136 
GUATEMALA. 
often wondered if they were not, many of them, parts of 
one rivulet winding in devious way among the foot-hills. 
Except in the ravines, where we had to zigzag down and 
up while the toiling mozos patiently climbed the banks 
too steep for horses, the road was generally over a good 
country for road-building. In one place, however, we 
had to climb a stairway paved with stone set on edge 
and walled with masonry. In places earthen pots were 
built into the walls to collect water for the wayfarer, 
and tiles were used to cap the masonry. This extended 
more than a mile, and took us up just a thousand feet 
by the barometer. We could not learn its age nor the 
builders; but it is old, and some of the mozos attributed 
it to the Jesuit Fathers. It is much out of repair, and I 
fancy that most of the travel over it is on foot. The views 
were fine all the way; but we knew our journey was 
long, and the daylight all too short to permit us to wait 
for our mozos to come up with the camera. Indeed, I 
hardly cared to reduce to black and white the glorious 
colors the light was painting on every side. The greens 
of the forest faded into the blues of the sky as in the 
turquoise, gold and silver glittered from the streams, 
and the very gray of the rocks seemed to be richer and 
more varied than usual. 
On the hill-sides were ancient potato-fields only culti¬ 
vated by digging the tubers; and this process has gone 
on for years, — the Indios digging at the bottom of the 
slope as potatoes are wanted, leaving enough for seed, 
and arriving at the top by the time the rains begin. As 
the small stems were quite dead and dried up, we could 
not ascertain the species of this aboriginal potato; but 
it was certainly not the common potato of cultivation 
