Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/101

Rh in rags and filth, a coloured population drunken and revengeful, her females licentious and her males shameless, she ranks as a true child of that accursed city which still remains as a living monument of the fulfilment of prophecy and the forbearance of God, “the hold of every foul spirit, the cage of every unclean and hateful bird.”

To this sweeping censure there are certainly many exceptions, but they are not sufficiently numerous to render such a description as a whole, unjust. The pure and simple sweets of domestic life, with its thousand tendernesses, and its gentle affections, are here exchanged for the feverish joys of a dissipated hour; and the peaceful home of love is converted into a theatre of mutual accusations and recriminations.

Among the lower orders this loose and vicious life leads to excesses, which, unrestrained by a vigilant police, produce the most melancholy consequences. The men generally carry a large knife stuck in the belt against the back, and the women a similar one, fastened in the garter of the stocking. These on every trifling occasion, they draw, and the result is often fatal. Not a day passes in which some one or other does not stain his hands in the blood of his fellow creature. On feast days and on Sundays, the average number killed is from four to five. From the number admitted into the hospital of St. Juan