Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/237

Rh 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