CHAPTER VIII.

ESQUIPULAS AND QUIRIGUA.

HAVE grouped in this chapter two most interesting

monuments of the past, - a Christian temple whose mission seems to have been fulfilled, and a pagan graveyard where stand the monuments of unknown kings or heroes. They are not inaptly joined; for in this busy, matter-of-fact, commercial age, it is well that the less perishable records of our brothers who have preceded us in the unending march of life upon this globe should detain if but for a moment, with the lessons they may teach to thoughtful minds, the temple raised by pious labor to signify that there is more than the present to live for, the monuments of the dead to carry on the personalities so soon lost in earthly life.

us,

We gazed from the precipice at the white building, large even on so vast a plain, and began the steep descent. The little village was almost dead in appearance. There were many houses and rooms to let, but no posada; and as our mozos had not arrived, we rode to the Santuario down the single street of the town. It was wide, paved with cobbles, and bordered on either side by the booths and lodging-sheds for the merchants and devotees who still crowd the town at the festival season. Two streams, one the headwaters of the Rio Lempa, flowed across the road beneath solid masonry bridges.

Into two of the posts of one of these were inserted two ancient sculptures, said to have been brought from Peten, but more probably from the neighboring ruins of Copan, just beyond the mountains. One was the grotesque head of a griffin, the other a small human figure with a preposterous head-dress. The Santuario is an imposing structure, massive rather than elegant, and dazzling in its whiteness. Towers rise at the four corners, divided into four stages, of which the lower one is broken only by a small oval window on the side; the second is pierced by an arched window and decorated with pilasters; the third, still square, rises above the general roof with two windows on each side; the fourth, octagonal in shape, has a single window on the alternate sides. A large

dome rises in the midst, figures of saints and a clock mark the façade, and the whole structure rises from an extensive platform surrounded by an iron fence with masonry posts, and approached by a broad and easy flight of steps.

a

On entering, the first thing noticed was the immense thickness of the walls, ten or twelve feet at least, reminder that this is an earthquake country. The floor was paved with large red tiles, needing repairs in places. Among the pictures was one of the Last Supper, and near it a decidedly local one of people lassoing Christ. We had hardly glanced about, when a curious figure presented himself, speaking tolerable English very rapidly, and, after the usual interchange of compliments, introduced himself as Dr. José Fabregos y Pares, a traveller; and then presented his companion, the handsome young cura, Padre Gabriel Dávila, who welcomed us to his church and showed us the curiosities of the place.

First, of course, we wanted to see the famous black Christ, "Our Lord of Esquipulas." This miraculous image, to whose shrine devout pilgrims have gathered even from distant Mexico and Panama, - pilgrims numbered in former years as many as fifty thousand at a single festival, -was made in Guatemala City in 1594 by Quirio Cataño, a Portuguese, at the order of Bishop Cristobal de Morales, on the petition of the pueblo of Esquipulas. The sculptor was paid "cien tostones," a testoon being of the value of four reals, or half a dollar; and to meet this expense the Indios planted cotton on the very land where the sanctuary now stands. For more than a century and a half the image stood in the village church, where the miracles wrought spread its fame very far. The first archbishop of Guatemala, Pedro Pardo de Figueroa, laid the foundation of the present temple, which he did not live to finish, but died Feb. 2, 1751, praying with his last breath that his bones might rest at the feet of this image of his Lord. In 1759 Señor D. Alonso de Arcos y Moreno, President of the Real Audiencia of Guatemala, completed the great work, at a cost, it is said, of three million dollars; and on January 6 of that year the image was translated with all the pomp of the Romish Church. Twelve days later, the remains of the pious archbishop followed. The founder established a brotherhood of worthy people who should take upon themselves the material support of the edifice; but Padre Miguel Muñoz, writing in 1827, says that this laudable custom had died out among the whites, only the Indios holding to the compact. Those of Totonicapan furnish a certain amount of wax and provide for some offices of the Church; those of Mexico visit the shrine in Holy Week with offerings