256 Naturalist at Large 



Company in allowing me to use them, but of all the mo- 

 tions producing seasickness, from which I have suffered 

 acutely all my life, nothing was ever contrived in the 

 shape of a boat which could touch these two craft for 

 unspeakable gyrations. 



Guatemala to me means the Popenoes. They live in the 

 house about which Louis Adamic wrote the book called 

 The House in Antigua. Do read it. You will then know 

 exactly what I mean. And to me Guatemala also means the 

 colorful Indian cities and towns, with their individual and 

 characteristic costumes; the sumptuous ruins of Quirigua 

 in their setting of one of the finest bits of high rain forest 

 anywhere to be found; and delightful, lazy week ends spent 

 at the hospital at Quirigua with Dr. Macphail, whose cook 

 made what always seemed to me the best tortillas in all 

 Central America. What Dr. Macphail has done in alleviat- 

 ing human suffering in a land where skilled medical care 

 is not widely distributed could only be handled justly in 

 a book devoted to the men in charge of the far-flung hos- 

 pitals of the United Fruit Company. 



It is curious how a single person or a single object re- 

 calls a whole concatenation of scenes and personalities. 

 Mention dancing-girl orchids and the market at Salvador 

 flashes to mind. You can buy these gemlike flowers, 

 in armfuls of long sprays, for a few cents and then your 

 mind jumps to Madam Duenas and her wonderful collec- 

 tion of pottery to whom and to which Warren and Irene 

 Robbins introduced us. Warren was our Minister to Sal- 

 vador when the Utoivana stopped to bring mangosteen 



