Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/439

CH. XXXI.] The European inhabitants, who may not exceed thirty families, are divided into two classes: the elite party had given a ball to which the other had not been invited; and the latter were busily engaged in making preparations to outvie, by the strength of their purses, the entertainment from which they thought they had been so unreasonably excluded. These jealousies had been going on for some time; but no body could tell me the precise grounds upon which they were founded: some were, however, bold enough to say that their neighbours, the high party, (I do not pretend to vouch for the truth,) were smugglers to a vast extent; that they dreaded the chance of a settled government in Guatemala, when they could not run their goods as they had been in the habit of doing, for so many years, at Omoa, and Izabal;—and, in fact, that they wished to keep every thing snug and quiet to themselves; abominating the idea of the new commission-houses which were forming from the Havannah and other parts, and to which, as