Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/386

308 and quiet of the village, it seemed as if the mountains and volcanoes around had shielded it from the devastation and alarm of war. Passing through it, on the other side of the plain we commenced ascending a mountain. About half way up, looking back over the village and plain, we saw a single white line over the mountain we had crossed to the Ciudad Vieja, and the range of the eye embraced the plain and lake at our feet, the great plain of Escuintla, the two volcanoes of Agua and Fuego, extending to the Pacific Ocean. The road was very steep, and our mules laboured. On the other side of the mountain the road lay for some distance between shrubs and small trees, emerging from which we saw an immense plain, broken by the track of the direct road from Guatimala, and afar off the spires of the town of Chimaltenango. At the foot of the mountain we reached the village of Paramos. We had been three hours and a half making six miles. Don Pepé summoned the alcalde, showed him Carrera's passport, and demanded a guide to the next village. The alcalde called his alguazils, and in a very few minutes a guide was ready. Don Pepé told us that he left us in Europa, and with many thanks we bade him farewell.

We were now entering upon a region of country which, at the time of the conquest, was the most populous, the most civilized, and best cultivated in Guatimala. The people who occupied it were the descendants of those found there by Alvarado, and perhaps four-fifths were Indians of untainted blood. For three centuries they had submitted quietly to the dominion of the whites, but the rising of Carrera had waked them up to a recollection of their fathers, and it was rumoured that their eyes rolled strangely upon the white men as the enemies of their race. For the first time we saw fields of wheat and peach-trees. The country was poetically called Europa; and though the volcano de Agua still reared in full sight its stupendous head, it resembled the finest part of England on a magnificent scale.

But it was not like travelling in England. The young man with whose throat Mr. Catherwood had been so familiar loitered behind with the sick mule and a gun. He had started from Ciudad Vieja with a drawn knife in his hand, the blade about a foot and a half long, and we made up our minds to get rid of him; but we feared that he had anticipated us, and had gone off with the mule and gun. We waited till he came up, relieved him from the gun, and made him go forward, while we drove the mule. At the distance of two leagues we reached the Indian village of San Andres Isapa. Don Saturnine flourished Carrera's passport, introduced me as El Ministro de Neuva-York, demanded a guide, and in a few minutes an alguazil was trotting