Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/192

118 others are much larger; that of the Aycmena family, for instance, covered a square of 200 feet; but mine combined more beauty and comfort than any habitation I ever saw.

At two o'clock my luggage arrived, and I was most comfortably installed in my new domicile. The sala or reception-room was furnished with a large book-case, containing rows of books with yellow bindings, which gave me twinging recollections of a law-office at home; and the archives of the legation had quite an imposing aspect.

My first business was to make arrangements for sending a trusty escort for Mr. Catherwood, and, this over, it was incumbent upon me to look around for the government to which I was accredited. From the time of the conquest Guatimala had remained in a state of profound tranquillity as a colony of Spain. The Indians submitted quietly to the authority of the whites, and all bowed to the divine right of the Romish Church. In the beginning of the present century a few scattering rays of light penetrated to the heart of the American continent; and in 1823 the kingdom of Guatimala, as it was then called, declared its independence of Spain, and, after a short union with Mexico, constituted itself a republic, under the name of the United States of Central America. By the articles of agreement the confederacy was composed of five states, viz., Guatimala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Chiapas had the privilege of entering if it should think proper, but it never did. Quezaltenango, a district of Guatimala, was afterwards erected into a separate state, and added.

The monster Party-spirit was rocked in the very cradle of their independence, and a line of demarcation was at once drawn between the Aristocratic and Democratic parties. The local names of these at first confused me, the former being called the Central or Servile, and the latter the Federal or Liberal, or Democratic party. Substantially they were the same with our own Federal and Democratic parties. The reader will perhaps find it difficult to understand that in any country, in a political sense. Federal and Democratic can mean the same thing, or that when I speak of a Federalist I mean a Democrat; and, to prevent confusion in referring to them hereafter, I shall call the Aristocratic the Central, and the Democratic the Liberal party. The former, like our own Federal party, was for consolidating and centralizing the powers of the general government, and the latter contended for the sovereignty of the states. The Central party consisted of a few leading families, which, by reason of certain privileges of monopoly for importations under the old Spanish government, assumed the tone of nobles, sustained by the priests and friars, and the religious feeling of