314 
GUATEMALA. 
they certainly are not pleasant. Not only enterprise and 
perseverance are needful for the planter, but a respectable 
capital as well; for the colonist has to build his own 
houses, wharves, and bridges, make his own roads, and 
own his tools, animals, boats, and carts. 
Labor is both by the day and by the task, and wages 
are very low. A day’s labor — from six o’clock in the 
morning to six at night, with an hour from ten o’clock to 
eleven for breakfast (almuerzo), and another from one 
o’clock to two for rest — is paid from twenty-five to fifty 
cents. Laborers are also hired by the month, with allow¬ 
ance for rations. On the Atlantic coast the Carib is a 
good, strong workman when properly managed, while 
in the interior the Indios and ladinos supply fully the 
present demand. 
Articles of food are cheap, and some of the prices, as 
given by the Minister of the Interior, are as follows: 
beef, pork, and mutton, eight cents per pound ; fowls of 
good size, thirty-seven and a half to sixty-two cents; 
rice, a dollar and a half to two dollars per arroba (twenty- 
five pounds) ; flour, eight to nine dollars per quintal (one 
hundred pounds); maiz, a dollar and a half to three 
dollars a fanega (four hundred ears); beans, white, 
black, or red, four to six dollars a quintal; eggs, a 
dollar and a half a hundred; milk, six cents a bottle; 
cheese, twelve to twenty-five cents a pound; butter, 
sixty-two cents per pound. Guatemaltecan cookery, al¬ 
though simplicity itself in its instalment, is excellent 
and wholesome, — none of the vile saleratus-bread, tough 
doughnuts, and clammy pies (I have great respect for 
a good tart) which are the curse of the country cook¬ 
ing of New England. But let the eomida consist of 
