Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/241

Rh spots, but the rancho was very small and we were twelve in number. By midnight the streams broadened and increased until the whole floor was a watercourse. Then one by one the Indians rose solemnly from the ground and squatted on logs or stones or anything that raised them above the flood, and covered themselves over with their leafy rain-coats. As they squatted there, looking just like a group of little haystacks, I wondered whether they were inwardly cursing their folly in not bringing their hammocks with them; if so, they certainly showed no outward signs of mental disturbance, but sat solemn and silent all the night through patiently waiting for the dawn.

To the north and west of Coban the land is fairly level, but it is dotted over with innumerable more or less conical limestone hills, usually standing apart from one another, or more rarely clustered together in groups. As we neared the village of Lanquin a high range of hills rose to the north of us, and our track lay down a narrowing valley, through the middle of which one might have looked for a fair-sized stream; however, it held no more than a small rivulet, which finally disappeared altogether. Then the track dropped down suddenly between high mountain walls and we saw the pueblo beneath us, and there to the left of it was our lost stream bursting out of a cave in the rock, a full-grown river. A large track of the porous limestone region to the north and west must be drained, sponge-fashion, to supply this swift-flowing Rio Lanquin. Just above the cave from which the stream flows out there is another stalactite cave, much talked about in the neighbourhood as one of the wonders of the world, but very seldom explored beyond the first hundred yards.

From Lanquin we rode on to Cajabon without stopping, leaving this part of the track to be surveyed at our leisure, as we intended to make Cajabon our headquarters, whilst the mozos were being collected for our journey to the north. On our way we crossed an affluent of the Cajabon river by means of a hammock bridge, one of those wonderful structures of twisted creepers and natural ropes for which the tropical American Indian has always been famed. From Coban (which stands 4280 feet above sea-level) the track had made a continuous descent, and at Cajabon we were again in a hot country only 704 feet above the level of the sea.

The Lopez family has long been connected with Cajabon, and although my companions Gorgonio and Carlos Lopez and other brothers had wandered away and settled in Coban and Salamá, the eldest, Cornelio, still remained in his old home and held the office of "secretario" to the municipality, the officer who is appointed by the Government to counsel and guide the Indian officials, for, with the exception of the Lopezes and one other half-caste family, the community is purely Indian. As we neared the town Gorgonio