A GLIMPSE AT GUATEMALA,
AND
SOME NOTES ON THE
ANCIENT MONUMENTS OF CENTRAL AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
THE VOYAGE.
We left England early in October, 1893, and on the 13th November found ourselves in San Francisco. Our passages were taken in a steamer advertised to sail from that Port on the 18th of the month for San José de Guatemala, but no sooner had we set foot in the Palace Hotel, than the Influenza fiend seized us both; so we were obliged to give up our cabins in the steamer, and, as soon as we were well enough to travel, were ordered by the doctor to leave San Francisco and its cold winds for the more agreeable climate of Monterey. The railroad took us in four hours through the fruitful plain of San Joaquin, and landed us almost at the door of the Hotel del Monte, a huge low wooden building standing in the midst of a grove of magnificent evergreen oak trees, and surrounded by beautiful flower-gardens and exquisite green grass. The many porticos and verandahs were bowers of roses and heliotrope and every variety of creeper, and the garden beds were brilliant with magnificent dahlias and chrysanthemums and numberless smaller flowers.
Chinese gardeners could be seen in all directions tending the plants, and watering the lawn-grass to keep it fresh and green, in striking contrast
