Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/47

Rh His predecessor, who was an officer of Morazan, had been just driven out by the Carrera party, and he was but twenty days in his place.

Three great parties at that time distracted Central America: that of Morazan, the former president of the Republic, in San Salvador, of Ferrera in Honduras, and of Carrera in Guatimala. Ferrera was a mulatto, and Carrera an Indian; and, though not fighting for any common purpose, they sympathized in opposition to Morazan. When Mr. Montgomery visited Guatimala, it was just thrown into a ferment by the rising of Carrera, who was then regarded as the head of a troop of banditti, a robber and assassin; his followers were called Cachurecos (meaning false coin), and Mr. Montgomery told me that against him an official passport would be no protection whatever. Now he was the head of the party that ruled Guatimala. Señor Peñol gave us a melancholy picture of the state of the country. A battle had just been fought near San Salvador, between General Morazan and Ferrera, in which the former was wounded, but Ferrera was routed, and his troops were cut to pieces, and he feared Morazan was about to march upon Guatimala. He could only give us a passport to Guatimala, which he said would not be respected by General Morazan

We felt interested in the position of Señor Peñol; young, but with a face bearing the marks of care and anxiety, a consciousness of the miserable condition of the present, and fearful forebodings for the future. To our great regret, the intelligence we received induced our friend the padre to abandon, for the present, his intention of going to Guatimala. He had heard all the terrible stories of Morazan's persecution and proscription of the priests, and thought it dangerous to fall into his hands; and I have reason to believe it was the apprehension of this which ultimately drove him from the country.

Toward evening I strolled through the town. The population consists of about fifteen hundred Indians, negroes, mulattoes, Mestitzoes, and mixed blood of every degree, with a few Spaniards. Very soon I was accosted by a man who called himself my countryman, a mulatto from Baltimore, and his name was Philip. He had been eight years in the country, and said that he had once thought of returning home as a servant by way of New Orleans, but he had left home in such a hurry that he forgot to bring with him his "Christian papers;" from which I inferred that he was what would be called in Maryland a runaway slave. He was a man of considerable standing, being fireman on board the steamboat at twenty-three dollars a month; besides which, he did odd jobs at carpentering, and was, in fact, the principal architect in Yzabal, having then on his hands a contract for 3500 dollars for building the new house of Messrs. Ampudia and Pulleiro. In other things,