CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST GUATEMALA—McBRYDE 43 
Adobe walls.—The finest adobe walls are those 
made of rectangular adobes (McBryde, 1933, p. 104). 
_ These large sun-dried blocks,*! fashioned of local dirt 
and straw usually available near building sites 
throughout the Highlands, require no high degree of 
skill in their manufacture, and every community of 
any importance where they are used has inhabitants 
who can mold them (pl. 10, f). No framework is 
necessary in adobe brick walls, only the roof requir- 
ing timbers and poles. Principal buildings and 
houses-in the centers of the larger towns usually 
are of adobe plastered and whitewashed, and not in- 
frequently tinted pale shades of pink and blue on 
the sides facing the street. The better Ladino houses 
have barred windows and floors of coarse fired brick, 
but both are lacking in most Indian dwellings, 
wherein floors are of dirt, sometimes hardened with 
adobe, the door is usually the only opening (there 
may be a very small window, especially in the Cu- 
chumatanes region), and smoke seeps out through 
the roof. There are no chimneys even in the best 
of native houses. 
Wattle-and-daub and stone walls.—In certain 
sections, notably in the more remote communities, 
walls may be of adobe daubed on a cane frame- 
work, and occasionally reinforced with rubble. This 
type is generally called bajareque. It is particularly 
in evidence around Lake Atitlan, where also (Santia- 
go Atitlan) the only unplastered stone walls in the 
entire region are to be found. These walls, of 
readily accessible lava blocks, usually are built so as 
to enclose only the lower half of the house, with 
the upper half “fenced” by upright canes (probably 
Arundo donax, as identified by W. W. Mackie 
from a photograph). 
Board walls.—The outlying settlement of Pié de 
Volcan, near Quezaltenango, has walls of upright 
boards, and, in a few cases, of grass. Two factors 
that here discourage the use of adobe are the sandy, 
pumice-nodular soil, and the bunchgrass cover (pl. 38, 
d), but these do not entirely explain the phenomenon. 
Sheepherders’ huts commonly have grass-covered 
walls as well as roofs in the alpine-meadow summit 
country. Muhlenbergia (bunchgrass) occurs here in 
abundance; is easier to put up than adobe (not always 
suitable in the highest regions because of raw humus 
and excessive clay), and just as warm. Though 
ephemeral, the dwellings are well suited to the shift- 
ing occupation of herding. 
~ Usually about 25” by 15” by 5”. Wauchope (1938, p. 82) quotes 
Stephens (1841, vol. 1, pp. 383-384) to the effect that in Costa Rica 
they were “‘two feet long and one broad.” 
Pole walls.—Tax (unpublished Chichicastenango 
Ms.) reports from native informants a total absence 
of adobe houses in 14 cantons along the southern 
margin of the Chichicastenango municipio because 
“no adobe-earth is available,” so that walls are made 
of poles. This may be in part due to excess of raw 
humus and clay, as stated above. 
Upright poles of various kinds of wood, bamboo, 
and boards or split tree trunks are the three principal 
types of Lowland house-wall materials. Their use 
depends upon their local availability. Along the 
ocean shore and the lagoons of the littoral, the 
bordering mangrove thickets provide ideal poles, 
which are straight, durable, hard, and plentiful in 
convenient sizes.°? 
Back in the inner Coastal Plain and piedmont, 
dense thickets of bamboo (“‘tarro”) furnish excellent 
light wall material. This giant cane may either be 
set up entire, as a pole (pl. 3, c), or split longitudi- 
nally along one side and opened flat, forming a 
“board” in exactly the manner described by Ponce’s 
companion.®* If bamboo and cane (Arundo spp. 
and/or Gynerium sp.) are respectively of Asiatic and 
Mediterranean origin, they must have been intro- 
duced very early to have served as native house walls 
almost from the time of Spanish occupation. 
Popular in several sections of the piedmont for 
wall boards is the guarwmo,** the straight, white, 
hollow trunk of which is readily split. 
Exceedingly large boards and poles, which may be 
quite crude and rough, are sometimes used for walls, 
as at San Sebastian Retalhuleu, Samayac, and other 
piedmont centers. 
Grass and leaf walls—On Lake Hopango in El 
Salvador, at the village of Dolores Apulo in 1936, 
most houses were covered on walls as well as roof 
with grass and palm leaves. Wauchope mentions 
e“Mangle” (Rhizophora mangle), as the tree is called in most of 
Central America, is mentioned by Oviedo early in the 16th century as 
the best in the West Indies for wall poles and door and window frames 
(Oviedo, 1851-55, vol. 1, p. 338; see also Standley, 1920-26, p. 1028, 
and Wauchope, 1938, p. 36). 
63 This anonymous companion of Alonso Ponce wrote in 1586 con- 
cerning the houses of the little village of San Pedro (now disappeared) 
just west of Zambo, Suchitepequez, that they “had walls of thick cane, 
split open lengthwise and flattened out to form wide boards” (Ponce, 
1873, vol. 1, pp. 435-436). 
®t Cecropia sp. Standley points out that the several species are so 
much alike as to make identification difficult even with herbarium speci- 
mens, ens, T hough in some of his works | Standley mentions humerous uses 
‘(never including house construction, however) for which ’ Cecropia is 
valued, he states that in British Honduras it is “not utilized” (Standley, 
1936, p. 111). Oviedo (1851-55, vol. 1, p. 300) cites “yaruma” only 
for its medicinal uses. 
The hostile ants which always inhabit Cecropia, and of which Stand- 
ley often writes, impress the identity of this tree upon the tenderfoot 
the first time he carelessly sinks a machete into its tempting trunk. 
