city of sixty thousand inhabitants, with its houses extending six miles north and south, with a population of many nations and tribes,—mingling the sixteenth with the nineteenth century in many customs and business ways,—was not to be seen at a glance, was not to be understood even after a sojourn of a few days. We envied the faculty of our English cousins who can come to America, spend a few weeks,—even days,—and then go home and write with more knowledge of the places they have just glanced at than the inhabitants ever possessed. [Illustration: STREET IN GUATEMALA CITY.] As we entered the city we passed at some distance the fort of San José; and it was significant that the guns all pointed towards the city it was supposed to protect. Taking no interest in military matters, which I am constrained to believe are undesirable if not unnecessary relics of a barbarous age, I did not go any nearer to see whether, as in the case of San Felipe, the guns were more deadly to those within than those outside the fort; but the walls looked queer, and we were assured that they were of adobe, painted to imitate stone blocks,—a kind of Quaker wall. [Illustration: GUATEMALA CITY FROM CARMEN.] Although the Plaza is always the principal focus of a Spanish town, no street ever leads directly to it, all lead by it, as if accidentally; and so we found ourselves in the public square of Guatemala before we had been an hour in the city. It was simply a square taken from the tiresome rectangles of the city; and only on one side had it any sufficiently imposing boundaries. The Government had suppressed the priestly power; but its monument still towered above the very insignificant buildings used as Government offices. This metropolitan cathedral is about two hundred and seventy-five feet long, with some architectural pretensions, but belittled by its front towers, which were added a few years ago. The colossal statues of the four Evangelists which guard the platform in front detract from the effect of a good façade. The interior is plain. In a vault beneath the church repose the remains of Rafael Carrera, the former President of the republic. On the evening of the seventh of December the whole front was illuminated with small lamps in honor of the Immaculate Conception. Within was a large doll dressed to represent the Virgin Mary, “_sanctissima, purissima, caramba!—carissima_,” as we heard a young heathen exclaim. She stood on a blue ball spangled with stars, and trod the _culebra grande_ as at Escuintla. All the choir-boys wore scarlet robes. It seemed as though the attendants rather hustled the gauze angels, which trod on snakes in imitation of Madonna. The other churches were numerous, and the more imposing date from the days of the Spanish domination, when all good things, including plenty of money, were in priestly hands. Perhaps the most curious of all the churches is that one on the Cerro del Carmen which antedates the city. Santiago