During our brief stay there we had the finest of strawberries for the table, also sweet corn, beets, lettuce, and artichokes. Inquiry revealed that almost every fruit and vegetable known to the temperate zone can be grown in the Guatemalan highlands. We passed some unusually fine peach trees at Totonicipan later in our travels. The flowers, too, were lovely, roses, hollyhocks, and crysanthemums being cultivated in the public plaza at Antigua.

Leading out of Antigua one passes on broad shady roads, sometimes through narrow ravines, again crossing meadows with running brooks and now mounting upward through forests of pine until the plateaus are reached, great broad table-lands bordered by distant mountain. ranges whose lofty volcanic peaks stand out boldly against the sky. All the highland country is densely populated; at least all that portion which lies between Guatemala City and Quetzaltenango, the second city of the Republic. The mountains are intensively cultivated up to a height of almost 10,000 feet. Fine schools have been built in the pueblos and cities under direction of President Estrada Cabrera. The President, who is a patron of all the arts, has vigorously pushed the manual training and technical schools. They are to be found throughout the settled portions of the Republic. Education is compulsory. Electric lights and pure water piping are installed in all communities of any size. The telegraph system is admirable; I sent 10 words 180 miles for 7 cents (American currency), a much lower rate than prevails in the United States or most other countries. The telegraph, educational, postal, and mining laws were personally formulated by President Cabrera, who is a jurist of extraordinary attainments. The police system is excellent. I have never seen an intoxicated person in the Republic. One can travel in any portion of it unarmed. Concrete has worked wonders. Every community has its public concrete washing place where the women may wash their clothes and to which water is often piped a great distance. The people of the highlands, except in the larger towns, are mostly Indians, who are believed to be descended partly or wholly from the ancient Mayas. I had read that the faces upon the existing obelisks and monuments often bore a striking resemblance to the countenances of the Indians of to-day. The statement I found verified in the monuments at Quirigua. Of all the prehistoric races of the American hemisphere the Mayas were among the most advanced. They had progressed so far in mechanics that they were able to move rocks weighing 20 tons or more over great distances. They possessed a considerable amount of written lore, and represented sounds in their hieroglyphics. Their carvings of human beings or animals had been developed beyond the profile stage of the Egyptians. We found that many of the Indians we met upon the road had but a limited knowledge of Spanish. Father Garcia, of Naguala, is authority for the statement that there are now 27 different dialects spoken among

Top: View of a plantation 20 miles from Guatemala City. Note the coffee trees growing in the shade of banana plants and larger trees. Middle: Bridge on the road between Quetzaltenango and Totonicipan, the two cities being connected by a fine public highway. Bottom: One of the beautiful mountain roads of Guatemala.

these people. The Rev. Father Rossbach, of Totonicipan, has 40,000 Indians in his parish. He did not know, he said, of a more devout or moral race. They are, too, a picturesque people. The men with their loose, open-sleeved jackets, plaid skirts, sturdy bare legs, and flat straw hats of home weave, strangely resemble the natives of northern Japan. The women lend a touch of vivid color to every country side. They wear richly hued guipils, home-woven waists of purple cloth, embellished with red and gold patterns and with sashes extending from the waist to below the knees, wound somewhat tightly yet permitting freedom of the limbs.

The gray dawn each morning found us started on our way, the air was cool and bracing and one could make from 35 to 40 miles a day without discomfort (we made more than this at times) and with several hours to spare in leisure at the road side or in the villages. Between Pazum and Panajachel we came to a profound barranca or chasm in the earth, where the ground at the road side fell away in precipitous walls 800 feet in depth. As one looked down from the level surface of the plains the tallest pines at the bottom of the chasm seemed but pigmies. This was the head of a great valley which stretched straight ahead for a score of miles. There are a number of such barrancas in Guatemala, some of which have no visible outlet above the ground. While I was photographing one of these crevasses at its apex a huge piece of ground 40 feet long and several feet wide broke from the opposite side, not more than 100 feet away, and went thundering down to the bottom.

Totonicipan, in the northwest part of the Republic, which we reached from the Peten region, lies at an altitude of 8,300 feet above sea level. Around it on all sides but the west rise the walls of great hills. It is a well-paved city of 18,000 population with attractive shops and fine churches and public buildings. All about are vegetable gardens, grain fields, and numerous orchards. Were it not for the lofty mountains near by, the North American here might fancy himself in the central part of New York State.

From Totonicipan a fine road leads west for 15 miles to Quetzaltenango, the second largest city in Guatemala, distinguished by its imposing public edifices, beautiful plaza, and fine business structures. There are six good hotels in Quetzaltenango and, although the city is 35 miles from the railroad at San Felipe, they enjoy a brisk patronage.

The stage road to San Felipe is one of the scenic highways of the world. In 35 miles it drops more than 1 mile and skirts the flanks of Mount Santa Maria, one of the most picturesque of the Central American volcanoes. More than this: In a few brief hours it plunges from the pine-clad temperate zone into tropical jungles of a luxuriance that baffles description. Here is a foreworld. Prodigious hardwoods with branches rising from clear boles 80 to 100 feet above the

Bottom:

Top: The old bridge built by the Dominican friars over the outlet of Lake Amatitlan, about 17 miles west of Guatemala City, easily reached by a fine automobile road. Middle:
Lake Amatitlan, reached in three-quarters of an hour by train from Guatemala City. Along its shores are many hot springs, and the lake is well stocked with fish.
Bridge crossing one of the narrow sections of Lake Amatitlan.

earth are hung with giant creepers like enormous serpents. Clusters of orchids cling to the branches or crevices of trees or hang suspended from trailing vines. Skeins of gray moss beard the trees. Tree ferns, giant palms, and exotic flowers are features of a jungle which, at times, one can only penetrate with a machete. In a few hours by the auto stage the traveler has plunged into a different world.

Santa Maria has been the most formidable of the Central American volcanoes. In 1902 an eruption blew a strip of earth said to exceed a mile in length from its side. The ash dust from the volcano is said to have been perceived as far north as the City of Mexico and as far south as Colombia. Ashes fell in some places at Pacific coast points to a depth of 6 or more inches. Yet despite the intensity of the upheaval the loss of life was not as serious as was reported and was confined principally to Santa Maria, although portions of Quetzaltenango were damaged.

No one who visits Guatemala should miss seeing Lake Amatitlan, which is much more accessible than Atitlan, although the latter can be reached by a 35-mile ride from the railroad if one approaches it from the South. Lake Amatitlan, however, is reached in three quarters of an hour by train from Guatemala City, the railroad skirting its shores for about 6 miles and, at one point, passing over a narrow escarpment which divides the lake in two parts. Along its shores are many hot springs, and the lake is well stocked with small fish. It is rumored the lake possesses a subterranean outlet which causes a vortex where luckless fishermen have perished. Good roads and trails extend around the north borders of Lake Amatitlan. I recall a charming Sunday spent in traversing some of them and in walking into the fertile back country, where the fine roads are bordered by stately cypress or by eucalyptus trees, and white-walled adobe houses are set off by morning-glories and thickets of bamboo. Lake Amatitlan has long been a popular watering place; centuries ago the Guatemalans visited its hospitable shores in winter to escape the chill winds of the higher plateaus. From Amatitlan good roads run to Escuintla in the first foothills near the Pacific. Also Lake Amatitlan offers a wonderful foreground for the volcano Agua, that colossal pyramidal cone whose exquisite proportions are easily recognized from whatever point of the compass one views it.

Wonderful Guatemala, with its sky-piercing peaks, its purple mists, its vast forests, great lakes, cool uplands, and cities in the fine architecture of the Spanish renaissance, will well repay the tourist from whatever land. It is easily reached by the fine steamers of the United Fruit Co., from either New York or New Orleans and is traversed by 500 miles of modern railway.

At last my trip was over. I parted from my brave compadre of the winding trail in the highlands, said good-by to my new-found friends, and sailed from Puerto Barrios. But I shall go again.