of them as would make it impossible to go there. Carrera had left a garrison of soldiers in Solola, and we called upon the commandant, a gentlemanly man, suspected of disaffection to Carrera's government, and therefore particularly desirous to pay respect to his passport, who told me that there had been less excitement at that place than in some of the other villages, and promised to send the luggage on under safe escort to the corregidor of Totonicapan, and give us a letter to his commissionado in Santa Cruz del Quiché.

On our return we learned that a lady had sent for us. Her house was on the corner of the plaza. She was a chapetone from Old Spain, which country she had left with her husband thirty years before, on account of wars. At the time of Carrera's last invasion her son was alcalde mayor, and fled. If he had been taken he would have been shot. The wife of her son was with her. They had not heard from him, but he had fled toward Mexico, and they supposed him to be in the frontier town, and wished us to carry letters to him, and to inform him of their condition. Their house had been plundered, and they were in great distress. It was another of the instances we were constantly meeting of the effects of civil war. They insisted on our remaining at the house all night, which, besides that they were interesting, we were not loth to do on our own account. The place was several thousand feet higher than where we slept the night before, and the temperature cold and wintry by comparison. Hammocks, our only beds, were not used at all. There were not even supporters in the cabildo to hang them on. The next morning the mules were all drawn up by the cold, their coats were rough,

and my poor horse was so chilled that he could hardly In coming in he had attracted attention, and the

move.

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alcalde wanted to buy him. In the morning he told me that, being used to a hot climate, the horse could not bear the journey across the Cordilleras, which was confirmed by several disinterested persons to whom he appealed. I almost suspected him of having done the horse some injury, so as to make me leave him behind. However, by moving him in the sun his limbs relaxed, and we sent him off with the men and luggage, and the promised escort, to Totonicapan, recommended to the corregidor.

At a quarter before nine we bade farewell to the ladies who had entertained us so kindly, and, charged with letters and messages for their son and husband, set out with Bobon for Santa Cruz del Quiché. At a short distance from the town we again rose upon a ridge which commanded a view of the lake and town; the last, and, as we thought, the loveliest of all. At a league's distance we turned off from the camino real into a narrow bridle-path, and very soon entered a well-cultivated plain, passed a forest clear of brush and underwood, like a forest at home, and followed the course of a beautiful stream. Again we came out upon a rich plain, and in several places saw clusters of aloes in full bloom. The atmosphere was transparent, and, as in an autumn day at home, the sun was cheering and invigorating.

At twelve o'clock we met some Indians, who told us that Santa Thomas was three leagues distant, and five minutes afterward we saw the town apparently not more than a mile off; but we were arrested by another immense ravine. The descent was by a winding zigzag path, part of the way with high walls on either side, so steep that we were obliged to dismount and walk all the way, hurried on by our own impetus and the mules

crowding upon us from behind. At the foot of the ravine was a beautiful stream, at which, choked with dust and perspiration, we stopped to drink. We mounted to ford the stream, and almost immediately dismounted again to ascend the opposite side of the ravine. This was even more difficult than the descent, and when we reached the top it seemed good three leagues. We passed on the right another awful barranca, broken off from the table of land, and riding close along its edge, looked down into an abyss of two or three thousand feet, and very soon reached Santa Thomas. A crowd of Indians was gathered in the plaza, well dressed in brown cloth, and with long black hair, without hats. The entire population was Indian. There was not a single white man in the place, nor one who could speak Spanish, except an old Mestitzo, who was the secretary of the alcalde. We rode up to the cabildo, and tied our mules before the prison door. Groups of villanous faces were fixed in the bars of the windows. We called for the alcalde, presented Carrera's passport, and demanded sacate, eggs, and frigoles for ourselves, and a guide to Quiché. While these were got, the alcalde, and as many alguazils as could find a place, seated themselves silently on a bench occupied by us. In front was a new whipping-post. There was not a word spoken; but a man was brought up before it, his feet. and wrists tied together, and he was drawn up by a rope which passed through a groove at the top of the post. His back was naked, and an alguazil stood on his left with a heavy cowhide whip. Every stroke made a blue streak, rising into a ridge, from which the blood started and trickled down his back. The poor fellow screamed in agony. stretched up in the same way.

After him a boy was At the first lash, with

WHIPPING-POSTS.

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a dreadful scream, he jerked his feet out of the ropes, and seemed to fly up to the top of the post. He was brought back and secured, and whipped till the alcalde was satisfied. This was one of the reforms instituted by the Central government of Guatimala. The Liberal party had abolished this remnant of barbarity; but within the last month, at the wish of the Indians themselves, and in pursuance of the general plan to restore old usages and customs, new whipping-posts had been erected in all the villages. Not one of the brutal beings around seemed to have the least feeling for the victims. Among the amateurs were several criminals, whom we had noticed walking in chains about the plaza, and among them a man and woman in rags, bareheaded, with long hair streaming over their eyes, chained together by the hand and foot, with strong bars between them to keep them out of each other's reach. They were a husband and wife, who had shocked the moral sense of the community by not living together. The punishment seemed the very refinement of cruelty, but while it lasted it was an effectual way of preventing a repetition of the offence.

At half past three, with an alguazil running before us and Bobon trotting behind, we set out again, and crossed a gently-rolling plain, with a distant side-hill on the left, handsomely wooded, and reminding us of scenes at home, except that on the left was another immense barranca, with large trees, whose tops were two thousand feet below us. Leaving a village on the right, we passed a small lake, crossed a ravine, and rose to the plain of Quiché. At a distance on the left were the ruins of the old city, the once large and opulent capital of Utatlan, the court of the native VOL. II.-Y

15

kings of Quiché, and the most sumptuous discovered by the Spaniards in this section of America. It was a site worthy to be the abode of a race of a kings. We passed between two small lakes, rode into the village, passed on, as usual, to the convent, which stood beside the church, and stopped at the foot of a high flight of stone steps. An old Indian on the platform told us to walk in, and we spurred our mules up the steps, rode through the corridor into a large apartment, and sent the mules down another flight of steps into a yard enclosed by a high stone fence. The convent was the first erected in the country by the Dominican friars, and dated from the time of Alvarado. It was built entirely of stone, with massive walls, and corridors, pavements, and courtyard strong enough for a fortress; but most of the apartments were desolate or filled with rubbish; one was used for sacate, another for corn, and another fitted up as a roosting-place for fowls. The padre had gone to another village, his own apartments were locked, and we were shown into one adjoining, about thirty feet square, and nearly as high, with stone floor and walls, and without a single article in it except a shattered and weather-beaten soldier in one corner, returning from campaigns in Mexico. As we had brought with us nothing but our ponchas, and the nights in that region were very cold, we were unwilling to risk sleeping on the stone floor, and with the padre's Indian servant went to the alcalde, who, on the strength of Carrera's passport, gave us the audience-room of the cabildo, which had at one end a raised platform with a railing, a table, and two long benches with high backs. Adjoining was the prison, being merely an enclosure of four high stone walls, without any roof, and filled with more than the usual number of criminals, some of whom,