Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/149

Rh

COBAN.

CHAPTER XI.

COBAN AND THE VERA PAZ.

A air of prosperity pervades the settlement of Coban. Fortunately the touch of modern European influence has in no way lessened the attractiveness of the native surroundings, and for the first time we found comfort united with picturesqueness under the lovely skies of these tropical highlands.

The cottages of the natives stand apart from one another in gardens of flowering shrubs, fruit-trees, and rose-bushes, many of them half-buried in the thick foliage of coffee-trees, and they form a pleasant setting for the central group of public buildings and the substantial, comfortable, and characteristically southern houses of the well-to-do planters and merchants. Although the Indian cottages are mostly of the wattle-and-thatch order, there are not wanting stone-built and red-tiled dwelling-houses amongst them; and there is also an intermediate form of house peculiar to the neighbourhood of Coban in which the walls are made of "chute," the roughly-squared trunks of tree-ferns, set close together in the ground and slightly tapering towards the top. Unlike timber, these fern-posts are entirely unaffected by moisture, so that, although the butt-end of the post is embedded in the ever-damp soil, it will