Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing. After a few days of this impossible landscape one finds oneself thinking nostalgically of the English Home Counties.
-- Aldous Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934)
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In 1841 John Stephens was so impressed with the ruins at Quiriguá that he planned to take them home, using the Río Motagua to float the stones to the Caribbean so that "the city might be transported bodily and set up in New York". Fortunately, the asking price was beyond his means and the ruins remained buried in the rainforest until 1909, when the land was bought by the United Fruit Company.
“Of one thing there is no doubt; a large city once stood there; its name is lost, its history unknown; and no account of its existence has ever before been published. For centuries it has lain as completely buried as if covered with the lava of Vesuvius. Every traveller from Yzabal to Guatimala has passed within three hours of it; we ourselves had done the same; and yet there it lay, like the rock-built city of Edom, unvisited, unsought, and utterly unknown.”
-- John Lloyd Stephens (1884)
-- Aldous Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934)
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In 1841 John Stephens was so impressed with the ruins at Quiriguá that he planned to take them home, using the Río Motagua to float the stones to the Caribbean so that "the city might be transported bodily and set up in New York". Fortunately, the asking price was beyond his means and the ruins remained buried in the rainforest until 1909, when the land was bought by the United Fruit Company.
“Of one thing there is no doubt; a large city once stood there; its name is lost, its history unknown; and no account of its existence has ever before been published. For centuries it has lain as completely buried as if covered with the lava of Vesuvius. Every traveller from Yzabal to Guatimala has passed within three hours of it; we ourselves had done the same; and yet there it lay, like the rock-built city of Edom, unvisited, unsought, and utterly unknown.”
-- John Lloyd Stephens (1884)
