A Glimpse at Guatemala/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII.
ON THE WAY TO THE COAST.
Although the work which my husband had planned to do at the ruins was not nearly finished, we had reluctantly to cut short our stay at Quirigua, as we learnt that the next steamer to leave Livingston would be the last to carry passengers to New Orleans without a long detention on account of quarantine. As far as our personal comfort was concerned I was sincerely glad of the move, for as the season advanced the heat and steamy dampness had become exceedingly trying. A few days before setting out, an exceptionally heavy shower had driven a party of women, who were passing by, to take shelter in our house; one of them carried in her dress a baby squirrel, a charming little brown creature with a long, grey, feather-like tail. I longed to possess it, and with some hesitation made an offer for it of five reals, about 1s. 6d. of our money, which was eagerly accepted, and the tiny thing became our property. I gave him a grass saddle-bag for a bed and hung him inside my mosquito curtain, where he slept through the night without disturbing me. During the day, when not cuddled up asleep in my hand, he was rushing about the house, prying into all the corners, and amusing my lonely days by his pretty ways and the grace of his movements. "Chico," as we named him, took most kindly to his afternoon tea, a habit which has grown upon him so that he shows much impatience when it is not served at the proper time; but the first time he drank tea, the effect upon his nerves was disastrous, he could not sleep, and a long midnight run on the sand-bank was necessary before he could be quieted.
On the 14th April we were ready to leave Quirigua for the port of Yzabal, and, sad as was the thought that this was to be our last day's ride under the lovely sky of Guatemala, I plead guilty to a feeling of relief when our house and its suroundings were out of sight and we were once more wending our way along the forest beneath the arches of great coroza palm-leaves. Thence we rose again to the pine-woods and rode over the hills to the eastward, striking the main road from the capital to Yzabal, and, looking back, we caught lovely glimpses of the llanos of the Motagua River and the forest we had left. It was late in the afternoon when we crossed the gap in the Sierra del Mico and began the descent to the Golfo Dulce, which we could see lying tranquilly below us, and the moonlight was playing its usual tricks, lighting up the scattered palm-trees and throwing a glamour of beauty even over the white-washed houses of the village when we rode into Yzabal. It was indeed a delicious change from the stifling heat of the forest, for a refreshing breeze was blowing from the lake, and I was lulled to sleep by the cooling sound of the wavelets lapping on the beach.
Chico's first day's journey into the great world had been rather trying to us both: from the moment I mounted my mule until our arrival at Yzabal he never ceased running up and down from my saddle to the top of the mule's head, tugging at the string which held him and trying to jump into all the overhanging branches. He was so excited and wilful that I was sorely tempted to set him free to return to his native forests, where, however, he would probably have died of hunger or fallen a prey to some snake or carnivorous beast; but when we reached Yzabal, all trouble with him was at an end, the poor little creature had so exhausted himself that he at once crept to his saddle-bag and slept without stirring for many hours. This was indeed the only day on which he gave us any trouble during the whole of our journey to London. In our cabin on the steamer he made himself quite at home; through the bustle and noise of a railway station he always remained quietly in his bag, and although during the long railway journey to New York, he took many a scamper round our state room, he used the utmost discretion in always retreating into his bag on the approach of the guard, as though he knew the stringent rules against carrying animals in a Pullman car. Ever since his arrival in England he has been the household pet; he has the run of the house, under certain restrictions, and London life seems to suit him wonderfully well. The summer after our return he passed through what appeared to be a bad attack of distemper with severe convulsions; but it may have been only the effect of teething, for, strange to say, he has twice lost his upper incisor teeth. As soon as the teeth became loose he was very anxious to get rid of them, and when I took hold of them between my thumb and finger, he would pull hard against me and try to work them out. When he is ill he becomes pathetically affectionate and loves to be petted, and seems sincerely grateful for one's care of him. During his second summer in England, we were living on the banks of the Thames, and Chico was allowed the free run of the garden during the daytime. He never wandered far, and made a home for himself in a hole in a walnut-tree on the lawn, and spent many hours carefully lining it with leaves. Here, if he were not caught and brought in when he came down for his five o'clock tea, he would prepare to spend the night, and the only time he ever showed temper was when he was hauled out of this favourite hole and carried off to his own bed.
One morning, as Chico was scampering about among the trees, he unluckily attracted the attention of some men who were passing in a boat, and before I could make out what they were after, one of them had landed and knocked poor Chico off the tree with an oar. When I ran towards him, the man made off and I picked up the poor little animal, who lay in my hand as I thought dying, breathing in gasps and with quivers of pain passing through his little body. A dose of brandy and ammonia partly revived him, and a careful examination showed that his forearm was broken near the elbow. Twice was he put under chloroform and attempts were made to set the tiny limb in plaster bandages, but the bandages always slipped off, and after the second attempt the veterinary surgeon, who had been called in, said he could do no more for him. During the first night after the accident, he slept by my side and became restless as soon as I removed my hand from and him; the next day he at last consented to lie still in his own bed and slept for hours together, putting up his head when he awoke to be fed with milk from a spoon. By degrees he began to get about again, and at the end of a fortnight the bones seemed to be firmly knit, and although he has ever since had a stiff joint, it seems to cause him very little inconvenience, and he enjoys the most robust health. He is beautifully clean and his coat is without the smallest trace of scent of any kind, and he is fastidious in his food, delighting in a hot roll at breakfast, and cake with his tea, but scornful of baker's bread. He likes fruit and is especially fond of cherries but he refuses all English nuts and has to be provided with Spanish chestnuts and pecan nuts from America, and these latter he expects to have cracked for him, as he has never yet learned to open a nut himself. He is indeed as charming, gentle, and attractive a pet as one could wish for; but alas he has no respect for the furniture, which shows only too visibly the marks of his teeth.
On the 17th April, having disposed of our mules and bidden farewell to Mr. Price and the tearful Gorgonio, who, faithful to the last, strove to make everything comfortable for our journey, we embarked on the little steamer which plies between Yzabal and Livingston, where we were to take the steamer for New Orleans. The sail down the great lake was devoid of interest until we approached the narrows which separate the Golfo Dulce from the Golfete. Here the castle of San Felipe guards the passage, a ruined seventeenth-century fort of which little remains but the crumbling bastions and a solitary cannon, but around which hangs many a legend of the bold buccaneers who infested the coast during the days of the Spanish dominion. As the steamer threaded its way between the islands which dot the placid waters of the Golfete, we were many times hailed by the occupants of heavily laden canoes, who were on the watch to deliver their cargoes of bananas for conveyance to the ocean steamer. Then the waterway narrowed, the hills closed in on us, and we entered the gorge of the Rio Dulce. The cliffs rose precipitous around us, densely clothed with vegetation wherever a root could find a hold; trailing creepers, graceful tree-ferns, and feathery bamboo gave a lightness as of lacework over the denser masses of green, and here and there the living veil was rent by gigantic buttresses of white-veined rock. The windings of the stream are so abrupt that at times one felt that the steersman must have lost his head and was madly charging the mighty wall in front with his pigmy craft, then at the last moment a sudden turn would open up a new scene of beauty bathed in ever-changing light and colour. One longed to be drifting quietly along in a canoe instead of being hurried down the stream with the rattle and smoke of a steamer, and we seemed hardly to have time to drink in all the beauty of our surroundings before the hills opened again, and we were fast moored to the wharf at the little settlement of Livingston, within sound of the roar of the Atlantic surf.
Livingston bears the name of an American who surveyed the coast, and its most numerous inhabitants are negros, whose first western home was the Island of St. Vincent, where they are supposed to have intermarried with the Indians, and have thus come to be known as Caribs, although one can detect little trace of Indian blood by their appearance. Their language is a mixture of Spanish, French, English, and some Negro dialect, and they seem to be an exclusive people, who give one the idea of tolerating the white population of the village rather than being tolerated by them. This indifference to their white neighbours is curiously exhibited in the sale of fish. When a Carib fishing-boat comes in, it is at once surrounded by the Carib women, who, with petticoats rolled up, stand knee deep in the water round the boat, taking out, weighing, and selling fish to their fellows; but until the wants of every Carib household are supplied no white person is allowed to buy, and not infrequently the whole catch is disposed of to the Caribs and the white people get none of it.
As a port Livingston is a modern creation, and is likely to fall again into desuetude as soon as the railway connecting Puerto Barrios with the city of Guatemala is completed; even at the present time, whilst it enjoys the advantage of being the sole port of entry on the Atlantic seaboard, it can hardly be called a success. No ocean-going steamer can cross the bar, or rather the two bars which stand across the mouth of the river; and a passage in a dugout Carib dorey from the wharf to a steamer when a strong wind is blowing may not be always a dangerous operation, for the boats sail well and are beautifully handled by the negro boatmen, but it is by no means a pleasant experience, as we found out when we had in sudden haste to catch a steamer after dark. We had refused to engage a passage in the over-crowded mail-boat, preferring to take our chance in a trading steamer, which was gathering in a cargo of fruit further down the coast and had to call at Livingston on the way home. The arrival of the steamer was signalled just as the sun was setting, and we had to cross the bar and scramble on board in the dark. However, we were fortunate in our choice of vessels and as there were 18,000 bunches of bananas on board, the Captain was bent on getting them to market as soon as possible, so, favoured with fine weather in the Gulf, we passed the jetties of the Mississippi River about ninety-three hours after leaving Livingston. Thus ended the interesting part of our most delightful journey; but there was, unluckily, a bad time to follow, for no sooner had I landed in the United States than a "calentura" laid me low, contracted, I think, in the fever haunted forest near the banks of the Motagua.
CARIBS BUYING FISH AT LIVINGSTON.