The clouds seemed to be bewitched; they came down on us in alternate black and sunlit masses, terrible in their majesty; then rolled aside to show us all the beauty of a sunset sky, tints of violet that shaded into pink, and pink that melted into the clearest blue, whilst far away beyond the mountain seaward rolled vast billowy masses, first red and yellow and then pink fading to the softest green. Again and again would the clouds roll down upon us, the mist at times so thick that we could not see beyond a hundred yards; then just as quickly it would roll away and reveal a completely new phase of this ever shifting scene of beauty. As the sun sank behind San Pedro all turned again to dark and angry purple with contrasts and reflections like the sheen of a shot silk. Slowly the mists melted away with the fading daylight, Venus hung for a while like a splendid jewel in the air and the mountains turned again to shadowy masses outlined against a crystal sky." FASCINATING HISTORY THROUGH THE CENTURIES. Historically every period of Guatemala is fascinating. Usually the history of the country is divided into the epochs of the aborigines, the Spanish Conquest, Independence, and the era of liberal governments. Across the centuries the path of history can be traced. A book written in the 16th century by one of the aborigines of the time of the Conquest and called "Popol-Vuh" or "Book of the People," speaks of the Quiches, vigorous and hardy natives of the soil, forerunners of the Guatemalan people as having reached at that time a degree of advance which singled them out from among the other primitive inhabitants of America. Their religious system was in essence a kind of animal worship whose gods were personified by the fox, the coyote, and the wild boar to be soon reemployed through natural evolution by the forces of nature such as the heavens, the earth, and the sea. They left as evidences of their worship the multitude of monuments whose imposing ruins are preserved today. Pyramids which seem to bear traces of Egypt and characters indicative of a remote Asiatic origin; temples, such as the Temple of the Sun, of grand architecture; and the Palace, dwelling of the King, a holy being and the Supreme Arbiter. The latter is among the most notable of American antiquities and it causes admiration through the graduated pyramid, the triangular vault and the arch forming an harmonious whole. The Quiche civilization was an advanced one and its government was a theocracy in which the High Priest was both the Supreme Governor and inherited the name of the primitive god Votan. This theocracy was drawn from among the warriors while the people in complete servitude tilled the fields in order to sustain the worship and raise grand monuments and built numerous cities on the borders of the lakes and rivers.