104 
GUATEMALA. 
half. This little town, of some four thousand inhabi¬ 
tants, is surrounded by hills of great beauty; but the 
Laguna is an insignificant body of water. As there is 
no posada, we rode into the Plaza, and had a capital 
room assigned us in what was once a monastery, — now 
confiscated to public uses. Our comida was obtained at 
the house of an aged senora to whom the polite coman- 
dante conducted us. We found that Thursday and 
Sunday were the principal market-days, that the town- 
clock chimed the quarters, that there were unworked 
mines of silver and lead close at hand, and that the 
maguey grew abundantly there. We also watched the 
process by which the rotted leaves are macerated and 
washed in the brook which flows through the town, and 
we saw the resulting pita spun into 
cords for hammock-weaving. 
The priests’ kitchen was roofless; 
but the great cooking-range was in¬ 
tact, being built of brick, with per¬ 
haps a dozen pot-holes of graduated 
sizes, — tlie largest being cut from 
the corners of four tiles, the smaller 
ones from the edges of two. Besides 
this range, which occupied the middle 
of the kitchen, there were two large cooking-benches. 
The road to our next stopping-place was remarkably 
good, and the scenery very fine, — the road winding 
along the side of a mountain and overlooking deep val¬ 
leys in which the night-clouds still lingered. By the 
wayside we saw a cascade of calcareous water, which 
petrified twigs and leaves in its reach. By eleven o’clock 
we rode into a sugar-plantation belonging to President 
