So good an impression had the Padres made in a short time on these hitherto hostile people that by the end of the year Luis Cancer had succeeded in penetrating the Province of Coban without any opposition from its inhabitants; and in the year following—after a journey to Guatemala in company with the cacique Don Juan—Las Casas himself visited Coban, and bears witness in his writings to the good order and arrangement of the native government and excellence of its laws, and states that he found the people more religious by nature and less given to abominable sacrifices than any other people in the whole of the Indies.
I must not follow any further the fortunes of the Dominican Fathers who had changed the name of the much-dreaded land of war into that it now bears of the "Vera Paz," or True Peace—not that incidents of interest are lacking, such as the martyrdom of Padre Vico at the hands of the Acalaes and Lacandones, which tempt one to wander on.
It is, indeed, a sad fall from the heroic figures of Las Casas and his faithful companions, who, whatever their failings in judgment, feared neither hardship nor death, and for years carried their lives in their hands and toiled unceasingly without hope of earthly reward, to the easy-going half-caste cura of this century as he is depicted in the pages of modern travellers. The celibacy of the clergy must, indeed, have been a more patent fact in those days than it is now, for about the year 1558 it made such an impression on the Indians of the Vera Paz that they formally represented to the authorities that as the padres did not marry, and they could see no little padres running about, they feared the race would die out!
There is a larger proportion of foreigners in Coban than in any other town in the Republic: they are almost exclusively Germans engaged in coffee-planting, and some few of them in cattle-ranching and other industries; although complaints of isolation and of housekeeping and labour troubles are not unheard of amongst them, they seemed to me to be fortunate from a business point of view in the high reputation that the Vera Paz coffee holds in the market, and the very considerable commercial importance which their industry and foresight has brought to the district; and, from a personal point of view, in the enjoyment of a delicious climate in which their rosy-cheeked children can be reared in health and strength, and in all the comforts which pertain to a life half European and half tropical. Hotels or fondas appear to be scarce; but the hospitality of the foreign residents is proverbial; and it was to old friends of my husband's that we were indebted for a charming week passed in comfort and ease, especially grateful to me, somewhat wearied as I had become with the cares and difficulties of camp housekeeping and the toil of the road. I took my
