisions to quit the narrow side-walk for the
rough cobble-stones of the street.
The Indians are for the most part carriers of vegetables and other
produce from the neighbouring villages, or merchants from a distance,
who bring all their merchandise on their backs packed in light wooden
crates called "cacastes." The Indian women from the nearer hamlets also
come burdened with large bundles of clean linen which has been washed
for the townsfolk, or support baskets on their heads full of cakes and
"pan dulce" for sale in the market-place, and many carry an additional
burden slung in a shawl over the back, from which peeps out the quaint
little face of an Indian baby. To judge from the expression of their
faces one would say that the Indians are a dull and solemn race; but
this impression vanishes when one hears their lively chatter as they
trot along under their burdens, for none but the most heavily laden
condescend to the slowness of a walk.
The ladino housekeepers and maid-servants with their bright striped
aprons and rebosos add to the crowd, and give it a distinct charm when
they poise their large flat baskets on their heads and show their
shapely bare arms and pretty hands to advantage. One is not long in the
city before hearing the wails of the mistresses at the length of time
spent by their servants in buying a few vegetables or a dozen eggs,
for, indeed, these handmaidens dearly love the loitering and chatter of
the market-place.
The market-place itself is divided into two large patios surrounded
and crossed by corridors. Small recesses in the walls are used as
shops, like those in an eastern bazaar. Here the vendors of the durable
articles ply their trade, offering for sale hardware and saddlery and
all the innumerable sacks, bags, ropes, and girths needed for the
trains of pack-mules; whilst others deck out their stalls with the
bright-coloured dress fabrics so much loved by the natives. Towards
the middle of the market-place, where the light fell strongest, colour
reigned supreme in the rainbow hues of the women's dresses and the
brilliant tints of the tropical fruits. Here are heaped up mountains of
golden oranges, red, yellow, and green bananas, cocoanuts, pine-apples,
aguacates, anonas, and tomatoes large and small, jocotes, pimientos,
limes, and sweet lemons, great bunches of flowers, endless bundles of
green vegetables, and baskets piled high with fresh eggs; in fact the
produce of every clime, from potatoes grown on the cold slopes of Agua
to the sugar-cane from the hot plains of the Pacific coast.
At Christmas time another market is held in the arcades which surround
the great Plaza de Armas, where the women display their handiwork in
the manufacture of toys, most of them tiny dolls dressed in the Indian
costumes and illustrating the occupations and customs of the race.
Some of these little groups of figures are so extremely minute that
one almost needs a magnifying-glass to examine them, and attest the
clearness of vision and neatness of hand of the makers.
The shops and stores of the principal merchants are numerous, and, I
suppose, under the circumstances, may be said to be fairly good, but
to one coming from Europe or the United States the articles displayed
are not very enticing. Most of the foreign goods are of a class which
must, I think, be manufactured only for export to a semicivilized
country. They do not, however, possess the merit of cheapness, for the
exorbitant duties levied at the Custom House would alone more than
double their original price. My efforts to buy a good silk veil to wear
when travelling, as a protection against the dust, were not crowned
with success; and the French modiste from whom I finally purchased a
very second-rate article amused me greatly by her description of the
difficulties she met with in satisfying the taste of her clients in a
country where duties are levied on bonnets and hats by weight, and the
boxes and paper in which they are packed are also weighed and charged
for at the same rate.
Three-quarters of the foreign trade is in German hands, and many
Germans have been wise enough to settle on the rich coffee-lands of the
Costa Grande and Costa Cuca on the Pacific slope, and in the province
of the Vera Paz, and have made a splendid success of their plantations.
Next to the Germans the North Americans are most in evidence, but the
English are not to be found.
When the capital was moved to its present site in the year 1774,
priests and monks were still a power in the land and the finest
buildings in the city were raised by the monastic orders. Now not a
monk or friar is to be found in the country, and even the secular
clergy are forbidden to wear any distinctive dress. From the time of
the rupture with Spain ecclesiastical influence began to decline; it
rose again for a time under the rule of the Dictator Carrera, an Indian
of pure blood, whom the priests found it worth while to support; but
during the wars which followed Carrera's death it again waned, and
in 1872 the last of the great Orders was expelled and its property
seized by the government and turned to secular use. The Post Office
and Custom House are now lodged in the monastery of San Francisco; the
"Instituto Nacional," a great public school, is well housed in what was
once the Jesuit College; the military school is in the Recoletos. The
monastery of Santo Domingo harbours the "Direccion general de Licores,"
the Capuchinos is utilized for a second theatre, and some of the less
important religious houses serve as "mesones" or caravanserais for the
muleteers and ladino travellers.
The churches are still left to the secular clergy, and they are as
uninteresting as Spanish-American churches are wont to be. Had the
conquest occurred but a century earlier America might have been
covered with churches worthy of the traditions handed down by the
builders of Burgos, Toledo, and Seville, for the supply of labourers
was for some time unlimited, the Indians were good craftsmen, and the
great monuments of Copan and Quirigua show that curved and drooping
feathers may afford a motive for decoration as graceful and beautiful
as Gothic foliations; but such art as the Spaniards brought with them
was a degraded form of the renaissance, and the innumerable churches
which they built are without any architectural merit but mass, the
interiors great bare halls, and the façades overloaded with stumpy
twisted columns, wavy stucco cornices, and such-like abominations. Not
even the ruin into which so many of them have fallen can add a grace
to the masses of stucco and rubble. It is only in the villages that
they gain a picturesqueness of their own, and that owing more to their
surroundings than to any merit in design. However, in their favour
it must be said that they are neither dirty nor bad-smelling, partly
because they are so little used and partly because in this equable
climate doors and windows can be left open all day long.
A few days before Christmas we happened to enter the church of La
Merced and chanced upon a vesper service for the Hijas de Maria, sung
by a choir of girls and children to the strains of a wheezy harmonium,
whilst all did their best to increase the noise by blowing penny
whistles, shaking bells and tambourines, and striking triangles. After
playing with their penny toys until they were tired, the choir broke
into a quaint chant, to which the rest of the congregation responded.
During this performance the "Daughters of Mary," veiled and dressed in
white, and each carrying a lighted candle in her hand, knelt at the
altar rails, whilst the "Sons of Mary," with large white ribbon bows
tied on their arms, sat in the seats near the choir. This was almost
the only ladino church-function which we saw during our stay in the
country. In all the other towns and villages the churches seemed to be
given over almost exclusively to the Indians.
In our rambles through the suburbs we often found our path barred by
the great barrancas which almost surround the town. These big fissures
are very beautiful, and we spent many idle and pleasant hours watching
the shadows chasing each other across their open green mouths, and
enjoying the delicious June temperature which comes to this favoured
land at Christmas time. Trees and shrubs loaded with festoons of
creeping plants cling to the precipitous sides of these rifts, and
now and then one caught a bright gleam where the sunlight struck the
rivulet that bubbles through the luxuriant tropical vegetation in the
depths. The great Zopilote vulture which seems to haunt every barranca
would swoop with a whirr of his outstretched wings close above our
heads and sail on over the chasm with hardly a quiver in his wings, but
with his ugly black head and restless eyes always in eager movement,
whilst from below now and again would well up the strong sweet notes of
the "guarda barranca," a small brown bird, who makes his home in the
most inaccessible cliffs and deepest tree-clad gorges.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The usual evening stroll of the Guatemaltecos is to the Cerro del
Carmen, a small turf-covered hill rising to the north-east of the city,
where stands an old church and the remains of a monastery, perhaps the
oldest in the Republic. From this hill the view of the city with its
large white churches and conventual buildings, surrounded by walled
gardens full of trees and flowers, is very beautiful at any hour of
the day, but at sunset the sight is one not easily forgotten. It is
difficult to describe the beauty of the amphitheatre of mountains all
aglow in the sunset light, or of the majesty of the clouds as they
float up from the distant sea, wreathing themselves round Agua and
Fuego, filling up the valleys with mists of every possible hue, which
take on a deeper colour as they drift away from the setting sun and
fill the vault of the heavens. Then the east takes up what light the
clouds have left behind and shoots up to the zenith splendid rays of
colour, which meet those of the setting sun as it sinks behind the
mountain peaks. Too soon the short twilight ends and the volcanoes
clothe themselves in a bloom of dark blue, and receding into the night
seem to sleep quietly under the brilliant tropical stars.
It was a lovely scene, which we always left reluctantly for the
comfortless hotel and a bad dinner. But not even our dusty room
nor the dark stuffy "comedor," where we took our meals, could
obliterate the vision of that brilliant pageant of marching clouds
and magnificent colouring which had surrounded us on the Cerro del
Carmen. The less said about Guatemala hotels the better; those in the
capital are pretentious and bad. The Grand Hotel, where we put up, is
a good-sized house, with patios and broad corridors and good rooms,
but the furnishings are old, dirty, and disagreeably stuffy. In the
dining-room, which was always overcrowded, we were not permitted to
engage one of the many small tables, and had to take our chance of
companions and table-cloths; the former not always agreeable and the
latter often unbearable. Good food might have done much to soothe
our troubled feelings, but it never came, and this was all the more
aggravating as the market was full of good things to eat. The bedroom
service, carried on by a very dirty man, was uncomfortable beyond
expression, and a large part of my day was always passed cleaning
and tidying the single room which was all the accommodation we could
secure. Appeals to the landlord, a German, who, thanks to the cook
whom he had married, had grown rich and proportionately proud, and
who was also the owner of the large store attached to the hotel,
resulted in nothing but a polite bow, a hand pointing the while to
a pile of telegrams, and a suggestion that if the Señora proposed
making different arrangements others were more than willing to engage
her room. However, we were most fortunate in finding the kindest of
friends at the British Legation and amongst the foreign residents, who
rescued us from bad dinners and smelling oil-lamps, entertaining us so
hospitably as to make us forget the distance from home at Christmas
time; and although the atmosphere would have afforded no clue to the
season as we know it in the north, there was no mistaking its kindly
greetings and its roast turkeys and plum puddings.