Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/71

Rh To this situation removed in succession the university, parishes, convents, and churches, as their different buildings were completed. “Many of the artizans and a great part of the people still wished to remain in their old abodes, “but in the month of June, 1779, the governor issued a proclamation, (certainly a tyrannical one,) commanding that every inhabitant should quit the city within a prescribed number of days, and that from the date of the proclamation “no artificer should there exercise his trade, without being liable to very severe penalties.” In compliance with these positive orders, “the city from being the busy haunt of men, was at once transformed into a dreary solitude.” It remained in this state for some time, until at length many of its former occupants covertly resumed their abodes, and it has by degrees, again become peopled, though far inferior both in size, population, and wealth, to New Guatimala.

This city as the present capital of the republic of the United Provinces, merits a more minute description. It is situated in the midst of the plain of La Virgen, which is five leagues in diameter, and forms part of the Valley of Mixco, one of the nine smaller valleys, which constitute what is termed the great Vale of Guatimala or Pasuya. It lies in 14° 37" N. latitude, and