FROM COBAN TO QUEZALTENANGO. 117 
documents in the register’s office, and I must confess 
to reading one of these marriage-records, which, as 
usual, was entered with great particularity, filling a folio 
page. Comfortable as this “ marriage bed” was, we 
were in the saddle the next morning at five o’clock; 
and leaving our adios for the kind comandante, followed 
the river bank for some distance in the mist. Not half a 
league from the town we came to a ruined church of con¬ 
siderable size, evidently shattered by earthquakes. Our 
path led directly through a campo santo, and even over 
the graves, which were usually covered with tiles crossed 
and edged with white paint. 
We crossed the dry bed of a river, — certainly at some 
seasons difficult to ford, — and came upon a good level 
path extending along the river side for a mile; and then 
by a sudden turn we climbed out of the valley up a steep 
hill of decomposing rock, coming to a grassy plain on the 
top. There we met Indios loaded with pottery, — some 
with huge cantaras of red clay so large that two made a 
load; others with twelve fifteen-inch spherical pots, all of 
good workmanship. 1 The water by the roadside was all 
whitish, and not inviting. The highest part of the pass was 
6,250 feet; only a few hundred feet below it we found a 
1 The uses of pottery in Central America are almost universal; it supplies 
not only water-cisterns, flour-barrels, ovens, stoves, wash-tubs, baths, coffee¬ 
pots, stew-pans, but dishes, lamps, floors, roofs, and aqueducts. Some made 
ol white clay is exceedingly light, and the patterns are often very tasteful. 
The tinajas (water-jars) and cantaras are also light, but very strong, while the 
cazuelas , or flat pans, and the coffee-pots are quite fire proof. I have seen a house- 
wall built of pots not unlike a Yankee bean-pot in shape, the mouths opening 
into the house being “ pigeon-holes 55 for the human inhabitants ; while those 
opening out of doors were the nesting-places of pigeons and hens. The roof- 
tiles are not in great variety, usually semicylindrical or conical, and seldom orna¬ 
mented ; floor-tiles are large, square, and not very thick. The porous water-jars 
suspended in a current of air keep their contents refreshingly cool. 
