MARKET DAY 



in 



Louis O. Williams 



Anti 



Associate Curator, Central American Botany 



In 1773 La Muy Noble y Muy Leal 

 Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros 

 de Goathemala, today La Antigua, Gua- 

 temala, was a busy and important sym- 

 bol of Spanish might and dominion in 

 the New World and an imposing capital 

 city already more than two centuries old. 

 In that year the Volcan de Agua, which 

 is both a sentinal and a spectre above 

 Antigua, awoke from its troubled rest 

 and with earth-jarring force destroyed 

 the city that lay along its western base. 

 Humble house, rich man's mansion, as 



Page 6 



well as imposing cathedrals, were tum- 

 bled down into a mass of rubble and ruin. 



It was not long afterward that the 

 capital was moved from Santiago de los 

 Caballeros into an adjacent valley where, 

 it was hoped, further restive manifesta- 

 tions of the volcanos might not be so 

 severely felt. La Antigua, or "the old 

 one," as now it was called, was par- 

 tially cleared from the rubble, only to be 

 subsequently shaken and again rebuilt. 



Today Antigua lies serenely at the 

 base of its volcano, giving indications of 



ua 



its former splendor and of its troubled 

 past only in the broken remains of its 

 once patriarchal churches and in the 

 houses that, here and there, still turn 

 their roofless faces toward the heavens. 

 Within the shattered walls of what 

 was once an imposing Jesuit monastery, 

 church, and college, Antigua holds its 

 main market. Where Spanish fathers 

 once lived, meditated, and taught, there 

 are bought and sold today the plebian 

 necessities of the temporal life — beans 

 and maize, chiles and meat, pineapples 



