COPAN IN 1885 (CONTINUED). (BY A. P. M.)
In such an out-of-the-way place as Copan the natives seem to think that
every foreigner must know something about medicine, and soon after my
arrival the maimed and the sick began to pay me visits and pour their
tales of suffering into my ears. With the many sick children I often
found that good beef-tea and condensed milk and arrowroot from my
stores worked wonders, without any call on the medicine chest; but my
strongest efforts went towards persuading the mothers to keep their
babies clean, for they seemed to think that water was dangerous for
them. Unfortunately, I soon gained a distinguished reputation as a
surgeon. I say unfortunately, as it raised the hopes of all sufferers,
including every incurable cripple, for leagues around, and gave me the
unpleasant task of telling them that I was powerless to help them. The
case that brought me fame was that of a poor fellow, a blacksmith by
trade, living some twelve or fourteen leagues away, who came into camp
one morning with his eyes in the most dreadful state of inflammation.
He told me that about ten days before, when working at his forge, a
hot spark from the metal had flown into his eyes, and that during the
following week every one in his village had tried in turn to get the
speck out of his eye and that each one had failed. Then he heard of my
arrival at the ruins, and had walked over to ask me to help him. It
was no use my telling him that I was not a doctor, and that I might
very easily destroy the sight of his eye altogether if I were to try
any experiments: he only replied that he did not care whether I was
or was not a doctor, and that I could not make him much blinder than
he was, for he could not see at all with one eye, and very little
with the other. I was at my wits' end to know what to do for him, it
seemed cruel to send him away; and my hands were so hot and shaky
after working with a crowbar and machete all the morning, that I could
not even examine his eye satisfactorily. So I put cold bandages over
his eyes, gave him some food, and a seat in the darkest corner of the
rancho, and told him to rest after his long walk, whilst I thought
the matter over. When the sun had fallen low, Gorgonio led the man
to my house in the village, and there we put him on his back, and I
examined the eye with a magnifying-glass. I could clearly see a minute,
almost transparent particle just on the outer rim of the iris, but the
camel's-hair brush which I passed over it failed to move it. Then I
screwed up my courage and got Gorgonio to hold the eye down whilst,
looking through the magnifying-glass, I tried to remove the particle
with the fine point of a knife. The first attempt failed but did no
damage, and on the second trial I got the point of the knife under the
particle and it came away. By the next morning the inflammation had
very considerably subsided, the sight of the uninjured eye appeared
to be almost normal, and that of the injured eye had to some extent
recovered. The man was very grateful, and said he was unhappy at having
no money to pay me, but that he had strong arms and would stay with me
until he had worked off his debt. As I learnt that he had a wife and
family dependent on him, I told him to rest during the glare of the
day, and then make the best of his way home during the evening and in
the early morning, and I have no doubt that he spread my fame abroad on
the journey.
A few days later another interesting case came under treatment. I had
noticed an anæmic-looking man accompanied by a woman loitering about
the village in the morning, and later in the day saw the same man in
earnest conversation with Gorgonio at the ruins; but as he did not come
to speak to me, and as I knew he did not belong to Copan, I took him to
be a traveller whose curiosity had prompted him to leave the road to
see what we were doing at the ruins. However, when I returned to the
village in the evening the same couple were still hanging about, and
Gorgonio came with a mystified air to my hut and said: "Don Alfredo,
it isn't true is it, that a man can have an animal inside him eating
him up?" I expressed my doubts as to its probability, when he said:
"That is what I have been telling the man who has been about here
all day, but he says that he is quite certain that he has an animal
inside him eating him up, and that a brujo (witch) put it there, and
he knows who the brujo is, and he wants to ask you whether he should
kill the brujo, and if he does so whether the animal will go away?"
This was my first case of "brujeria," and the medical notes in 'Hints
to Travellers' did not give any directions as to treatment, so I sent
for the victim of witchcraft and got him to state the case himself.
He was rather shy about it, but finally told me what I had already
heard from Gorgonio, and I learnt further that the "brujo" was one of
his neighbours living in the same village. Then I tried my best, with
Gorgonio's assistance, to persuade the man that he was mistaken, that
no brujo could possibly put an animal inside him to eat him up, that no
doubt he was out of health, but that "brujeria" had nothing to do with
it. We might just as well have talked to one of the stone monuments in
the plaza with the hope of making an impression on it; both the man and
his wife were fully convinced that their probably harmless neighbour
was the cause and origin of the mischief, and their only doubt seemed
to be whether his death would ensure the death of the animal. After
fruitlessly arguing for an hour, I took Gorgonio aside, and we held a
private consultation; then, with as much mystery and solemnity as we
could assume, I presented my patient with my far-famed "anti-brujeria
pills and powders," which looked very much like small doses of calomel
and compound rhubarb pills, and were to be taken at stated intervals,
at certain phases of the moon, in order to keep the animal quiet,
while the patient tried by every means in his power to propitiate and
live on good terms with the "brujo," as it was the well-known opinion
of the faculty that if the patient killed the "brujo," the animal
always killed the patient. I added that no fees were taken in cases
of "brujeria," not even bundles of cigars or fresh eggs, and that the
patient had better return to his village at once and carry out the
treatment prescribed. The couple went off apparently fairly satisfied,
and I heard no more of them, but I have some hope that the "brujo"
escaped death.
Every evening, when I had my supper, some of the villagers would drop
in for a chat, and of course I had to be shown off to every stranger
who happened to pass through the village, by whom I was plied with
questions such as--"Is it true that you will have to cross the sea to
get back to your own country?" "The villagers tell me that you bathe
every day: is it not bad for the health?" The Niña Chica was generally
show-woman and she took great pride in my performances, and her remarks
and comments on these occasions were always delightful.
There had been some difference of opinion amongst the villagers when
I first came amongst them as to whether I was a "Christiano" or not;
but the matter, I believe, was finally settled in my favour without
reference to any ecclesiastical authorities. There was no church in the
village, and no school, and the visits of a priest were very few and
far between; certainly none came to the village during my stay, and the
villagers did not appear to feel the need for one except in the matter
of baptism. When a child was born it was hurried off, whatever might be
the state of its strength or health or the length of the journey, to be
made into a Christian by the nearest priest; after that had been done,
no other rites of the Church seemed to be of much account. Each house
in the village had its saint, and every now and then the villagers
would form a small procession to escort a saint on a round of visits to
his neighbours. Niña Chica's saint was San Antonio, and all the gaudy
labels on my tins of food, and all the shreds of coloured paper in
which the things had been packed, were carefully preserved by the old
lady for the decoration of the corner of her hut, where stood a very
dilapidated image enshrined in a cracked glass cupboard. I asked her
to tell me something of the saint's history, but she replied that she
knew nothing about it. Then I told her what I knew about his story, but
she would not have it that it was that San Antonio at all. "When and
where did he live?" I asked. "How should I know?" she answered. "Was he
ever alive at all?" "What is the use of asking an old woman like me? I
don't know if he ever lived, but I know that he is a 'santo.'"
"But, Niña Chica, he is your own particular saint, and you don't know
anything about him at all?"
"Yes, I do," she replied indignantly; "I know that the cockroaches have
eaten the end of his nose!"
Soon after this conversation took place a greater demand than ever was
made for the coloured wrappers and labels, and an old photographic
tent with a yellow lining was borrowed from me, for the "Novena" of
San Antonio was approaching. I had an invitation to attend the prayer
meetings, but managed to excuse myself, for the Niña Chica's house was
very small and it was crowded each night as tightly as it could be
packed, and for half an hour the congregation shouted chants and hymns
in unmelodious voices. On the last night I had watched the company
arrive and had then turned into my own hut to eat my supper, and was
wondering why the singing did not begin, when I heard the sound of
much loud talking, and on going out to see what was the matter, found
the whole congregation outside the house discussing the situation. At
that moment a messenger came running in and cried, "It is no use, Don
Pedro says his toothache is so bad, he can't possibly come!" The Niña
Chica was in despair, and came over to tell me all about it, and then I
learnt that Don Pedro was the only man in the village who could read,
so that there was no one now to conduct the service. "You bring me the
book," I said, "and I will see what can be done." She flew off, and
soon returned with a very dirty little paper-covered book containing
the services for the Novena, but on turning over the leaves I found
that half the service for the last night had been torn out. I broke
this gently to the Niña Chica, and expected another wail of despair,
but she chirped up and said, "Never mind, Don Alfredo, you read as much
as there is and then nudge my arm, for I know lots of things to sing."
I begged for a few minutes' delay that I might first read through the
service to myself, and I cannot say that I found it edifying, nor do
I think that it could have conveyed much meaning to the native mind.
However, I went over to the crowded hut, and there in the corner was
the noseless St. Anthony in his glass-faced case, surrounded by candles
and flowers and a choice selection of labels of somebody's soup and
somebody else's salmon, and shreds of coloured paper, all arranged
under the yellow-lined canopy made of my photographic tent, and I must
own that the general effect was brilliant and successful.
I stood up to read the service to a most attentive congregation, and
when at last I had to stop short in the middle of a sentence I jogged
the Niña Chica's arm according to arrangement, and the old lady put
up her head and positively howled out a chant, which gave me a chance
of escape from the stifling atmosphere of the overcrowded hut and of
finishing my supper.
A few days later I had another conversation on religious subjects, this
time with a girl about fifteen years old, a niece of the Niña Chica,
whom I had been doctoring for troubles which seemed to me to come
solely from want of good food and consequent poorness of blood. She was
a bright-eyed and sharp girl, and I knew that she had been away for
some time to a neighbouring town, and might probably have received some
education. However, she knew no more than her aunt about the household
saint, so I asked her if she knew who Christ was. "Yes," she replied,
"He is Nuestro Señor."
"And who was His Mother?"
She answered promptly, "La Santissima Virgen."
At least, I said to myself, the rising generation have been taught
something, so I went on with my catechism. "Who was his Father?"
"His Father? Oh! Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas."
"But," I said, "Our Lord of Esquipulas is the Christ too."
"Yes," she replied, "there are numbers of them, Nuestro Señor de
Esquipulas, and Nuestro Señor of this and that,--"; and she rattled
through all the names of the shrines for leagues around.
"Was He ever alive on earth?" I asked her.
"Quien sabe!" was the answer. "How should I know!"
The want of religious education did not prevent the villagers from
celebrating Easter by idling for a week and getting very drunk. On
the "tres dias grandes," from Good Friday until Monday, of course
no one worked, but I had the greatest difficulty in getting anyone
to work in Holy Week at all. Mr. Giuntini could not go on with his
plaster moulding without some assistance, and I spent a weary hour in
persuading the most intelligent of my workmen to limit his holiday to
the three days. The only reason he adduced for not wishing to work was
the fear of ill-luck--as he put it, "se puede machetearse," "one might
cut oneself with a machete." However, he gave way on the promise of
extra pay, and no ill effects followed.
Soon after Holy Week, I was hurriedly implored one morning to go and
see an old man who was suffering from "goma." In my ignorance I asked
what "goma" might be, and was given the satisfactory answer that it
was "goma" of course, and my dullness at not understanding was met
with open-mouthed astonishment. Then I looked the word out in the
dictionary, but failed to find it. At last, after much questioning, I
learnt that it was the term used for the after-effects of drunkenness,
and I refused to have anything to do with the case; but I was entreated
and implored to come, as it was feared that the man was dying, so I
went off to his hut and found him in a miserable condition. He seemed
to have been poisoned by the vile new spirit, and had been able to
take no nourishment for several days. As it was too serious a case for
the Worcestershire Sauce cure, I had to take a shot at a remedy, but
with the help of small doses of solution of opium and beef jelly we
gradually managed to get him round.
Ignorant, lazy, dirty, and drunken as these people undoubtedly are,
I found them to be cheerful, kindly, and honest. My hut was full of
things which were of value to them, and although at first I was always
careful to padlock the door when I went off to the ruins and to give
the key to the Niña Chica, later on it was often left open nearly all
day long, yet nothing was ever touched. There was indeed one case of
theft, but the villagers were not to blame. I had occasion to send
Manuel, one of my workmen, to Zacapa with a few dollars to make some
necessary purchases, and he returned empty-handed, saying that he had
been robbed and ill-treated on the road. This was quite possible, as
the country was in a disturbed state; but I had my suspicions, and
talked the matter over with the Alcalde and Niña Chica. They said that
they could not answer for the man as he came from another village,
but that he had been living some months amongst them and they had
always found him to be honest, and believed his story to be true.
Next Saturday a machete was missing, and my suspicions again fell on
Manuel; but there was no direct evidence against him, and he came to my
hut that night with the others to receive his weekly wage. As it was
Saturday, the village green was decorated with the week's wash hung
out to dry. Next morning I was awakened by cries of indignation and
despair--all the clean clothes had disappeared, and as few could boast
of possessing more than two shirts, or, indeed, more than two of any
other garment, the distress was universal. An indignation meeting was
held outside my hut, and the wildest stories of raids by a licentious
soldiery passed from mouth to mouth. When things had quieted down a
little, I asked "Where is Manuel?" but Manuel was nowhere to be found.
There was no doubt that it came as a real shock to the villagers to
find that the theft had been committed by one who had been living
amongst them. Two or three men were sent at once in pursuit of the
thief, but he had a good start, and they were many days tracking
him from place to place before they overtook him on the frontier of
Salvador, where he was brought to justice and some of the clothes
recovered.
I believe that Gorgonio and his brother did real missionary work in
Copan, by bathing every day in the river and affording proof to the
other half-castes that cleanliness was not necessarily followed by
fever. And on the day when my numerous friends and patients came to bid
me good-bye and bring me little parting presents, I felt quite proud
of the success of my preaching when a woman, whose child I had been
doctoring, whispered, rather shyly, as she gave me a little bundle of
native cigars, "Don Alfredo, I wash my baby every day!"
As soon as the war was over we had begun to send mules and carriers
to Yzabal with cargoes of paper and plaster moulds. The paper moulds,
after being well dried in the sun, were given a good dressing with
boiled linseed oil, and then made up into packages covered first with
"scrims," a sort of loosely woven canvas, and then with an outer coat
of shiny waterproof cloth. Each package was then fixed in a crate
made of the long light stems of a species of Hibiscus, which we had
previously cut and dried. They were unwieldy burdens, but as none of
them weighed more than sixty pounds, we had no great difficulty in
engaging mozos who carried them on their backs in safety to the port.
The conveyance of the plaster moulds was a more difficult matter, as
there were in all about fourteen hundred pieces of various shapes and
sizes, which needed the greatest care in handling and packing. Each
piece was first of all wrapped in tow, which I had brought from England
for the purpose, and then tied up with string in a sheet of strong
brown paper. Thirty-two of these packets could, on an average, be
packed into the two boxes which each mule carried. We usually managed
to send off about ten cargoes at a time, with instructions that the
boxes (which were those in which our stores had been brought from home)
should be unpacked at the port, and returned to us empty. On his last
journey but one the muleteer was told to bring back only half the empty
boxes; but, alas! we had made a miscalculation, and when the mules
returned for their last loads, we found that we had still on hand five
muleloads of plaster moulds, and no boxes to pack them in.
It would have taken at least ten days to get the empty boxes back from
the port, and to us they would have been days of idleness, as our camp
was broken up and most of our luggage packed. So we looked about to see
where we could procure ten rough boxes nearer at hand. We had already
exhausted the resources of Zacapa, and now I learned to my dismay
that there was no hope of buying any boards from which boxes could be
made nearer than the port itself! Finally we had to search the native
"milpas" for the stumps of the scented cedar trees which had been left
in the ground when the forest was cleared and the plantations made:
these we split up with our axes as nearly as possible into boards, and
carried them into the village to be dressed down with an adze. No such
thing as a saw could be heard of for miles around, and we had to make
use of a small blunt saw about an inch in breadth which Mr. Giuntini
had brought with him for cutting plaster. Even then our difficulties
were not over, for we had come to the end of our small store of nails
and screws, and one messenger despatched to Zacapa, and another in the
opposite direction to Santa Rosa, were between them only able to buy
just enough for our purpose. At last, after all hands had been hard at
work on the job for a week, ten boxes, or rather crates, sufficiently
rigid to protect the moulds on their rough journey were finished,
and we set out on our way to Yzabal. A week was spent at the port
in making strong wooden cases out of a supply of timber which I had
fortunately had the foresight to order to be sent from New Orleans, and
in repacking the moulds for shipment to England. I have gone into these
rather uninteresting details about packing only to show how absolutely
necessary it is, when starting on an expedition of this kind, to think
out every detail beforehand.
It was lucky, indeed, that the moulds were well packed and the cases
strong and well made, for the vessel in which they were shipped ran on
a reef off the coast of Florida, and the cargo had to be transhipped
under difficulties; and when the freight came to be paid I was
initiated into the mysteries of a "general average" which added largely
to the cost. Throughout this expedition it seemed as though the sea
had a spite against us. The vessel in which Mr. Giuntini sailed from
England broke her shaft when a few days out, and had to return to
Queenstown, so that he did not reach Guatemala until a month later than
arranged; then the vessel which held the precious results of our work
ran on shore; and, lastly, the small steamer in which Mr. Giuntini
and I took passage on our way home from Livingston to New Orleans,
broke her shaft when sixty miles off the north coast of Yucatan, and
we lay for some days helplessly drifting into the Gulf of Mexico,
until we were able to anchor on the great Bank of Yucatan, about fifty
miles from land and in about forty-five fathoms of water. The weather
fortunately held fine, but it proved too hot for the preservation of
the cargo of fruit, which was thrown overboard as it ripened, until a
broad yellow band of floating bananas stretched out astern as far as
the eye could reach. At the end of a week our signals of distress were
most fortunately sighted by a small fruit steamer which had strayed
somewhat out of its course; and the passengers were carried in her to
New Orleans, whence tugs were sent out to rescue the disabled vessel
and tow her into port.
Since the date of this expedition the ruins of Copan have undergone a
considerable change. In 1896 the Directors of the Peabody Institute of
Massachusetts made an arrangement with the Government of Honduras by
which they acquired complete control of the ruins for a period of ten
years, on certain conditions, of which one is that a certain amount of
work shall be done on the spot during each year. Before I returned to
Copan in 1894, two years' work had already been done and very valuable
results obtained. Unfortunately, during the second year, Mr. John G.
Owens, the leader of the expedition, and a young man of great promise,
was attacked by a malignant fever, from which he died, and now lies
buried at the foot of one of the monuments in the Great Plaza. This
sad event somewhat disorganized the work of the Institute, and the
Directors were not prepared to send out another expedition in 1894. It
was in these circumstances that, thanks to the kindness of Mr. Charles
Bowditch of Boston, and of Professor Putnam, an arrangement was made
by which I held a commission from the Institute, and did the amount of
work at the ruins necessary to prevent the lapse of the concession,
whilst I was able to carry on my own investigations.
One great and important piece of work done by the Americans has been
the building of a substantial stone wall which encircles and protects
the principal ruined structures, so that there is no longer any danger
of the sculptured monuments being damaged by fire, as has so often
happened before from careless burning of fallen timber when the natives
have been clearing ground for plantation. The site of the ruins has
been carefully resurveyed, many important excavations have been made,
and many specimens of pottery and other articles have been unearthed
from tombs, amongst which the skull of a peccary covered with incised
ornament and hieroglyphics is not the least interesting.
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