and sank down powerless by the road. Fortunately we were near a brook. We poured cool water on her head, and she soon recovered. We met great herds of cattle on their way from the dry uplands to the juicy pastures of the lowlands, and also stages full of miserable people, shaken and dusty, and with the look one might fancy a soul in purgatory would assume, always supposing it had a face.

1

The Falls of the Michatoya by the roadside relieved the monotony of the way, but were not so beautiful as I had expected from Stephens's account. We found the rails of the ferro-carril laid as far as Palin; and it was graded beyond Amatitlan, on its way to Guatemala City, which it has since (1886) reached. Basaltic rock was abundant along the road, and so were beehives, generally made from a hollow log and hung horizontally under the eaves of the houses. Honey, costing us a medio a quart, was very good; wax, however, is a more valuable product, as it plays a very important part in the service of religion, masses costing so many pounds of wax candles. The bees seem to be quite inoffensive, and the hives often hung close to the house-doors. Sugar estates were common in this district, the water-power being generally furnished by the Michatoya river. The chimneys of the ingenios did not indicate severe or frequent earthquakes here. Oranges, not of the finest quality, sold at three cents a dozen. Late in the afternoon we passed some cochineal plantations in a rather neglected state, and soon after

1 Palin is the market-garden and orchard of the metropolis, and the fruit is good, but not cultivated with any care; nor is there here or elsewhere in Guatemala any attempt to procure new and choice varieties of either fruits or vegetables.

entered Amatitlan, where we found a pretty little posada. Our mozos, who were fine fellows, were not far behind us. The barometer told us that we were 3,650 feet above San José.

In the morning, finding sacate very dear, we made up our bestias' breakfast with maiz, and started betimes. We rode to the Lago de Amatitlan, which is very shallow, but clear near the shore. In the depths of this lake were thrown, according to tradition, immense treasures; and every now and then some ancient idol or bit of pottery is dragged up. On the banks were willows of considerable size; altogether, the whole scene was very

amidships would be like the diagram. In trying a short cut back to the main road, we were lost in a cafétal, and had to ask the people in charge to open a locked gate and let us out upon our road. We ascended seven hundred feet and found a good path. In various places there were deposits of fine pumice, much of which had been excavated, leaving caverns large enough to shelter many people from the weather. We entered the capital about noon, meeting Santiago on the outskirts, who conducted us to the Hotel del Globo. At this hotel, which was kept by a wretched German, we found our mozos, and the

luggage we had sent from Coban and Antigua, in perfect order.

We were now in the principal city of Central America, -a city well worthy of study; but not at all a representative one, for all that. After the earthquake of Santa Marta, in 1773, had ruined the beautiful city of Antigua Guatemala, the inhabitants sought a more stable site, farther from the slopes of the great volcanoes; and the valley of the Hermitage was selected, towards the north. Here was the half church, half fortress, that still interests the visitor; but all around was a sterile plain, and its elevation and distance from any port seemed most unfavorable to the growth of a large city. Eighty-four miles separate Guatemala City from its port of San José; while the Atlantic ports are more than a hundred leagues away, with no carriage-road between. In spite of these and other disadvantages, the city of Saint James has grown. to be the largest and most important of Central America. It numbers among its churches some of the finest in the country; and its other public buildings are of imposing size, if devoid of any architectural merit. Almost all the houses are of one story; and the paved streets, laid out at right angles, and of nearly uniform width, do not attract the stranger as he rides over the exceedingly rough pavement. Indeed, our first impressions were very unfavorable; for had we not seen Coban, Quezaltenango, Sololà, and Antigua, all of them much more. — beautiful than any part of Guatemala City? It was not until we were well out of the city that we were pleased with it, - not until it became a confused mass of white walls almost hidden in foliage, with the church-towers rising above, and in the distance those two noble volca

noes higher still, their heads well in the clouds. A city of sixty thousand inhabitants, with its houses extending six miles north and south, with a population of many nations and tribes, mingling the sixteenth with the nineteenth century in many customs and business ways, - was not to be seen at a glance, was not to be understood even after a sojourn of a few days. We envied the faculty of our English cousins who can come to America, spend a few weeks, - even days, - and then go home and write with more knowledge of the places they have just glanced at than the inhabitants ever possessed.

As we entered the city we passed at some distance the fort of San José; and it was significant that the guns all pointed towards the city it was supposed to protect. Taking no interest in military matters, which I am constrained to believe are undesirable if not unnecessary relics of a barbarous age, I did not go any nearer to see whether, as in the case of San Felipe, the guns were more deadly to those within than those outside the fort; but the walls looked queer, and we were assured that they were of adobe, painted to imitate stone, blocks, kind of Quaker wall.

a

Although the Plaza is always the principal focus of a Spanish town, no street ever leads directly to it, all lead by it, as if accidentally; and so we found ourselves in the public square of Guatemala before we had been an hour in the city. It was simply a square taken from the tiresome rectangles of the city; and only on one side had it any sufficiently imposing boundaries. The Government. had suppressed the priestly power; but its monument still towered above the very insignificant buildings used