LIVING CHEAP IN HONDURAS

Evening Star, Issue 19855, 2 May 1928, Page 10

LIVING CHEAP IN HONDURAS

£1 A PHTH FOR ROOM AND BOARD Mr J. Eric Thompson, an arclueologist just returned to New York from an expedition to British Honduras, brings back news as to room and board which might interest more persons acutely if British Honduras were only a little nearer. tn that Central American country, in the Maya Indian village of Sau Antonio, to ioe explicit, according to the explorer, a person can rent a bouse for 10s a month, and get board—three square meals a day—for a like sum. But, it is explained by Mr Thompson, who is asistant curator of Mexican and South American Archeology for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the house is a native-built one-room wooden hut, with a mud floor, a palm roof, and no modern conveniences. MONKEY ON MENU. It should be added also that the menus offered by your Maya boardinghouse host will contain the' following dishes frequently:— Stowed monkey meat, with finli. Jtoast parrot, with ehili. Armadillo steak, with cluli. Tortillas, with chili, as frequently as beans in the army. Cocoa made without milk, but containing very hot pepper, and corn. And always, according to Mr Thompson, chili, chili, chili and corn, corn, corn. Mr Thompson lived in one of these Indian huts and partook with a .Maya family of this diet for five weeks, in order to make intimate ethnological studies of the tribesmen, who are descendants of the old Mayas, founders of one of the most ancient American civilisations. During his stay of nearly three months there he made a small collection of native garments for the museum. Ho will return next year for further studies, after which he wall prepare a hook on these people, to be published by the museum. Mr Thompson is author of a leaflet, ‘The Civilisation of the Mayas,’ already published by the museum, in which he presents the results of researches in connection with the ancient ancestors of the people he is now studying. PRACTISE PAGAN RITES. “The modern Mayas are a decent sort of people, although the timehonored custom of .wife-beating is still very much in vogue among them,” Mr Thompson said. “ The men are completely the masters. While largely Christianised, they still indulge surreptitiously in pagan ceremonies consisting of dances, pagan prayers, burning incense and alLnight rituals, for the purpose of winning prosperous years from the gods, curing illness, and blessing new houses, f witnessed a number of these rites.

“European clothes are worn to some extent, the men wearing trousers and

the women skirts, but to the waist only do they clothe themselves ordinarily. These are varied with their native costumes when at home. The raising of corn is the chief means of livelihood, but some of the men work for the white men in charge of the mahogany lumber camps. At this they can earn about 4s a day, and they need only about £4 a. year to live. AVhile in British Honduras Mr Thompson inspected some recently-dis-covered ruins of ancient Maya civilisation at Pusilha, on the Guatemala border, which, he established, date back at least to 314 a.d. Prominent among the ruins of this ancient Maya city are a bridge over the fork of two rivers and numerous mounds and irrigation terraces, he said.