Jungle of Stone Page 5
Three days later, with a new guide and mules, they approached the next town, Zacapa, traveling in the shadow of the Sierra de las Minas, a soaring range of cloud-capped mountains prized for its deposits of jade. Along the road, the surrounding trees and bushes were covered with red and purple flowers. Waterfalls cascaded down the distant mountainsides, reminding Stephens of Switzerland. Entering Zacapa, a sizable municipality with an impressive Moorish-style church, whitewashed houses, and regular streets, they rode directly to the house of Don Mariano Durante, one of the town’s leading citizens, to present a letter of introduction. The Don was out but a servant took their mules and invited them into a huge reception room.
“We had candles lighted and made ourselves at home,” Stephens wrote. “A gentleman entered, took off his sword and spurs, and laid his pistols upon the table. Supposing him to be a traveler like ourselves, we asked him to take a seat; and when supper was served, invited him to join us. It was not until bedtime that we found we were doing the honors to one of the masters of the house.”
Over the next two days, Stephens learned much about the political state of the countryside and the conditions of the road ahead. He was given conflicting accounts by different party factions, but all the informants agreed on one fact: the road to the capital was so treacherous at the moment with bandits and Indian guerrillas that to take it would be to face serious dangers. The risks they faced coming to Central America were no longer abstract but now real and immediate. There would be no more pleasant jaunts through the countryside. The single road to the capital was beset by the worst kind of violence—fueled, they were told, by the natives’ hatred for all foreigners.
It was a sobering moment and the two men quickly drew up an alternate plan. They would delay the journey to Guatemala City. And instead of waiting in Zacapa until the latest political upheavals cooled and the road to the capital was more secure, they would veer off east into the state of Honduras. Although Stephens was under official orders to go to Guatemala City, he clearly had some discretion over how to proceed—protecting his life certainly fell within that discretion. But there was another motive for the detour: a village named Copán lay just across the border in Honduras. He and Catherwood had read that carved stones had been found scattered through the jungle near Copán, along with many structures of uncertain age. In large part, it was this report that had drawn Stephens and Catherwood to Central America. They were so close—a three-day journey, they were told, though few people even in Zacapa had heard of Copán. Stephens had talked himself into it.
On the morning of November 12, they rode east out of Zacapa, heading for Copán—whether it was any safer going in that direction, no one could tell them.
4
Passport
The way to Copán was south over a ridge to the town of Chiquimula, then east through a gap in the mountains into Honduras. Here the land changed radically from the rich, abundant foliage of the Motagua Valley to parched hills, dotted with prickly pear and cactus. As they descended to Chiquimula, the landscape turned to dense vegetation again. From a distance they could see a white church outlined sharply against surrounding green mountains spotted with rose-colored mimosa trees. It was a substantial edifice, Chiquimula’s original Spanish church, now abandoned, its roof caved in by earthquakes. The church was the first of many such desolated structures they would see over the next few days, victims of heaving earth and war.
The church ruins were located on the edge of town. Huge blocks of stone and mortar, some as tall as a man, lay inside exactly where they had fallen from a quake years earlier. Part of the site was now a graveyard, and Stephens had a keen eye for picking out incongruities. He noted that the tidy graves of the town’s better-heeled residents were located inside the nave and the bones of the town’s succession of priests were lodged in crypts in the massive cracked walls. Outside were the common people. Parts of their moldering bodies were visible in hastily dug, shallow graves, surrounded by flowers growing wild along the ground and drooping from the branches of trees. The air was thick with gaudy parrots whose “senseless chattering” irreverently cut though the stillness of the sacred ground.
During a short walk around Chiquimula’s main plaza, the two men met a pretty young woman who lived in a corner house and invited them to stay for the night. It was an unusual welcome for two conspicuous foreigners considering the place and the times. And Stephens, always ready to fall under the charms of women, found their hostess especially appealing. In this rough place she seemed a proper lady. She wore a frock, shoes, and stockings and her eyebrows were finely penciled. His hope that she was unmarried, however, was dashed when he discovered that the man of the house, whom he initially took to be her father, was actually her husband.
Church at Chiquimula. (Catherwood)
Palms and jacaranda trees shaded the plaza, scattering sunlight on a group of women who drew water from a fountain in the center. A sense of peace settled over the late afternoon scene, and it seemed unimaginable that the country was torn by violent conflict. Then hundreds of soldiers began assembling in a large formation for evening parade, and the war, of which they had heard so much, began for the first time to take on a tangible presence. Stephens found them banditlike and ferocious looking but took solace at the sight of criminals peering out through the bars of the nearby jail, “as it gave an idea that sometimes crimes were punished.”
Though the town was far enough north to be out of the direct line of fighting that now seesawed between Guatemala City and the current federal capital of San Salvador, the area surrounding Chiquimula had been savaged in the recent civil war. Party loyalties in the region were deeply divided between federal authorities and the insurgents. At times lawlessness and anarchy had been worse than the pitched battles. For the moment, a kind of uneasy calm had crept across the area. The insurgents were led by a twenty-four-year-old former pig herder named Rafael Carrera, who had overrun Guatemala City with his Indian partisans several times and was now in full possession of the capital city. Earlier in the year he had also seized control of the Chiquimula district, and he had appointed a professional mercenary named Francisco Cáscara to pacify the area. Cáscara was a former Sardinian general who had learned his trade as an officer in the French army under Napoleon.1
As Stephens and Catherwood watched the straggling contingent of soldiers form up on the plaza, the sixty-two-year-old Cáscara rode up the line with an aide at his side. Stephens noticed that the general appeared ghostly pale and ill. After the inspection, they followed the old commander back to his house, where Stephens presented his credentials. Cáscara was immediately suspicious. And he was not pleased with the route the two men were taking. Who in their right mind would be rambling through the countryside to the tiny village of Copán in the midst of civil war? He seemed apprehensive that they were, instead, on their way to San Salvador to meet with the federal authorities. But he accepted that Stephens was a credentialed minister of the United States, and besides, Copán was outside of his department. He signed the visa allowing safe passage through the department, but not before cautioning them of the risks they were taking. His signature was no guarantee of safety, he warned.
The next morning Stephens and Catherwood were off. Not far from Chiquimula, they passed a village that had been destroyed a year earlier by federal soldiers, its church roofless and abandoned. Leaving the road, they turned onto a little-used trail and crossed a mountain, riding for some distance in cloud forest and rain. Then they descended into a deep, snakelike river valley that wound for more than ten miles.
After a while they came to a village along the river called San Juan Ermita, where their mule driver declared they had covered enough ground for the day. But it was only two o’clock, and a band of unruly, threatening soldiers occupied the town’s only mud hut, which was enough to convince Stephens they should push on. The cursing muleteer followed. Their path now paralleled a stony riverbed that cut through cottonwood trees along the valley floor. The countryside
was rugged, extravagant. Steep mountains on each side towered above them, some pyramidal in form, blunt peaks in the clouds. As they continued up the valley, they slowly gained altitude and pine forests could be seen along the upper slopes. The soil was a rich rust color. Rain poured down fitfully, soaking them as they rode, reminding them of Mico Mountain. Huts, enough to count as hamlets, cropped up here and there on the far mountainsides, every one with a church or chapel crisply whitewashed against the dark green slopes. Late in the day they arrived at a village called Camotán. As they approached, they saw their seventh church of the day. “Coming upon them in a region of desolation, and by mountain paths which human hands had never attempted to improve, their colossal grandeur and costliness were startling,” Stephens wrote.
The small plaza in front of Camotán’s church consisted of little more than dirt and a patch of weeds. No one was around. In fact, the entire village appeared deserted. Stephens and Catherwood rode over to the municipal cabildo across from the church, forced open the door, and started unloading the mules. Augustin was sent to forage for dinner. He returned with a single egg, though apparently he had roused the town in the process. A group of village officials, including the alcalde carrying the silver-headed cane of his mayoral office, came down to survey the scene. Stephens showed them their passport and visa and explained where they were going, and the officials left, but not before explaining that there was no extra food in the village to give them.
The expedition quickly settled in and dined on the lone egg, along with their own bread and chocolate. The alcalde sent a jar of water. The village hall was of good size, forty by twenty feet, and equipped with wall pins for travelers’ hammocks. Still hungry and exhausted from the day’s long journey, they hung their hammocks and prepared for sleep. Catherwood had already climbed into his hammock and Stephens was half-undressed when the door burst open. More than two dozen men rushed in. As Stephens later described them, they included the mayor and his assistants, as well as “soldiers, Indians, and Mestizoes, ragged and ferocious-looking fellows, and armed with staves of office, swords, clubs, muskets, and machetes, and carrying blazing pine sticks.”
For a moment everyone froze. Stephens and Catherwood were taken totally by surprise. There was no chance for the two men to grab their pistols—such a move would have been suicidal anyway.
Then stepped forward a young officer, who they learned later was a captain of one of Cáscara’s army units. He wore a glazed hat, a large sword, and a smirk. As he glared at the two foreigners, the mayor, who was clearly intoxicated, asked again to see Stephens’s papers. The passport was handed over and the mayor quickly passed it on to the officer. He examined it closely and then stated flatly that it was not valid.
With the help of Augustin, Stephens, by now dressed, explained the purpose of their visit and pointed in particular to the visa endorsements of Commandant Penol of Izabal and General Francisco Cáscara. The captain was unimpressed and ignored the explanations. He said he had seen a passport once before and it was much smaller than the one Stephens possessed. More important, it should bear the seal of the state of Guatemala, not the department of Chiquimula. There was nothing more to do, he said, but they must remain at Camotán until a dispatch was sent to Chiquimula and orders received directly from the general.
This, Stephens was not disposed to do. He had slogged through muck and rain, endured blistering rides on the backs of mules, and had played by the rules getting visa endorsements attached to his passport—twice. Besides, he felt guilt for veering off, for personal purposes, from the most direct route to his diplomatic assignment in Guatemala City. Now, to be delayed further at the arbitrary whim of a smirking martinet—that was not going to happen. Stephens threatened them with the consequences of holding up a representative of the United States government. When that had no effect, out of frustration he said that he would return immediately to Chiquimula himself. But both captain and the alcalde said that he was not going anywhere.
The captain demanded that Stephens give him his passport again. Stephens refused. It was issued by his government, he asserted, and was the property of the United States. Then the usually reserved Catherwood weighed in, launching into a learned discourse on the “law of nations” and the legal rights of ambassadors, and added that the captain was in great danger of bringing down on his head the wrath of the government of “El Norte,” the United States. The captain was unmoved. When Stephens offered again to go to Chiquimula, under armed guard if necessary, the officer said that he wasn’t going anywhere, not forward or backward, and that he must immediately hand over the passport.
At that Stephens placed the document inside his vest and buttoned his coat tightly across his chest. The captain sneered that they would take it by force. As Stephens later recounted, during the escalating confrontation, two “assassin-looking scoundrels” sat on a nearby bench and carefully leveled their muskets at his heart, the muzzles a mere three feet away. The other men stood with their hands at ready on their machetes and swords. As the burning pine sticks cast flickering shadows against the walls, the long, tense silence was broken by a familiar voice from a dark corner of the room. It was Augustin, who had secured his pistol and begged Stephens in French to give the order to fire. He could scatter them with a single shot, he said. Stephens later recalled their naïveté at that moment: “If we had been longer in the country, we should have been more alarmed; but as yet we did not know the sanguinary character of the people and the whole proceeding was so outrageous and insulting that it roused our indignation more than our fears.”
Just then, a man wearing a glazed hat and short roundabout jacket stepped forward, having entered after the others. He asked to see the passport. Judging the man to be of a better class than the rest of the rabble, Stephens carefully removed the passport from his vest, and clutched it firmly in his fingers as he held it up to the blazing torchlight. At Catherwood’s request, the man read it aloud. When the official language was finally communicated to those in the room, a murmur broke out and the tension seemed to wheeze out of the building. It occurred to Stephens later that it was probable that neither the captain nor the mayor was able to read. The demand for the passport was dropped. But they were ordered to remain in custody.
Now Stephens insisted that a courier be sent at once with a note to Cáscara, and the captain and mayor agreed only after Stephens said he would bear the expense of the trip. Catherwood and Stephens then went to work drafting the note in Italian, describing their imprisonment.
Not to mince matters, Mr. Catherwood signed the note as Secretary; and, having no official seal with me, we sealed it, unobserved by anybody, with a new American half dollar, and gave it to the alcalde. The eagle spread his wings, and the stars glittered in the torchlight. All gathered round to examine it, and retired, locking us up in the cabildo, stationing twelve men at the door with swords, muskets, and machetes; and, at parting, the officer told the alcalde that, if we escaped during the night, his head should answer for it.
Finally they were gone, but now what should they do? They looked out. The guards sat around a fire directly in front of the door, smoking cigars, their firearms immediately within reach. Stephens was sure any attempt to escape would be fatal. The prospects did not look pleasant. They fastened the door as well as they could, and to steady their nerves, they broke out the bottle of wine that Colonel McDonald had sent along with them from Belize and drank a toast to his generosity. Exhausted, they fell into their hammocks.
In the middle of the night, the door was forced open again and the same crowd rushed in. This time, however, the young captain was not among them. As quickly as the whole affair had started, it was over. The mayor handed Stephens back his letter with the big seal—the silver half dollar pressed in wax—unbroken. And without explanation, he told them they were free to go when they pleased. Later, Stephens, mulling over the episode, was not sure why they had so suddenly changed their minds. He speculated that their aggressiveness in defending themsel
ves no doubt helped. But he guessed that it was the seal, the American eagle on the half dollar, that had decided it.
When the alcalde and his men withdrew, Stephens and Catherwood were in a quandary. If they continued on into the interior, they might well run into similar situations or possibly much worse. Again they fell into their hammocks, and again they were jolted awake in the early morning by the alcalde and his assistants. They had come to pay their respects, they said. It was the soldiers and their captain, they explained, who created the disturbance the night before, and they had now passed through the village and were gone.
Their spirits bolstered, Stephens and Catherwood agreed to press on. After their morning chocolate, they loaded the mules. Copán, after all, the mystery at the center of their quest, the remote possibility that they might find evidence of something ancient and lost, beckoned less than ten miles away. But mountains still separated them. When they finally saddled up and left Camotán, it appeared as deserted as it had been when they arrived. It was as though nothing had changed; not even a mote of dust had altered course. The two men, however, more wary than ever, strapped on their weapons and took a deep breath. As they rode out, the great, empty quiet of Camotán was unnerving, broken only by the warble and caw of the morning birds.