•. * •* •? *>^ 'Y^LE-WMVEIESJlirY'' - JLJHBH3AIET • Deposited by the Linonian and Brothers Library Ill ^^w-,,*« THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. § as IHQ < O '- O r<«o3 *#. bim ,ei„re l 4 :^%rcz;rx Tt;;v him' o- ¦"- polit.cal or .ocial institutions of a sta.e m™.. / T am"' or lo de™'»P I» the limited sense we have taueu it XJL^tn ' "t ¦*? °' *" ^ _ seapot, We „, ,rticuW,t V^T^^ZXZ CENTRAL AMERICA: GENERAL GEOGRAPHY. 5 in the Republic of Guatemala ; Omoa, and Truxillo, in Honduras ; San Juan Del Norte, or Grey Town, in Nicaragua ; and Matina, in Costa Rica. On the Pacific shore there are Nicoya, belonging to Costa Rica ; Realejo, to Nicaragua ; La Union, or Conchagua, Libertad, and Acajutla, belonging to San Salvador ; and Ystapa, to Guatemala. The last three, however, are mere open roadsteads, but the others are very good harbours indeed. In addition there are San Juan Del Sur, in Nicaragua ; Culebra and Salinas, in Costa Rica, though in an almost uninhabitable district ; Jiquilisco in Salvador, and Olos in G uatemala, all on the Pacific. VIEW ON THE RIO POLOCHIC, GUATEMALA. The mountain range which forms the backbone of the isthmus is not so elevated as the mountains further south and north. Yet the peaks are by no means low, some of the more prominent points rearing to nearly 14,000 feet, though from 5,000 to 7,000 feet may be taken as the average. There are amongst them several volcanic cones, two or three of them still active, and the others extinct. They are all near the Pacific coast, none being found in the interior or close to the Atlantic shore. This chain sends off lateral spurs, so that the whole of Central America is an alternation of mountain valleys clothed with dense vegetation, and nowhere allowing of great plains, though naturally presenting so immense a variety of climate, that in the course of a day's journey the traveller may pass through hot, temperate, and cold regions. The great mountain ranges disappear before they reach the Isthmus of Panama, the high Cordillera of the north and south dwindling down to elevations of from 500 6 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. to 1,000 feet, and which do not even form a continuous chain, but are isolated and independent of each other, so that every here and there low plains or valleys intersecting the isthmus can be found amongst them. Rivers are found everywhere, and hot springs— as might be expected from the volcanic character of the country— are common. None of the rivers are, however, large, and before most of them can be of much use for navigation they would require to be greatly improved, as they are liable to be silted up by the washing away of the soft clay banks between which they generally flow. All of them are obstructed by bars at their mouths; many of them have falls and rapids, and owing to the rapidity of the current and the amount of sediment they are continually bearing down to the sea, are apt to get shoaled up here and there, and, accordingly, have a very variable depth. The San Juan is perhaps the river which is of most importance, but even it of late years has got shoaled up in places, and owing to the formation of a bar at its mouth, has been all but destroyed for navigation for any craft save small steamers. The lakes of the region are in some cases of large size, but only three of them, namely, Nicaragua and Managua in Nicaragua, and Golfo Dulce in Salvador, are ever likely to be of any great use commercially as a highway for commerce or travel. The Golfo Dulce, or Gulf of Dulce, is the means by which most of the foreign trade of Guatemala is carried. It communicates with the Atlantic by a smaller lake called the Golfete and the Rio Dulce. The Polochic we shall have occasion to mention when speaking of Guatemala, through which it flows, first discharging itself into the Gulf of Dulce, and then into the Bay of Honduras (pp. 4, 5). Climate. With the exception of the lowlands, Central America is not so hot as we should expect a region occupying nearly the middle space between the equator and the Tropic of Cancer to be. The heat of the Pacific shore, owing, probably, to the greater dryness and purity of the atmosphere in that region, is not so intense as on the Atlantic coast. The northreast trade winds arrive at America laden with moisture, but the greater portion of their vapour is intercepted by the mountains of the interior, and flows down the Atlantic slopes in streams and rivers. But the mountains of Central America are not high enough or continuous enough to entirely intercept the trade winds. Accordingly they blow entirely across the continent at this spot, arriving, however, at the Pacific deprived of much of their moisture, and cooled by passing over the elevated region of the interior. Hence, as Mr. Squier has pointed out, the greater salubrity of that declivity, the com parative coolness and dryness of its climate, and the consequently more numerous population. On both coasts heavy dews fall at night, but at higher elevations, at and above three thousand feet, the dews are slight, and "the nights as dry as the day." The result is that these regions look arid and burned, and are never clothed with the bounteous vegetation which, in spite of its drawbacks of climate, give such a charm to the lowlands and coast regions of the isthmus. The rainy season is usually from May to December, and is disagreeable- enough. It does not fain in the tropics — it pours. A shower does not usually last more than half an hour, but it falls so briskly that in that period the earth is covered with water. Then the torrent ceases as abruptly as it began — " the sky as suddenly recovers its serenity, the sun comes out unclouded, dispersing the humidity, and in a brief space CENTRAL AMERICA: CLIMATE. 7 the earth becomes, to all appearance, as dry as if no rain had fallen." The elevated plateaux have a climate of their own. On most of these rain falls in small quantities every month ; but during the dry season the showers are slight, while during the wet one they are long and heavy. Continuous rains, or temporales, as they are called, are here unknown. Johnson has calculated that the average amount of rain which falls in the tropics is 113 inches per annum. In some parts of Brazil it is 276 inches, and in Guadaloupe and a few of the Lesser Antilles as high as 292 inches. On the other hand, taking Honduras as a type, 48 inches fall on an average annually, while between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific there falls — according to a return before me — 97*7 in one year. The mean maximum heat of the interior may be about 68° Fahr., and that of the coast 82°, though in many places — at Omoa, for example — it runs much higher. The north coast and the Mosquito Shore are perhaps the most insalubrious places, while, as we have already remarked, the Pacific coast is much more healthy. The Isthmus of Panama has •a climate a good deal worse than any of the localities north or south of it, and as Central America is, unfortunately for its good name, familiarly associated with Panama, sweltering Colon, that home of intermittent fever, Chagres, or still worse with Portobelo, it may be well to point out that this portion of the region we are describing is exceptionally hot, owing to its low elevation. No doubt, take it all in all, Panama thoroughly deserves its infamous reputation. The heat is great, moist, and enervating. It takes the colour out of the ladies' cheeks, makes the most energetic of Britons languid, and in time destroys appetite, health, and temper. Passengers cross the isthmus as if they were passing through a plague-infected city. In these lovely tropical forests through which the railway runs they seem afraid to breathe. In Panama they have more cause for dread, and once out into the Bay, and past the Pearl Islands of the buccaneers, they heave a sigh of congratulation that now they are out of danger. In reality, there is very little danger to the passing traveller if he takes ordinary care, and even the resident does not lose his health under several years. "It is," writes a resident, "the fashion to report the climate of Panama as a fiery burning furnace, and pestilential. I would not call it either the one or the other. In our house (it was a cool one) the thermometer ranged from 78u to 84° Fahr. I never knew it higher. I have even known the temperature to fall as low as 72°, and after a good spell of Panama we felt that cool. The dry season, commencing nominally in December and lasting until April, is the healthiest, and the first part of it the pleasantest. In December and January the intense heat has not set in; only in the morning, until the Norther, as it is called, begins, the warmth is oppressive. By 5 p.m. it is becoming cool, and through the night the fine fresh wind is delightfully refreshing. I have always found March and April most trying; then the heat is felt sensibly, and the effects are very debilitating. The rainy season is, up to a certain time", merely showery uncertain weather, and thunder and lightning vivid enough may be seen and heard every night. Later, there are terrific storms, sharp, short, and angry, and euch crashes of thunder that the old crazy town seems falling in one mighty smash, succeeded by tropical rains in vast sheets, as if heaven opened to pour forth its seas upon the earth." The city of Panama is really more healthy than most places under the tropics ; but the Atlantic coast, low and swampy as it is for a considerable distance from the 8 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. sea, is extremely pestilent. Miasmatic fevers and bowel complaints prevail, and yellow fever is not uncommon, though in most cases it has been introduced from St. Thomas, Havannah, and New Orleans, and rarely spreads among the natives or old acclimatised foreign residents. Light kinds of intermittent fevers are, however, common, and are extremely injurious to foreign constitutions in combination with the debilitating effects of a tropical climate, though it only takes root after a certain term of residence.* Panama is hot — decidedly hot. Yet new-comers do not feel it very much. They have before reaching so far got somewhat accustomed to the tropics, and so far from complaining of the intense heat of the isthmus, they are rather astonished that the "place" has been so maligned. If the visitor escapes the initiatory fever he will get along very well for the first few months, and may possibly find the weather no hotter than that which he has experienced in London, Paris, or New York in July or August. But by-and-by he feels less inclined to go about. He may mount his horse for exercise, or go around the walls of the city to catch the sea breeze at night, but he would much rather lie in an uneasy half-boiled sleep in his hammock. His digestion gets out of order; and in time he is disgusted to find that he is quite as indolent as the shopkeepers and other residents whose dolce far niente life so stirred his astonishment and contempt when he first arrived. " He sits," observes our late Consul in this city of evil odour, "in his shop, with his feet cocked upon the back of a chair, like a true Yankee, and he will hardly take the trouble to rise when his customers go in to buy; indeed, he seems generally most happy if he can say he has not the article asked for." Women do not thrive on the isthmus. They always look as if they were in a rapid consumption — lean, sallow, and seldom in good health. The children thrive better, but they also are pale from the effects of the heat. There, is little temptation to take exercise, and no winter to brace up a constitution enfeebled by the summer. Hence they languish, lose strength, grow old before their time, and yet rarely die much before the alloted span of life has expired. After a few years' residence, Mr. Bidwell has most truthfully observed, that what is generally experienced is a sort of lassitude, with a disinclination for exercise, and a derangement more or less of the digestive organs, which, added to the monotonous life of the ordinary dweller in these dead- alive tropical regions, has a most depressing effect on the nervous system. Mr. Anthony Trollope has most thoroughly expressed this feeling when he remarks that the heat made him uncomfortable, but never made him ill. "I lost all pleasure in eating, and indeed in everything else. I used to feel a craving for my food, but no appetite when it came. I was lethargic, as though from repletion, when I did eat, and always glad when my watch would allow me to go to bed ; but I was never ill." The longer one stays, the more thoroughly does he experience this feeling. He cannot labour hard, for in a few minutes he streams with perspiration, which may be healthy, but is decidedly exhausting and uncomfortable. He dare not walk about much in the sun for fear of sunstroke, and all the ills that the sun brings to mortals in its favourite land. There is no twilight here ; the sun rises at once, and sets as suddenly, while a bad road through a tropical forest is neither a desirable nor a safe place for promenading on a dark night. He can read, if * Commercial Reports received at the Foreign Office from her Majesty's Consuls, 1863. CENTRAL AMERICA: CLIMATE. 9 the mosquitoes will allow him, but as he generally begins the day half tired, after a feverish broken sleep stewing in a hammock, or in a close tent-like mosquito-curtained bed, the chances are that the liveliest volume would send the reader asleep. I do not think that I ever saw any one reading in Panama, unless, perhaps, it was the Star and Herald, and then most frequently the student of that not very absorbing record of current news was half asleep, and, if even awake, never by any chance excited. An Irishman once expressed an opinion to the Consul regarding the climate of Panama, which is perhaps unscientific to the last degree, and very Milesian, but yet exceedingly truthful. "It is never at any season of the year cooler in Panama: it may in some months be hotter than in others, but VIEW OP GATUN VILLAGE, CHAGRES RIVER, PANAMA. never by any chance cooler," even though the excessive heat of the day is tempered by the morniDg and evening breeze. Roads — that Are : Canals — to be. Roads throughout Central America, except a little way out of the larger towns, there are none. They are mere tracks, more or less worn and trodden by continual use in irregular directions, and making their way in the course in which they meet the fewest obstacles, regardless of the fact that it may be the longest and most inconvenient. In the dry season these trails are not good; when converted by the tropical rains into ruts full of pasty clay they are all but impassable. Art had no share in forming them, and accordingly the States through which they pass seem to consider it unnecessary to apply any art to keep them in repair. Wheeled carriages are necessarily uncommon, all transit being by mules or horses, but more especially mules. From San Juan del Sur to Virgin Bay on the Lake of Nicaragua there was, when I crossed over it in 1866, a tolerably good road, but as that route across the continent has been long 82 10 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. abandoned, most likely it has fast got overgrown with tropical herbage, and is once more a track through a tropical forest, and the quiet little villages by the way again sunk into their pristine state of somnolent inactivity. A railroad — the only one in the region— crosses the Isthmus of Panama from the city of Panama, on the Pacific, to Colon, or Aspimvall, on the Atlantic, a distance of 47 £ miles, of which line, and the people who live on its borders, I may have something to say further on. It was constructed at great cost of treasure and lives, and is kept up at very considerable expense. It is usually said that a man a sleeper was the expenditure of human life. But this is only a broad generalisation, for there were never as many men as there are now sleepers ¦employed in its construction from first to last; but this we shall discuss by-and- by. .Several other railway routes have been projected, particularly across Nicaragua, Honduras, and Tehuantepec. But they have never gone further than mere talk, the financial slough of despond in which Central America is always sunk, and the utterly unstable character of their government preventing anything like an approach to serious work. Indeed, for some time past the project of a canal has been more canvassed than that of a second railway. The Panama one supplies all that is necessary in that direction, and indeed all that the traffic will support. A short route through the isthmus would, however, be an engineering triumph, and revolutionise commerce to even a greater extent than the canal now in operation through the Isthmus of Suez. Eventually it will be made, and the nation that secures it will be mistress of the isthmus, and eventually of a great portion of the trade of the world. As very imperfect and often erroneous ideas prevail on the subject, at the instance of various correspondents, I propose to devote some space to a consideration of the various routes which have been proposed, taking as the basis of my observations a recent report of Admiral Amman, of the United States Navy.* I do this the more readily as a consideration of the routes crystallises, as it were, into a short space the generalised ideas of the elevation and general orography of the isthmus. For the last five years, and especially the last two, the American newspapers have been filled with voluminous letters from Central America, written by correspondents accom panying some one or other of the Government exploring expeditions surveying the Panama region. By these means high hopes of success in digging a practicable canal across the isthmus have been from time to time excited; for the heralds of every surveying party that has gone out have announced grand assurances of success then and there. Those who are looking with most hopes to this highway of traffic do so because they believe that a canal there is of vital importance to trade, both domestic and European. They reckon— on the data of 1870, that is— that the trade of the United States with the west coasts of Mexico, Central and South America, Hawaii, California, British and Dutch Indies, China, and Japan, amounts to fully 1,000,000 tons; that of Great Britain in the same regions to over 1,600,000 tons; and that of France and Germany to some 300,000 tons. That is, they reckon on about 3,000,000 tonnage annually, as soon as a * Not having access to the Report itself, I havo compiled the account which follows from various articles in Amorican and English journals, and more particularly from the letter of a New York correspondent of the Standard. CENTRAL AMERICA: THE CANAL ROUTES. 11 ship canal shall be opened across Darien; and that new channels of trade and production would be developed by the current flowing through the grand thoroughfare. Not only the United States, but also the English and French Governments, and private parties in England, France, and America are agitating on this question. But the enterprise is yet far from completion. In January, 1875, the Nicaraguan Minister to Greajt Britain, and the Consul-General of Nicaragua in France, addressed a communication to M. de Lesseps asking his interest in the Darien Canal, and tendering assurances of "the surest and most constant protection" to the enterprise by the President of the Republic of Nicaragua ; and the hero of the Suez Canal replied encouragingly. He had already submitted to the Government of the United States his views on " the best solution of the problem of an interoceanic canal without weirs by the alimentation of the two seas, the same as nature and art have permitted to do for the Isthmus of Suez ; but," he added, " m the impossibility to obtain such a result in one of the American isthmuses, I consider the project of the canal of Nicaragua is that which offers the greatest facility of execution and the greatest security as to the result." This appears to have been the initiation of the latest French movement. The agitation for a canal dates beyond the administration of Mr. Jefferson, who. directed attention to it very early in the century. In 1835, again, an elaborate report on the subject was submitted to the House of Repre sentatives.* In 1854, and subsequently, Great Britain and France both made important explorations in regard to the canal ;f but it was not until 1870 that the American Government under took some important surveys, which we may now glance at. Without stopping to detail the results of an instrumental examination of what is known as the Truando route, made in 1856 and 1857 by Lieutenants Michler and Craven, who reckoned a tunnel of 12,250 feet necessary, and estimated the cost of the canal at 134,000,000 dollars, we come down to 1870. There have been ten since the beginning of that year. Yet all this work has given us no final result. M. de Lesseps last year saw, and Commodore Amman this year does not disguise the fact, that nothing positive has been accomplished, although several negatives have been well established; the data on hand are insufficient ; and those which are available are flagrantly contradictory. The routes thus far in some way surveyed, explored, reconnoitred, or examined, are eleven, and may be briefly summarised as follows : — (1.) The Tehuantepec. This route, commencing at the River Coatzacualcos in the Atlantic would require a canal of 144 miles, with 140 locks, and is considered the worst of all the practicable routes. Yet it has ever been a favourite one with the Spaniards, who have more than once surveyed it, and estimated the lowest cost of construction at £3,400,000. But this was Don Jose De Garay's estimate in 1842, and since that date the expense of such work- must have nearly doubled — even in Central America. The project of cutting such a canal * A full survey of all the projects may he found in a supplement by Professor Nourse, of the National Observatory at Washington, added to the Senate documents published in 1875, hy Commanders Lull, Crossman, and others, documents illustrated with twenty large maps. The supplement is valuable as giving full lists of" authorities on the subject. t By Lloyd, Garella, Gishorne, Prevost, Belli, Wheelwright, Hellert, Baily, Pirn, Depuydt, and many others. 12 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. from sea to sea was probably first mooted by Saavedra, the kinsman and companion of Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, and so strongly did Cortes believe in the project that he is said to have selected land in the neighbourhood of the proposed route as his portion of the country which he had conquered. (2.) The Nicaragua. This is the route of which the fullest reports have been published, and is, after all, the best one. Commodore Amman describes it as having "a summit of 107-6 feet; length of canal requiring excavation 61-75 English miles; slack water navigation, by means of dams in the bed of the San Juan river, from the mouth of the San Carlos to Lake Nicaragua, a distance of 63 miles ; lake navigation for 56-5 miles to Virgin Bay, and thence via the valleys of the Rio del Medio and Rio Grande to Brito." The route requires four dams, having an average height of 29-5 feet, and an aggregate length of 1,320 yards, and of twenty locks of an average lift' of 10-28 feet. It has also been proposed to avoid the San Juan altogether, and intersect the forest country straight from the lake on to Blewfields, the capital of the Mosquito territory* This was also the route which the late Emperor Napoleon III., even when a prisoner in Ham, in 1840, advocated, and that on which, seven years later, he published a pamphlet. The great attraction of the route is the Lake, of Nicaragua, ninety-five miles long, and at its broadest thirty-five miles, with an average depth of fifteen fathoms. The lake is navigable for ships of the highest class down to the point where the San Juan flows out of it ; and, independently of the aid which the presence of the lake would give this great stretch of water, affording access to towns north and south of it, would be an irresistible recommendation for its utilisation. (3.) The Panama. This is just now, as the Nicaragua was formerly, the favourite route with the United State's Government. There are, however, various rival lines across the isthmus. For instance, Louis Philippe's administration advocated a route from the little Bay of Vaca del Monte, near Panama, to Limon Bay, on the Atlantic. There is also a short route from Chiriqui Lagoon, a fine Atlantic harbour, to the mouth of the David river, which is nevertheless impracticable on account of the want of a harbour at the latter point. (4.) The route from San Bias to Chepo was long a favourite, mainly because the distance to be cut through was but thirty miles. But this route has been now almost definitely abandoned, it being seen that it is impracticable even with a tunnel of eight miles. (5.) Humboldt's great name has been used in advocacy of the true line for a canal, being from Caledonia Bay to the Gulf of San Miguel, or else to go further east, and connect the rivers Atrato and San Juan of Grenada. The Caledonia route from the bay of that name to the Monte and Sucubte rivers is still unsettled. The greatest elevation from the southern end of the bay is 1,259 feet, and from the northern end 1,148 feet. No elevation under 1,000 feet was discovered. (6.) The Depuydt route was first examined by a French gentlemen of that name. At the distance of thirty miles he reached an elevation 638 feet, and the divide of water still ahead of him. The salient point in this route was that the Atrato river was to be connected with the Teyter by way of the Tanela river.f (7.) The Atra'.o-Tuyra. This is the route over which there has been so much wrangling between the French and American surveyors. Hellert, La Charme, and Gorgorza appear to have made this, or nearly this, the line of their surveys, if surveys they should be called. Captain Selfridge in 1871 found two crossings of the divide, one 712 feet and the other about * Pim : " The Gate of the Pacific," &c. t Depuydt: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XXXVIII. (1868), p. 69. EXPLORING A TROPICAL FOREST. 14 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. 400 feet high; but Gorgorza denies that Selfridge was on the same route. The latter's- exploration was sufficient to prove that this is an exceedingly difficult, if not an impracticable, line, on account of high hills on the Pacific side and extensive swamps on the Atlantic side. The regular line is by way of the Atrato and the Perauchita rivers on the east, and of the Tuyra and the Cue rivers on the west. Some years ago it was estimated that a canal by this route would cost £30,000,000. (8.) The Truando route we need only mention in order to say that it was pronounced impracticable more than twenty years ago, and this verdict has never been reversed. (9.) The Atrato-Napipi route and (10) the Gorgorza we know little about, though the first has been twice surveyed, and if M. Gorgorza is right that his line of travel was different from Mr. Selfridge's, then the former gentleman must be credited with having explored, chiefly from the deck of a French steamer,' a route that nobody has been. so fortunate as yet to strike again. (11.) The last route which I shall refer to is the one surveyed by Lieutenant Wyse for the Colombian Government. His report just reaches me as I write. He proposes to cut across the Isthmus of Darien by way of the Tuyra river, which flows into the Gulf of San Miguel. Two routes were suggested by the expedition ; one by way of the Paya river (a tributary of the Tuyra) and the Caquirri, where the watershed between the two streams is only 250 yards long, but its height is 150 yards above low water. The other route Lieutenant Wyse considers more practicable. It lies more to the north, alongf the valley of the Tupisa, and the furthest point reached by the expedition was thirty-four yards above sea-level, and much closer to the Atlantic than any place of corresponding height on the alternative route. This route is in some respects similar to the various Atrato ones already described, though it differs in part of the proposed course being entirely new- With ordinary energy and perseverance the construction of a canal across Nicaraguan or Colombian territory may be looked upon as a certainty. CHAPTER II. Central America : Its Political Divisions. When the Central American States broke loose from Spain, they wisely formed themselves into a federal union of five States, each having an executive Government, a Legislative Assembly, elected at intervals, and a constitution peculiar to itself for its internal management. This. nation was ruled by a President, a Senate, and a Federal Congress, and so continued from 1821 to 1839. But in that year, after many bickerings, the Republic of Central America broke up into its component elements. " A change was supposed necessary," as one of their historians- naively remarks, and so the union was dissolved, and notwithstanding various attempts to- again reconstitute it, so continues at the date of writing, the five republics being practically the five Provinces or Intendencies of the Captain-Generalcy or Kingdom of Guatemala, viz.,. Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Guatemala. This republic contains an area of about 40,776 square miles, and forms a rough quadrangle. Most of the surface is mountainous, the main chain of mountains, already referred to (p. 3), CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA. 15 known as the Sierra Madre, sending off several branches in the direction of the Atlantic, thus enclosing several valleys, but few plains of any extent. Along the principal range (which rises to a height of 13,000 feet), or in spurs closely connected with it, are several rather remarkable summits, termed in the language of the country volcans, or volcanoes ; only two of them, however, namely, those called De Fuego and Atitlan, giving any signs of activity. Many •streams water the State, one of which, the Motagua, is navigable for a considerable distance. During the rainy season it carries a great volume of water to the sea, but in the dry months, according to Baily, it may be forded in almost every part, that is, for forty-five or sixty miles above its mouth ; from Gualan downwards it runs through lands almost uninhabited, and for this distance — ninety miles — it is navigable for small decked boats. The Polochic is another river of much the same nature ; it may be navigated by boats to about ninety miles from the city of Guatemala. Both the rivers could be improved, but in the present state of affairs this prospect is rather hopeless. Of the lakes, that of the Gulf of Dolce, Lake Peten — on an island in which the town of Flores stands — the Lake of Atitlan, and the Lake of Amatitan. Guatemala, Solola, Quesaltenango, Old Guatemala, Totonicapan, Salama, and Chiquimula are the capitals of the seven departments or corregimientos into which the republic is divided. But there are a humber of other considerable villages, towns, or cities, as they would be called. In 1872 — the last census — the total population was returned at 1,190,754, of whom 360,608 were classed as whites, and 830,146 as Indians. The army comprises 3,200 regular soldiers, and 13,000 militia. Its estimated revenue was, in 1875, £517,605, and its estimated expenditure in the same year £556,223 ; its public debt was at the same date £2,450,000, and at this time we may safely calculate that it is not less, the moral fronr all of which is that Guatemala is in a financially unwholesome condition. In 1873 the total value of the exports, chiefly sugar, coffee, cochineal, mahogany, sarsaparilla, tobacco, and fruits, was given at £672,612, while the imports are rated at £472,853. There are no railways in the State, and the latest returns mention that twenty-three ships, in addition to several monthly steamers, entered in twelve months at San Jose. Everywhere in Guatemala, and, indeed, throughout Central America, there are evident signs of tremendous earthquakes having taken place. Long, deep perpendicular rents occur at frequent intervals traversing the plains for several miles in length, and often, according to a recent traveller, Captain Lindesay Brine, exceeding 1,500 feet in depth. There are also occasionally to be met with large, deep, natural pits, not dissimilar to the south of Western America, or the depressions which made their appearance in the State of Missouri, particularly in the neighbourhood of St. Louis, after the earthquake at New Madrid in 1812. Earthquakes are, however, becoming less frequent, and since 1773, when the ancient city of Guatemala was destroyed, there has been no serious shock. There is a singular circumstance connected with an earlier destruction of "this city which has never been properly explained, though so curious that it deserves notice. The ancient capital was situated between two large volcanoes, one was known as Volcan de Agua (or water), the other, which we have already mentioned, as the Volcan de Fuego (or fire). The former, about 14,000 feet high, was supposed to be extinct; the latter which is above 15,000 feet high, was then, as now, occasionally active. In September, 1541, the Volcan de Fuego showed signs of activity, but though the inhabitants were apprehensive of the safety of their houses, yet nothing unusual was expected, and there was no immediate 16 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. loss of life. But in the middle of the night of the 11th the extinct Volcan de Agua began to give signs of being in labour, and suddenly there poured down from the summit, or upper slopes of the mountain, a vast torrent of water, which, rushing down with irresistible velocity, swept the greater part of the city into utter ruin, and drowned thousands of the inhabitants. The most probable explanation of this catastrophe is, that a small lake or a considerable £M3$ ANCIENT IDOL AND ALTAR AT COPAN, GVATEMALA. volume of water had been lying dormant in the crater, and that this became suddenly thrown out by some subterranean action of upheaval.* Travelling from the Pacific seaport of San Jose for thirty miles after quitting the coast, the road leads through dense forests of tropical vegetation peculiar to the low-lying Tierras Calientes, or hot lands, as the country between the Cordilleras and the sea is called. We then ascend and finally enter the city of Guatemala, which is built on a broad table-land 4,000 feet above the sea, and seventy miles from the coast. No longer is the vegetation so profuse * Brine : Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XLII., p. 35". CENTRAL AMERICA: THE LOWLANDS OF GUATEMALA. 17 as on the lowlands. The people have also changed. On the lowlands the Sambos, or mixture between the negro and Indian, prevail. They are physically strong though morally weak, and have all the African's love of ease and heat, both of which requisites can be found among the palms and plantains where they elect to build their frail, airy dwellings. Yet the two most remarkable men which Central America has produced since the revolution, namely, President Can-era and Serapio Cruz, have both belonged to these generally despised mongrels. On the eastern slopes of the Cordilleras the inhabitants are usually pure Indians, VIEW OP THE VALLEY OF THE POLOCHIC, DEPARTMENT (OR CORREGIMIENTo) OF VERA-PAZ, GUATEMALA. lmt not invariably of the aboriginal stock, many of them being descendants of the Aztec and Tlaxcalan Mexican Indians (Vol. II., p. 235), whom the Spanish generals brought as allies on their invading excursions. "It is only in the interior," writes Captain Brine, "in the secluded valleys among the mountains, and in the districts adjacent to the ancient ruined cities, that the descendants of the original Toltecan race are to be found : and these can be traced partly by language, partly from a peculiar type of features, but chiefly by the wonderful persistency with which they retain certain ancient superstitions and certain household usages ; there is quite sufficient evidence to enable it to be clearly assumed that the descendants of those advanced races which built the fortresses and mounds of the interior are still existing in their neighbourhood." These ruined cities we may speak of by-and-by, 83 ft> 18 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. The soil in Guatemala is as fertile as it is all through these favoured lands of the sun, and its varied climate allows of an immense variety of products being grown. Maize, wheat, rice, tropical fruits, legumes, all European garden plants, cacao, sugar, tobacco, coffee, cotton, and the mulberry on which the silk-worm feeds may be classed among the common products of the country. Were the Indian better acquainted with horticulture he might bring many of the plants to an enviable state of perfection. About the coast towns the description of the negro gardens in Jamaica might apply, the plants and other surroundings being similar. " Outside," writes the author whom I have already quoted (Vol. II., p. 310), " animal refuse is stored in some hollow where liquid permanently rests, as likely as not to the windward of the dwelling. The site is probably a hole in the ground, not unfrequently a swamp several feet below the adjoining road. The wretched hovel is crowded with males and females of all ages, not to speak of pigs, fowls, goats, and dogs; and as the sexes have no means of separation, the social consequences may be easily imagined. The only labour which is cheerfully performed by the negro is that which he bestows on his own ' provision- ground.' Of these ' grounds ' each negro has at least one, varying in extent from half an acre to two or three acres. Out of this he supports himself and his family, pays his taxes, and obtains his food. Like the ' plant-a-cruive ' of the Shetland peasant, the negro's ground is often at some distance from his home. It is often some piece of waste or 'ruinate' land, which he leases from year to year from a neighbouring proprietor. A provision-ground in full cultivation — ' when it a-bloom,' as the negroes call it — is a very picturesque sight indeed. Within a roughly-made bamboo or timber fence rise long rows of yams, twining their graceful leaves round poles eight, ten, and twelve feet high. Between these spring lines of Indian corn (maize) and broad-leafed cocoas (C'ocolabia esculenta, a coarse yam), and the ochro (Hibiscus esculentus) with its delicate yellow flower. Pumpkins trail along the ground. Knubbly cabbages raise their bullet heads. Pears and pulse of all kinds, the ' Red Miss Kelly/ and the ' Black Betty/ the ' Cockle's Increase/ and ' Sorrow for Poor/ crowd up all the available space. Clustering over an old orange-tree, which in process of time it will utterly destroy, is a handsome cho-cho vine {Sechium edule), whose pear-like fruit is one of the most useful vegetables of the tropics ; and in one corner is a little patch of cassava (Jairopha mani/wt), from which the negro gets his starch, his tapioca, and his bread, and from whose poisonous root is extracted the well-known cassarep, the foundation of all our sauces." And to this close by may be the palmetto palm, with which the negroes thatch their huts, and the leaves of which they also use as parasols on their journeys. The higher districts will also be sure to have the mountain cabbage (Areca oleracea), a graceful palm often 150 feet high. Its bud is perhaps one of the most delicate vegetables of the tropics, though the taking of the " cabbage " kills the tree. The roads in the same districts will be bordered with fences of the Barbadoes Pride {Poinciana pnlc/ier- nina) — the " doodle-doo " of the negroes — while over its pea-covered stems twines the liquorice vine {Abrus precalorius), the scarlet and black spotted seeds of which (John Crow or Jumby beads) are well known in Europe as the beads of necklaces. Here also trails the Circassian bean {Andenanthera pavonina), whose seeds East Indian jewellers use as weights, the Jeru salem thorn, and the sea-side grape tree {Coccoloba vvifera), the wood of which is well suited for wood engraving, while the fruit makes even better tarts. In the highlands — say CENTRAL AMERICA: THE LOWLANDS OF GUATEMALA. 19 among the Manchester mountains — as, indeed, almost everywhere, the humming-birds flit about among the trumpet-shaped flowers of the Portlandia, the scarlet blossoms of the shoe black flower (Hibiscus), or the full clusters of the lilacs. Rich orchids scent the air, chief among which is the Holy Ghost plant, with its white petals covering the snowy dove within. The wax plant trails over window-frames, the spider orchid over the guava trees, and the honeysuckle on the pillars of the piazza. Jessamines and frangipanes perfume every room, and the most common bouquet is formed of stephanotis and heliotropes, of gigantic lilies, lovely to look on and pleasant to scent, of clove-scented carnations, and Martinique roses. In the garden may be seen loquat and bread-fruit trees, and the magenta blossoms of the Tahiti apple (Spondias dulcis), while close by are the handsome star-apple trees (Chry- sophyllum Cainito), with their quivering leaves, green on the upper, bronze on the lower surface, justifying the cynical negro proverb, which declares that a woman is " deceitful, like a star- apple leaf." The famous avocado, or alligator pear (Persea gratissima) , is sure to be seen. It is eaten with salt fish, and is an excellent substitute for butter.* An irascible old planter was on the point of dismissing his bookkeeper because during the pear season he ate butter with his bread. "For a man who can do that," he growled, "upon the wages I give him, cannot possibly be honest." The negro watches the progress of his ' provisions ' with a careful eye through all their various stages of ' growth ' (sprouting) , ' blossoming/ 'fitting/ 'fitness/ and 'ripeness.' Still we are afraid that much of his labour in his field consists of lying under a tree with a ' junky ' (cutty) pipe in his mouth, indulging in Turk like keyf, and dreamily gloating over his rising crops. The food of the negro chiefly consists of ' bread-kind ' and ' salt provisions.' The former embraces yams, plantains, bananas, cocoas, bread-fruit, and sweet potatoes; the latter includes salt pork, salt cod, ling, herring, and mackerel ; vegetables are chiefly used as ingredients in a pepper-pot. Stewed cat is considered a dainty dish among these woolly-headed epicures. The labourers on the sugar estates, both coolie and Creole, hunt and eat the large rats which infest the cane-fields," and parrots are also largely consumed by the negroes, who say they resemble pigeons in flavour. In Guatemala, as in all Spanish-American countries, owing to the original conditions of the settlement (Vol. II., p. 280), private individuals often hold great tracts of land; still there is much unoccupied ground in the tierras valdias, so called, which is, however, for the most part utterly waste, a condition in which — so far as cultivation goes — much of the appropriated land is. The sparseness of the population (scarcely twenty-four to the square mile) is no doubt one of the causes of this, but the great fertility of the soil, and the consequent inducement to indolence and idleness, without any neutralising stimulus to ambition and industry, are also to be blamed for much of the backward state of this, as of all tropical countries. Spanish-American countries also seem un fortunate in attracting little or no immigration. But in reality this is greatly owing to the jealousy of foreigners, which has grown up in all the old Spanish colonies from the time when, by the old Royal laws, no strangers were permitted to trade with the * Hence it is also sometimes called vegetable marrow, or midshipman's hutter. It is a species of the Laurel order (Lauracece), and the tree, of which it is the fruit, grows, as a rule, to the height of twenty or thirty feet. 20 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Indies. Indeed, it seems characteristic of these countries that when they gained their freedom, they retained, as a result of the narrow-minded short-sighted prejudices among which they had grown up, some of the worst features of the former regime. Want of public spirit and ignorance of the elementary laws of political economy pervade every department of the Central American governments : it is no use particularising one over the other — they are all much about the same. The cochineal insect was introduced in Guatemala in 1811, and its nurture and collection now form one of the chief indus tries of the country. It is fed upon the "nopal" (Opuntia Tuna, as well as Nopalea coccinellifera), which grows to perfection in the volcanic country, where the soil is so dry and unstable that volcanic matter and sheets of hot water exist at a depth below the surface so small that in some places a temperature of 212° Fahr. is realised by digging down only a few feet. Jets of steam are constantly issuing from these furnaces, and become visible after sunset, filling the valley with smoke. Such a valley is that of Amatitlan, west of Guatemala, which constitutes the centre of the cochineal cultivation. There the insects feed on the cactus, and soon grows fat. They are then swept off into trays, and thrown on hot plates, the newly hatched young being, however, preserved for the next crop. The insect thus artificially shrivelled up is then put into water, and gives out the well-known cochineal dye of commerce. Cereus Dyckii (Plate XXI.) flourishes equally well, and in some places forms extensive thickets. It is, however, in the tierra templada — the high alluvial plains — that the Guate malan is seen to best advantage. As the lagoons, savannas, and great forests of the low hot lands disappear, the atmosphere, as M. Morelet remarks, becomes fresh and pure, the population more compact, the ties which bind society together more numerous, and man appears to have recovered in a large degree the energy and activity of other regions. He there displays greater industry, more forethought, and is less averse to labour. " His domain is more extended than in higher and ' in lower grounds, his efforts better appreciated, and he no longer sustains an unequal contest with Nature, but subdues and binds her to his will." In this part of the country, also, venomous reptiles are rarer than in the low land, where they are by no means uncommon. The poisonous Trigonocephalies is one of the most dangerous of snakes, while the boa, though not venomous, is yet dreaded for its strength and activity. The rattle-snake (Crotalus Jwrridus) is also common in dry ground, though it is not regarded with anything like the horror which attaches to the perfectly harmless, though hideous gecko (Gymnondaetylus scapularis), which basks on sunny walls, and is universally believed to inflict a bite which is incurable ! In the cool region are found the most beautiful flowers, which scent the air with their odour. Here flourish the amaryllis, the helianthius, the wood-sorrel, the Indian pinks, endless varieties of penstemons and tree ferns, while the clematis and ipomeea festoon the wood, and the glycine enlaces the wayside trees. A plain on which the village of Taltick is built is so cool that the inhabitants style it a tierra helada, or frozen land. In December there is often hoar frost, and even now and then a slight fall of snow. Yet here also the banana flourishes, a sure sign that the temperature does not as a rule fall very low. CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA. n. A VIEW ON THE SPANISH MAIN. The modern city of Guatemala is situated in the centre of a plain which abounds- with earthworks and tumuli, the work of a people of former times. New Guatemala iSj. 22 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. however, removed thirty miles from the volcanoes, though Antiqua Guatemale — the old capital— still stands, but its cathedral and houses are rent by the earthquakes which have visited them. Most of the inhabitants are of mixed descent, though there are a few descendants of the old Spanish families, and a small European Society, formed by the diplomatic corps, and the coffee planters and their agents. The Indians are, however, the hewers of wood and drawers of tobacco. In early morning they may be seen thronging the roads, carrying great burdens by means of bonds or straps passed round their fore heads. In the days before the Conquest there were no beasts of burden ; hence all loads had to be carried in this manner. Yet, though there is now an abundance of mules in the country, such is the force of habit that the Indians never use them, but bear their burdens, as did their fathers, on their own backs. Contrary, also, to what obtains among the Northern Indians, the women only carry water and grind the corn, the men doing all the hard toil. The capital of Guatemala — the city of the same name, the Quautemalan of the Indians — is not an inviting place of residence. It is poor, and the people are un- sympathising and suspicious of all who appear inclined to share their very moderate wealth. As the houses are low, the traveller who approaches it sees from a distance only a "monotonous succession of roofs, relieved here and there by the domes and clock towers of the churches. An air of solitude and abandonment pervades its environs; there are no gardens, no plantations, no country houses, nor any of those industrial establishments which throng the approaches to our capitals. The houses of the suburbs are mere huts, covered with thatch, and separated from each other by hedges or open spaces of ground. Proceeding further, the traveller finds broad streets all laid out with the severest regularity, which prevails equally in the architecture of the houses. As a precaution against earth quakes, their height is limited to twenty feet, and they are therefore reduced to a single ground floor. Their fronts are without ornament, but sometimes are bordered by a narrow side walk, which gives a momentary relief to the pedestrian from the detestable pavement of the streets, composed of stones, rough, angular, and badly laid down." Like all Spanish towns it is crowded with churches, including a cathedral, which might at one time have been rather imposing, but has now fallen much from its ancient grandeur. It contains some rather well-executed wooden statues of saints, and some indifferent paintings, for in the old Spanish days the patronage of the Government maintained here a school of artists devoted to ecclesiastical works of this description. Nowadays, from want of patrons, this secluded school has died away, and even the goldsmith's art, for which Guatemala was once celebrated, has sunk to the lowest ebb. The church contains — or did contain — a large tasteful lamp of silver, but the other sacred vessels, and the six great golden candlesticks — each upwards of three feet in height — have long ago disappeared. Four were stolen by a private individual, whose sacrilegious name is unknown, and the other two were melted down by the State under the excuse of "public necessity." The cemetery of Guate mala is like that of most Spanish countries. The dead are "buried" — if the phrase may be used — in niches in the high walls of the cemetery. In these compartments the coffins are placed, and the mouths plastered up, a black lozenge being painted on the outside for the reception of any inscription, so that, it has been remarked, the wall resembles the display of multitudinous packs of cards. At the end of every ten years the fosse CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA. 23 for the common dead is cleared out for the reception of new occupants, and the bones are piled up in pyramids in the corner of this hideous golgotha. The only feature at all pleasant about Spanish burying-grounds is that children are interred with music, the relatives, whatever may be their real feelings, always affecting to feel glad that the little one has so soon gone to rest. Yet Guatemala is a gloomy town, and one in which the stranger, by every account, speedily gets overpowered by ennui of the most consuming description. The people go early to bed, and get up late; by 8 p.m. the streets seem deserted, and the traffic — such as it is — is not resumed much before 10 next day. In the interval the sleepy serenos (Vol. II., p. 293) have it all their own way ; but even these incompetent watchmen are an institution of comparatively recent times, previous to which the streets after dark were safe neither for life nor limb. Of course there is a plaza, and in the plaza there is a market, this market, or rather the collection of Indians who frequent it, being really the most interesting sight in the whole city. M. Morelet's description of the scene is so graphic, that as a condensed view of Guatemalian life I may extract it : — " The market is well supplied with vegetables, collected,, it is true, from places not distant, yet possessing different climates, and the fruits of Europe, few in number, and of inferior quality, are confounded with those of America to such a degree, indeed, that the vendors themselves are ignorant of their origin. Scattered at intervals are little shops, where the Indians gather to obtain a cheap meal. They first lay in a stock of tortillas, which are sold separately, and then hand in their porringer or calabash to be filled. For a cuartillo (three cents) they are furnished with a thick red soup called pulique, composed of maize, pepper, and fragments of tortillas. Nothing can be less tempting than this national dish; indeed, the general manner of serving repasts in these Indian restaurants is revolting in the extreme. Overtaken one day by a heavy shower, which obliged me to seek shelter under one of the galleries of the plaza, I employed the leisure moments in watching the economy of these establishments. The one nearest me was kept by an old mulatress, squatting like a monkey beside a furnace which supported three earthen jars. When a customer presented himself, she drew from a basket near by a large plantain leaf, plunged her wrinkled hand into one of the earthen vessels, and took out a quantity of the steaming contents, which she spread over the leaf, then she added a layer of beans, and finally the same hand, still dripping, disappeared in the third jar, and came out of a charming orange colour, for it now containefl the pulique, and which gives to the customer's dish the culminating touch of perfection. Here and there huge parasols, covered with palm leaves, shade the booths, where are sold syrup, tiste, and other refreshing or tonic beverages. In the distance those naked, copper-coloured men, who are seated on the church steps, apart from the movements and seductions of the place, are the Indians of the tierras calientes, resembling a flock of migratory birds. They are resting themselves, while making their simple breakfast on an ear of maize. This group, close at hand, is made up of Sambos, a strange type of men, of whom we have already spoken, and who are easily recognised by their sooty colour, their brilliant eyes, and their crispy hair. They are bloodthirsty in disposition, and wholly destitute of honour, morality, or principle. The inhabitants of Palin and Jocotenango are easily distinguished by their white cotton drawers, which do not reach the knee, a peculiar costume, derived by their ancestors from 24 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. the conquerors, to whom it was probably transmitted by the Moors. Here lounge the ladiitos, under the shadow of the arcades, veritable lazzaroni, regaling themselves with boxes of sweetmeats. They have finished their day's labour, and are rapidly consuming its products; nor will they return to work until driven to it by necessity. And, lastly, those men with round jackets, who so carefully close their shops and barricade them within; they are the true citizens of the place, and the rustic simplicity of their customs and manners is not to be mistaken as belonging to the republican character, for they are full of aristocratic vanity, and feel deeply wounded if, when addressed, the title which they have seen fit to prefix to their name is omitted." If we are to take our opinions from M. Morelet, and he understood the country and its inhabitants better than some modern travellers, the Guatemalians are not a pleasant people. The women have little education, and feeling their deficiency, generally avoid the society of European ladies; the men are selfish, intensely suspicious, bound up in their petty interests and monastic squabbles, and though like all the Spanish race, full of high-flown compliments, and ever begging that the stranger will consider their honour, credit, and fortunes at their disposal, would be rather sulky if their offers were taken to mean more than a glass of water, or at most a cigar. Once, the priests ruled all in Guatemala, but though they still maintain a considerable hold on the State, their power has been gradually decreasing, until by the last constitution of the State they are prohibited from taking any active part in the government. The people, in a word, do not live, they vegetate. Morality is at a low stand, as might be expected in a country where for three hundred years the highest offices of State were put up to auction, where money was all in all, and merit nowhere, where the custom-house officers can to this day be " arranged " with, where the judges sold and still sell judgments, but not justice, and where the clergy by their greed and immorality bring religion into contempt. Guatemala is yet, as ever it was, the prey of ruffianly politicians, the most terrible of whom was Rafael Carrera, whom I have already referred to (p. 17), a Sambo, sprung from the lowest depth, fierce, cunning, unscrupulous, but yet a master of all the men who demeaned themselves before him, and endeavoured to make him their tool. The terrible condition of the country may be inferred from the fact that from 1S12 to 1842 no less than fifty-two battles were fought in Guatemala, while the aggregates for all the five States of the Confederation during that period were 143 battles — none of them very bloody, it may be allowed — but in the warfare of Central American politics probably more men have fallen by assassination and by military and political executions than in the field, where the dead during the period mentioned numbered 7,088, and the wounded 1,785. All over Guatemala are numerous ruined "cities," the work of the ancient Indians before they sank into their present condition by the oppression and barbarism of the conquerors. These cities, now lying hidden in jungles, seem at one time to have been densely peopled. A powerful priesthood occupied the numerous temples, a fixed and mild form of government was established, the people were employed in agriculture or State labour, methods of symbolic language were in course of construction and improvement, and hieroglyphics were in use to express astronomical data, and the principal meteorological and political events. It is probable that the architects of the mounds of the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys were of the same race as those who reared the mounds now found CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA. 25 in Guatemala, many of the articles found there being identical with those disinterred from similar mounds or refuse heaps in North America. It is curious that these ruined cities of Central America should be found only in a limited area, and should be evidently the work of one particular and exceptionally civilised race of Indians. None exist in South America, and none in that part of the Continent commonly called North America. They all lie within the tropics between the 12th and 22nd parallels of north latitude, and are chiefly adjacent to the Mexican and Honduras Gulfs, or in the plains on the VIEW OF THE VILLAGE OF PANSOS, GUATEMALA. east of the Cordilleras of Central America. On the western or Pacific slopes and plateaux, within the same parallels are also remains of ancient fortifications and sacrificial altars, but these are of a less elaborate type, and are allied to the Aztec structure of Mexico. The arrival of the Spaniards destroyed for ever the chance of the race who built these cities of Central America and the corresponding structures in Mexico from ever becoming one of the influential and civilised nations of the world.* Some of these structures are engraved on p. 6, and Vol. II., p. 265. * Brine : " The Ruined Cities of Central America." Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XLII., p. 355, Bemuilli ; Petermann's " Geographical Mittheilungen," 1868-69, and 1873 ; " Reports of Emhassy and Legation," 1871 and 1875 ; " Consular Reports," 1873 ; and the works of Del, Waldeck, and Stephens already referred to. 84 26 the countries of the world. ~ Belize. Belize, Balize, or British Honduras, is a colony of Great Britain, formed of the south-eastern portion of the Peninsula of Yucatan, and may be described as that portion of Guatemala bordering the shores of the Bay of Honduras. Its area is about 13,500 square miles, and its population in 1870 was 24,710 (12,603 males and 12,107 females), of whom only 377 were whites. The country is generally flat and swampy on the coast, as is most of the neighbouring regions, but towards the interior it rises gradually, the elevation culminating in the table-lands of Guatemala already described. The southern portion is composed of savannas or prairies covered with pines, while the banks of the rivers, such as the Rio Hondo, Blue, and the River Siboon — the first two of which-named streams form its northern boundary, and the last one its southern — and the Belize River are covered with mahogany and logwood. Indeed, it was this fine timber which originally attracted adventurers to this colony from Jamaica, soon after it was discovered by Columbus. The presence of the English was long regarded with extreme jealousy by the Spaniards, and though in 1670 our territorial rights were partially acknowledged, yet it was not until 1786 that a formal grant of the settlement was obtained from His Most Catholic Majesty. The population is confined chiefly to the towns and the mahogany cutting estab lishments on the rivers; one half live in the capital, Belize, a town of 6,614 inhabitants, situated at the mouth of the river of the same name, which is navigable for 200 miles from its mouth. The forests contain cedar, rosewood, pine, and other good timber, the india- rubber, and the sarsaparilla, agave, indigo, &c, while along the coast the cocoa-nut and other tropical trees and shrubs flourish. The valleys and plains yield abundant crops of sugar-cane and other tropical products, but the great staple of British Honduras is the mahogany tree (Swietenia mahogani), whose vast size and magnificent foliage justly entitle it to be called the king of the forest. It is very slow in growth, hardly under going a perceptible increase during the lifetime of a man ; hence its extreme firmness. It has been calculated, according to Mr. Squier, that it requires 300 years to attain to a proper growth for cutting. So large does it sometimes become, that the lower section of a tree, 17 feet long, has been known to "square" 5 feet 6 inches, equal to 550 cubic feet, and a weight' of seventeen tons. The camps for cutting the mahogany trees are situated as near as possible to the rivers, and like the logging camps of North America (Vol. I., p. 256) are necessarily temporary, being shifted according to the abundance or scarcity of the trees to be chopped down, and floated to the receiving, marking, and shipping establishments near the mouths of the rivers. The pursuit of the mahogany chopper is a wild but a systematic one. Having fixed on a "location," he brings to the spot a store of provisions, and makes arrangements for securing and embarking the wood on its voyage seaward. Here he keeps a little fleet of pilpans, or canoes, for carrying supplies, and keeping up relations with the " works " proper. Sometimes he is forced to go back a considerable distance from the banks, and then, as in the forests of the north, oxen are used to "truck" the wood to the river. The "camp" is then fixed, a hut, composed of a hammock swung between two posts, and protected from sun and rain by a thatch of palm leaves, forming a house sufficient for the purpose. Tbe mahogany season lasts from August to April, CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA; THE MAHOGANY TRADE. 27 as the wood when cut during these months is not so apt to "check" in seasoning, or split in falling, as during the rest of the year, or what is known as "the spring." The labourers work in gangs of twenty or fifty each, under the direction of a captain, who assigns to them their daily tasks, and adds to or deducts from their wages in proportion as they accomplish what is considered a fair day's work or not. To each gang is attached a "hunter," whose business it is to search for proper trees to cut, and as his work involves greater intelligence and activity than the others, he is paid higher wages. With his machette he cuts his way through the dense forest, until he comes to some elevated situation, when he climbs the highest tree, and minutely surveys the surrounding country. "At this season of the year (August)," writes an eye-witness, " the leaves of the mahogany tree are invariably of a yellowish-reddish hue, and an eye accustomed to this kind of exercise can, at a great distance, discern the places where the wood is most abundant. He now descends, and to such places his steps- are at once directed, and, without compass or other guide than what observation has imprinted on his recollection, he never fails to reach the exact spot at which he aims. On some occasions no ordinary stratagem is necessary to be resorted to by the huntsman to prevent others from availing themselves of the advantage of his discoveries; for if his steps be traced by those who may be engaged in the same pursuit, which is a very common thing, all his ingenuity must be executed to beguile them from the true track. In this, however, he is not always successful, being followed by those who are entirely aware of all the arts he may use, and whose eyes are so quick that the slightest turning of a leaf or the faintest impression of the foot is unerringly perceived. Even the dried leaves which may be strewed upon the ground often help to conduct to the secret spot; and it consequently happens that persons so engaged must frequently undergo the disappointment of finding an advantage they had promised to themselves seized on by others. The hidden treasure being, however, discovered, the next operation is the felling of a sufficient number of trees to employ the gang during the season. The tree is commonly cut about ten or twelve feet from the ground, a stage being erected for the axeman employed in levelling it. This, to an observer, would appear a labour of much danger, but an accident rarely happens to the people engaged in it. The trunk of the tree, from the dimensions of the wood it furnishes, is deemed most valuable ; but for purposes of an ornamental kind, the limbs or branches are generally preferred, tkeir grain being much closer, and the veins richer and more variegated." The next operation is "trucking" the trees cut, but this, as well as the operation of making graded roads, is much the same as that already described in the account of lumbering operations in the north (Vol. I., p. 259), with the exception that instead of the trees being simply dragged along the ground, they are borne on a sort of truck or low carriage, to keep them from rolling off which is the chief reason for them being square. In performing this work, many valuable trees — such as iron- wood, bullet-tree, red wood, sapodilla, &c, have to be destroyed, or are thrown away as useless, unless they happen to be near a stream or glen, in which case they are employed in building bridges. The roads being usually finished by the month of December, the trees are sawn into con veniently-sized logs, squared, unless they are small, and dragged to the river side. To again quote from the author on whom we have already drawn— "the season may be 28 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. termed the mahogany cutter's harvest, as the result of his season's work depends upon a continuance of the dry weather, for a single shower of rain would materially injure his roads. The number of trucks worked is proportioned to the strength of the gang, and the distance generally from six to ten miles. We will, for example, take a gang of forty men, capable of working six trucks, each of which requires seven pair of oxen and two drivers, sixteen to cut food for the cattle, and twelve to load or put the logs on the carriages, which latter usually take up a temporary residence somewhere near the main body of the wood, it being too far to go and return each day to the river side or chief estab lishment. From the intense heat of the sun the cattle would be unable to work during its influence ; consequently, they are obliged to use the night time in lieu of the day, the sultry effects of which it becomes requisite to avoid. The loaders, as before mentioned, being now at their stations in the forest, the trucks set off from the embarcadero at about six in' the evening, and arrive at their different places of loading about eleven or twelve o'clock at night; the loaders, being at the time asleep, are warned of the approach of the trucks by the cracking of the whips carried by the cattle-drivers, which are heard at a considerable distance. They arise, and commence placing the logs on the trucks, which is done by means of a temporary platform laid from the edge of the truck to a sufficient distance from the ground, so as to make an inclined plane, upon which the log is gradually pushed up from each end alternately. Having completed their work of loading all the trucks, which may be done in three hours, they again retire to rest till about nine o'clock next morning. The drivers now set out on their return, but their progress is considerably retarded by the lading, and although well provided with torchlight, they are frequently impeded by small stumps that remain in the road, and which would be easily avoided in daylight. They are, however, in general all at the river by eleven o'clock next morning, when, after throwing their logs into the river, having previously marked them on each end with the owner's initials, the cattle are fed, the drivers retiring to rest until about sunset, when they feed the cattle a second time, and yoke in again. Nothing can present a more extraordinary appearance than this process of trucking or drawing down the mahogany to the river. The six trucks will occupy an extent of road a quarter of a mile. The number of oxen, the drivers half naked (clothes being inconvenient from the heat of the weather and clouds of dust), and each bearing a torchlight, the wildness of the forest scenery, the rattling of the chains, the sound of the whip echoing through the woods : then all is activity and exertion, so ill-corresponding with the silent hour of midnight, making it wear more the appearance of some theatrical exhibition than what it really is, the pursuit of industry which has fallen to the lot of the Honduras wood-cutter. About the end of May the periodical rains again commence. The torrents of water discharged from the clouds are so great as to render the roads impassable in the course of a few hours, when all trucking ceases, the cattle are turned into the pasture, and the trucks, gear, tools, &c, are housed. The rain now pours down incessantly till about the middle of June, when the rivers swell to an immense height. The logs then float down a distance of 200 miles, being followed by the gangs in pitpans (a kind of flat-bottomed canoe), to disengage them from the branches of the overhanging trees, until they are stopped by a boom placed in some situation convenient to the mouth of the river. Each gang then separates its own CENTRAL AMERICA: BELIZE. 29 cuttings by the marks on the end of the logs, and forms them into large rafts, in which state they are brought down to the wharves of the proprietors, when they are taken out of the water and undergo a second process of the axe to make the surface smooth. The ends, which frequently get split and rent by the force of the current, are also sawed off, when they are ready for shipping." * The wages of the men engaged in this business in both British Honduras and the republic of the same name are about the same. The quotations of pay stand as follows : — A captain receives from £6 to £8 per month, and the men BRITISH BARRACKS AT ORANGE WALK, BELIZE. £3, £2 8s., and £2, according to their rank. The " hunter " for the gang has £3 per month, or more frequently he is paid at from half-a-dollar to a dollar for each tree he finds, according to its size and value. The men are supplied with tools and rations, or receive their wages in goods and money. In Belize most of the cutters are negroes, descendants of the former slaves employed in the colony, but in Honduras they are chiefly Caribs, many of whom go to Belize to hire themselves for the season, returning to their homes at the close. They meet with ready employment, as they are said to excel the negro in activity and strength, and hence make better workmen. The mahogany trade is increasing, nor, for the present, at least, is there any danger of the supply failing, though, owing to the reckless felling without proper supervision or replanting, the cutters have to go further and further every * Quoted hy Squier: "Honduras, Descriptive, Historical, and Statistical" (1870), p. 135. 30 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. year from the great rivers, and by-and-by will have to contend with the difficulties of floating the logs down shallow or broken rivers, and embarking them on an unprotected shore. In 1875 Belize exported to Great Britain £227,896 worth of products (including 2,300 tons weight of sugar), fustic, dyewoods of many kinds, and, of course, mahogany, cedar, and sarsaparilla. Imports from the United Kingdom were in the same year £125,308, the annual revenue £40,231, the expenditure £36,613, and as the debt in 1877 was only £5,040, the colony may be said to be solvent and even prosperous in its own quiet tropical sort of way.* It differs from most colonies whose acquaintance we have made or may have yet to make, in so far that it issues no imaginative yellow-covered pamphlet to tout its glories, and keeps in England no agent-general whose duties were long ago described in Talleyrand's definition of an ambassador. It does not profess to have "the finest chmate in the world," and though the Belisians would be more than mortal if they did not claim for their colony the merit of having "boundless riches," they are not particularly anxious for any more immigrants to share them. San Salvador. This is the smallest in size, but in point of population the second largest of the republics which came into existence on the dissolution of the Central American Confederation in 1839, though previous to 1853 it was in federal union with Honduras and Nicaragua, and has not unfrequently since been at war with both. It is difficult to be certain at the present moment what is its particular form of government, since for years past " pronuncia- mientos" have taken the place of any regular presidential election, and a sort of militarily controlled anarchy prevails. It is about 180 miles in length, by about 40 in breadth, and contains an area of 9,594 square miles, with a population estimated at 600,000, mostly aborigines or mixed races, as the pure whites do not number more than 10,000. Several mountain spurs break San Salvador into a number of inland valleys and a low rich belt along the coast. The Central range, or Cordilleras, possesses sixteen volcanic peaks, ranging in height from 4,000 to 7,386 feet. There are also numerous lakes, one of which — Guija — is nearly ninety miles in circumference, and abounds in fish. Five or six miles to the eastward of the city of San Salvador is the lake of Ylopango, about nine miles in length, and averaging three miles in breadth. Mr. Baily describes the ground on the north and south sides as very steep and rugged, while on the eastern and western extremities it is nearly level with the surface of the water. No stream of any consequence falls into it, and its only outlet is the Desaguedero, which flows through a deep, dark, and almost unapproachable ravine, until it empties itself into the Jiboa. The inhabitants believe that the lake is unfathomable. The water when taken up is beautifully pellucid, but it is not accounted wholesome; when ruffled it assumes that colour which the Salvadorians call rerde de perico (parrot-green), and exhales a powerful, disagreeable, sulphurous odour, which becomes more intense as the wind increases in strength. When the upper stratum of the water is thus moved, fish are taken in great quantities ; at other times, when the lake is still, few can be caught. These fish, * Statistical abstracts from the several colonial and other possessions of the United Kingdom in each ye&t from 1861 to 1875 (Parliamentary Reports, 1877). CENTRAL AMERICA: SAN SALVADOR. 31 though of indifferent quality, are much esteemed by the inhabitants of San Salvador, owing to their having little acquaintance with any other kinds. Tbis sulphury character of the lake, as well as the numerous mineral springs and other similar subterranean phenomena, are doubtless owing to the intensely volcanic character of the country. The soil is very fertile, but though the people of San Salvador are more addicted to agriculture than most of those of the neighbouring republics, much of the country still lies waste, and pastoral pursuits find little favour. Indigo, sugar, maize, cotton, and coffee are the chief crops. Along the coast, from Acajutla to La Libertad, the world-famous balsam of Peru, or St. Salvador balsam, is collected in such quantities that the country is known as Costa del Bal- samo. The annual export averages from 17,600 lbs. to 22,000 lbs. It is almost entirely collected by the Indians, who are the chief inhabitants of the districts, and hold no intercourse with the rest of the country except that which is absolutely necessary for carrying on their peculiar trade. Each individual or family collects independently of the others, and, accordingly, the balsam is bought in small quantities by the persons who purchase it for exportation. The trees yielding this commodity are very numerous in this part of the country, aad though other regions have the same kind of soil and climate, they do not seem to be favoured with the presence of Myroxylon Pereira. The balsam is collected by being absorbed as it exudes, in pieces of cotton rags inserted in the incisions made for the purpose. These, when thoroughly saturated, are replaced by others, which, as they are removed, are thrown into boiling water. The heat detaches the balsam, which floats, and is skinned off and preserved in calabashes. The wood of the tree is close grained, beautifully veined, nearly of a mahogany colour, and retains its fragrance for a long time. It would then be valuable for cabinet work, but it is rarely to be had, as the trees are never felled until, either through age or decay, they have ceased to yield the resins which gave them their original value. The association of the name of the resin with Peru is due to the fact that in former times, owing to the commercial regu lations then existing in Spanish America, the product was sent to Callao, and thence shipped to Spain, leading to the belief in Europe that it was a product of South America; and the few who knew the contrary did not care to enlighten the rest of the world. Though there is no great mineral wealth in San Salvador, yet at Tabanco there are rich. veins of silver, and in the west, near Santa Anna, mines of iron. The fine indigo — known in " the trade " as " Guatemala indigo "— »is the most valuable staple of the country. The estimated revenue for 1876 was £447,723, and the estimated expenditure £430,663. At present the debt is unknown. In 1875 it was said to exceed £872,645, but as there is also a floating debt of an unknown amount, it is impossible to rightly estimate the indebtedness of the Republic, though, if put at £1,300,000, San Salvador will not be wronged. In 1874, its imports were estimated at £373,818, its exports at £721,005.* The capital is San Salvador, a town of 16,000 inhabitants, which has been frequently destroyed by earthquakes, the last time in 1854, when it contained 30,000 people. Most of the new dwellings were accordingly rebuilt after this catastrophe at Nueva San *" Parliamentary Reports of Embassy and Legation," 1869, 1871, and 1873. Laferriere : "De Paris a Guatemala" (1877) ; Marr: " Reise nach Central Amerika" (1863), &c. 32 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Salvador, not far off, though without gaining much, as in March, 1873, this new capital was also partially destroyed by a series of earthquakes, ended by a simultaneous eruption of the Yzalco volcano. Its trade is now reviving, and is carried on chiefly through La Libertad— the principal port in the republic— which is distant about sixteen miles from the town. In the days before the Conquest, San Salvador was called Cuscatlan—" the land of riches"— and was the best peopled and most civilised of all the American countries ¦i i VIEW OF BAY ISLANDS, HONDURAS. which had come under the control of the Aztec religion. Conquered by Pedro de Alvarado, one of the companions of Cortes, it became one of the richest portions of the kingdom of Guatemala, until, m 1821, it threw off the Spanish yoke, and joined Mexico: In 1823 it, however, seceded from that republic, and formed the Central American Con federation, in which all of the five confederates were so uncomfortable, that they broke asunder in 1839. Since then it has frequently been at war with its old confederates. Honduras. conJnilT^0 COnitainSal;0ufc 39'600 ^™ "**, and is generally mountainous, though Got ZL 8 agnCUltUral laUd- ^ minml W6alth is' h0Wever ' * 8~t resourL chalk Imest?^ r T^" "^ antim°ny' tin' Platinum' °Pa1' ame%^ asbestos, chalk, limestone, marble, and coal are enumerated among its riches, while the soil produces 22 VIEW OF TUB CITY OF PANAMA CENTRAL AMERICA: HONDURAS. 33 mahogany, and other fine timber trees, cotton, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and the usual tropical crops. What the revenue is does not appear, civil war, wars with Guatemala and San Salvador, general anarchy and unconscionable peculation having produced something approaching to chaos. The national income is believed to be about £97,000, but the expenditure has for several years past exceeded this. At the end of 1876, the foreign debt amounted to some thing like £5,990,108 contracted for an interoceanic railway, of which only about fifty-three MAP OP CENTRAL AMERICA. miles on the Atlantic side were completed, and are now abandoned, the whole affair being little better than a swindle. In truth, if Honduras ever attempted to pay the interest on its debt — which it does not, and it is not likely ever will — it would amount to an annual charge of £695,700, or more than seven times the total receipts which the Govern ment can in any way calculate upon ! But it is unnecessary reopening these old tales : the " Interoceanic Ship Railway Canal " is a sore subject with the British capitalist, and Honduras a State very prominent in the " Report of the Foreign Loans Committee " of the House pf Commons (1875). The inhabitants of Honduras number about 351,700, but there has been no regular survey of the country or census of the people, so that the figures given are mere estimates. 85 34 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. There are not many Europeans, or people of European descent, the greater number of the " citizens " being either Indians or mixed breeds. Some of the towns, like Santa Rosa, in the tobacco districts, are almost entirely inhabited by whites. The capital — Comayagua — (formerly called Valladolid) an ancient town of 7,000 or 8,000 inhabitants, is figured on p. 37. It was founded in 1540 by Alonzo Caceres, in obedience to instructions to find "an eligible situation for a city midway between the oceans." Previous to 1827, it had 18,000 inhabitants, but in that year it. was taken and burnt by the monarchial faction in Guatemala — for Central America has even had yearnings after a king — and has never since recovered the shock. It has a languid university and a cathedral, built and decorated after the questionable tasteful style of Spanish ecclesiastical edifices. The city stands in the middle of a great plain, 2,000 feet above the sea-level, a site which seems, from the remains of towns, fortifications, and similar creations to have been a favourite one with the ancient inhabitants of Honduras. Its exports, which are chiefly mahogany, hides, tobacco, cattle, and indigo, are estimated to be worth on an average £200,000 per annum, while the imports, viz. — cotton goods, silk, hardware, &c. — cannot be stated with anything like accuracy, the customs of the different ports being farmed out to private individuals, whose interest it is to blindfold the Government and the public generally concerning the trade of the country and their corresponding profits.* The climate varies with the changing elevation, and exposure to the trade and other winds. At the highest elevation oaks and pines and wheat-fields flourish, and in others — as in the plain of Comayagua — the palm and the pine flourish side by side. The climate, even on the coast, is not hotter than, as Mr. Squier points out, New York during the warmest months of the year. Yellow fever is unknown in the interior or on the Pacific coast. The average range of the ther mometer is on the coast about 75° Fahr.; in the interior, at an elevation of 300 feet, 65°, and there are points where snow has been known to fall in light showers. NlCAKAGUA.f The area of this republic, including the Mosquito Territory, is estimated at 58,170 square miles, and the population at 350,000; but this is mere guess, as there are no proper census returns to go upon. The only statistical fact we are perfectly sure about in regard to Nicaragua is its debt, which was contracted in this country. This, at the end of 1874— when the lenders repented them of the error of their ways,' and buttoned up their pockets— was estimated at £1,900,000. The revenue in the same year was about £119,020, and the expenditure £151,710, an unhealthy financial condition, which has become chronic in the State, deficits having been the invariable rule since 1865. The number of people of pure European blood in Nicaragua is small, most of the inhabitants being Indians, Mulattoes, Negroes, and the other mongrel broods who swarm over Central * Annual statement of the trade of the United Kingdom in the year 1876 (« Parliamentary Report"). Pelletier: Honduras ct ses ports ¦¦ (1869 ; Reichardt : « Centro-America " (1851), and the works of Squier, Frobel, Scherzer, Marr, and others. .+ ^i." The Na« !° Nicaragua ; » Seeman and Pirn : « Dottings hy the Way ; " Scherzer : <• Nicaragua ; " K-T : .. r7u ! t? pe0ple',Sc0nery' M°num ™ts> &c > " Biilow : « Der Freistaat Nicaragua in Mittelamerika ; » Keller : Le Canal de Nicaragua ; ¦¦ « Reports of Embassy and Legation,- 1869 ; « Consular Reports," 1876 and 1877. CENTRAL AMERICA: NICARAGUA. 35 America. These mixed races are on the increase, while the whites are decreasing, with a result which cannot but be a drawback to the development of a country peculiarly favourably situated for commerce. Indeed, in this respect, it has a superiority over all the other Central American States, the San Juan River (p. 40) and the Lake of Nicaragua almost cutting the isthmus, which separates the Atlantic from the Pacific, in two. The country is, however, but thinly peopled, the density of population being but seven to the square mile, and even that scarcely expresses the real state of matters, for most of the inhabitants are collected in the various little towns of the Pacific coast, and between it and the Lakes Nicaragua and Managua, from Realejo to the town of Nicaragua. But from the latter point to the boundary of Costa Rica the country is almost destitute of popu lation. The region on the borders of Honduras, and eastward of the lakes, is dotted with a few towns, or rather villages, but these districts are in general very thinly peopled. The old capital was Leon (25,000 inhabitants), ten miles from the Pacific, but it is surrounded by five volcanoes, and the ruins in which it lies abundantly testify to the icono clastic habits of these dangerously active neighbours, as well as to the revolutionary tendencies of the inhabitants. The present capital, Managua — a town of about 10,000 inhabitants — is situated on the southern border of the Lake Managua, but as it is built on the slope of an active volcano, it can only be looked upon as a town existing by the sufferance of the Nicaraguan Enceladi. The country is varied in its features. Mr. Baily, who thoroughly examined it, described the territory from Realejo, southward and westward — a few leagues from the ocean — as broken up by a range of hills, nowhere of great elevation until they approach the confines of Costa Rica, when they rise into mountains ranging in height from 5,000 to 11,000 feet. Between this ridge and the lakes the country is moderately level, and not much broken, but along the borders of Honduras it is intersected by several lofty ridges running in various directions. In the intervening valleys flow many rivers, the largest of which are the Segovia, or Escondido, which falls into Blewfields Bay; but none of them are navigable in a commercial sense. There are several volcanoes, all near the sea, and standing alone, or only slightly connected with the main ridge, though they are nearly all in the direction of it. Of these Mombacho, nearly 4,500 feet, Ometepe, 5,100 feet, and Momotomba, of about the same elevation. The climate, like that of Central America generally, is best in the interior, and worst on the coast, the Bay of Conchagua and the banks of the San Juan River being, perhaps, the most unhealthy part of the country. The soil is fertile, but only a small portion of the land can bo said to be either improved or made any use of. Cattle rearing after a rough fashion is the chief occupation of the inhabitants, the district of Chontales, on the eastern side of the lakes, especially affording an excellent pasturage for even greater herds than it now supports. Indigo, mahogany, cedar, logwood, Brazil wood, Nicaragua wood, and hides are the chief exports, though sugar, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco are among its products. Maize, rice, beans, and plantains are produced in great abundance, and supply the chief food of 1 the people. Wheat is grown in small quantities in the cooler parts ; fruits are plentiful, especially oranges, pineapples, guavas, breadfruit, and limes of fine quality, while the mulberry grows remarkably well. Silver, copper, iron, lead, and gold — especially in the Chontales region, where it is mined to a considerable amount — exist. But the natural 36 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. feature which gives Nicaragua a superiority over her sister republics, is the presence of the great Lakes of Nicaragua and Managua, emptied by the San Juan River, at the mouth of which, on the Atlantic coast, is Greytown, or San Juan del Norte, or de Nicaragua. At one time, in the palmy days of the Empire of the Indies, the Spanish war ships used to regularly sail up the river, and across the lake to the town of Granada. Now a shallow canoe, steered or paddled by dexterous Caribs, can "hardly clear on the crest of a wave without touching the bar, and light river steamers with stern wheels can scarcely grope their way from rapid to rapid, where rocky bottoms strewn with boulders, and whose rapidly flowing current effectually bar their further progress." * Indeed, there seems to exist conclusive evidence that some centuries ago the sea covered the entire space now occupied by the mouths and swampy deltas of the San Juan, in the vicinity of Greytown. Every year it becomes more and more evident that the water in the river is decreasing, while the banks of the lake are undoubtedly rising. Even the least observant of the natives of the country, Mr. Collinson informs us, will tell how the River Panaloya, or Tipitapa, con necting Managua and Nicaragua Lakes, is becoming drier every season, so much so that at times lately no water communication has existed between them. This fact — for fact it is — is in no way remarkable, when we remember that these lakes are in the middle of the great volcanic range bisecting the isthmus, and that the gradual upheaval of the country year by year increases the gradients of tbe rivers, and by creating a more rapid flow of water, causes the perceptible drainage of the lakes and lowers the level of the waters ; the rivers in their turn form deltas, and silt up the estuary of the San Juan. Formerly, Mr. Collinson thinks, the river must have flowed out calmly almost on a level from lake to ocean, while now the turbid waters, hurrying down with ever- increasing velocity, carry with them the debris disturbed by the floods of the rainy season, till suddenly they find a level bed; and the violence of the denser sea-water with the frequent violent "northers" (Vol. II., p. 143) of these latitudes blowing full upon them, they are arrested in their course, and deposit the suspended material, a deposition which it is known is always hastened when the fresh water holding the mud and sand in suspension mingles with salt, or other water of a different specific gravity. The total length of the San Juan is about 70 miles, and its breadth varies from 100 to 300 and 400 yards. Its banks are densely wooded, swampy, and malarious. With the exception of a fort or two, and a few Indian huts at the Rapids, there are no inhabitants from the lake to Greytown, the only living thing being the paroquets, which fly in flocks at the report of a gun, the monkeys which swing from tree to tree, the many-hued tropical birds, the endless humming insect life (Vol. I, p. 278), and the multitudes of loathsome-looking crocodiles (Molinia Americana) that lie sleeping under the bushes dipping into the rivers, or on the watch for the unwary traveller, who may slip a foot crossing the rude log bridges, or fallen trees, which span the " slues," or cul-de-sacs of the river. The forest also swarms with gallipatos-the most terrible of tropical pests— and mosquitoes, which, in this part of the world, attain a vigour which can only be matched by the clouds which make the otherwise charming rivers of North West America something to be held in * Collinson: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XII., p. 37. 38 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. evil remembrance. From the Lake of Nicaragua to the coast in the Mosquito Territory — to which we are travelling — the country is, with a few exceptions, one dense forest. A few savannas or plains, slightly undulating, and clothed with trees, "stand up at intervals- like islands in the long grass which often overtop the heads of the horsemen." Water- is scarce here in the dry season, and the traveller is often greatly distressed for the want. of it, being compelled to seek for any dregs which may have been left in the pools. frequented by the dantes, or tapirs (Elasmotherium Bairdi), and used by them alike foi- drinking and bathing. Indeed, were it not for the sap which runs out of the cut branches of the "Bejuca" (Cissus hydrophora), the sufferings of the explorer even in the woods would be intense. This great forest is composed of palms, indiarubber trees,, sapodillas, cedars, groups of fine mahogany trees, "sprawling their enormous roots over acres of ground, and rearing their vast height from the jungle beneath almost, as it seemed, up to the clouds." The guan (Penelope), a small species of turkey, is found not uncommonly in these woods, but with the exception of the jaguar and the wari (Bicotyles tajacu), there is not much game now in the country. The natives accounted for the greater scarcity of game now than formerly in this manner: — "Two years ago (1865) a terrific hurricane- similar to the one which, in 1867, devastated St. Thomas and Tortola, swept over the country, utterly destroying Blewfields, and laying low vast tracts of the forest. The wild animals and birds were destroyed by myriads, and sought refuge in the very roads and houses of the little clearings on the coast of the ocean and lake, where they were killed by the inhabitants. Since then hunting has become a profitless employment; but the jaguars, too hardy and cunning to be destroyed by the same means as the other game, have grown bolder and more ferocious, attacking men whenever they meet them,, and even taking the town of Blewfields by storm." * The country is generally flat, only a few ridges here and there, but of low elevation, intervening between the lake and the Atlantic. The soupar, or peach palm (Guilielma speciosa), is found in the forest, though it is more familiar as one of the surroundings of the Indian huts, its fruit, tasting not unlike a yam, forming, when boiled, a considerable item in the food of these aborigines. The tree is about sixty feet in height, with a straight stem, covered by regular bands of long black prickles, used by the natives as needles. The eboe tree (Bipterix eboensis), the "nuts"" of which are also eaten, appears as the Atlantic is approached, for none of them are found in the vicinity of the lakes, or on the Pacific slopes of the isthmus. As the eastern coast is neared, " the vegetation, as if by magic, changes ; on the lake slope the woods are principally hard and small-leaved. Mahoganies, cedars (Cedrela odorata), lance wood, (Buguetia. qnitarensis) , lignum vitas (Guaiacum officinale), and indiarubber (Caslilloa elastica), are- distinguishing features. The jungle is exceedingly rough, consisting in many places of miles- of prickly pear (Bromelia karatos), bamboo with 'bejucas' vines, which tried the sharpest ' machete ' and strongest arm to cut, while the surface of the ground, except in the bottoms- of the valleys, was arid, stony, and so heated, that our feet were burnt and blistered by it; watercourses were comparatively few, and many of them dry. Such a country re minded me more and more of the Mosquito coast. The vines became green and tender;. * See " Races of Mankind," Vol. I., p. 267. CENTRAL AMERICA: NICARAGUA. 39 the great coroso and cabbage palms were now mixed with the swallow tail (Geonoma), so useful for thatching, and the ribbon-like leaves of the Circitligo latifolia, while the prickly and club-rooted zanona (Socratea) would mingle their foliage with the lowest trees (Hymenasa conrbaril) ; the entada M-ith their mahogany seeds, and the swelling trumpet trees (Cecropia peltata), sarsaparilla (Smilax medico), and the clinging vanilla began to appear, and the invaluable silk grass (Bromelia) took the place of the prickly pear. Lovely tree ferns gave their incomparably delicate appearance to grace the vegetation ; running streams occurred more frequently, and the ground became springy, and cool under our feet, while it acquired that rich black colour so suggestive of fertility " * — and I may add of malaria. Curiously enough, in this wood it is said that the great mahogany and wild cotton-trees (Ceiba bombox) would often deflect the compass from the " true " as much as three degrees. Wild honey of a delicious description is often found in this jungle, though it is, with the exception of the iguana (p. 45), about the only addition to the traveller's fare which can be obtained. So dense are the forests that sunlight rarely penetrates them, and in spite of the gran deur of the vegetation, which, after a time, grows wearisomely familiar, the exhausted explorer's spirit sinks under the combined heat, disappointment, and monotony, and hails a stream flowing between banks of " scutch " grass, or the broad-leaved Heliconia bicolor, as a relief to those dark and ghostly forests of the sun-land. Altogether, between the Lake of Nicaragua and the Atlantic, the height of land is only a little over 619 feet above the former, the latter occupying the place of the Cordillera at that particular point. We have now arrived at that portion of the Atlantic seaboard which is known as the Mosquito Shore, Mosquitia, or The Mosquito Territory. A few years ago this was a veritable sovereign State — a kingdom governed by an Indian monarch — but it is now merely a part of Nicaragua, though controlled to some extent by treaty obligations entered into by Great Britain and the republic. It derives its name — not as is commonly supposed from the presence of mosquitoes, for in reality these insects are not more abundant here than elsewhere, but from a cluster of small islands, or banks, situated near its coast, and called the Mosquittos. It was discovered in 1502 by Columbus, and though never conquered, was claimed by Spain up to the year 1600, when the king put himself under the protection of the English, and various settle ments were formed in the country. Part of the region for some time figured as the territory of Poyais, and governed by a Cazique of the name of M'Gregor, who claimed to be head of the Highland clan of that name.f However, these settlements from various causes came * Collinson : Lib. cit., p. 32. t This was, I believe, the same gentleman, who, under the name of General McGregor, made, in 1819, an ill-fated attempt to free New Grenada from the Spanish yoke. He captured Portohelo, hut the place being afterwards re-captured by the Spanish forces from Panama, the prisoners — mostly British— were compelled to work on the public roads. Ten of the officers were shot, and when, in 1820, the order to free the captives arrived, only 40 half -dead men out of 417 claimed the boon, and of these several died before they could reach Chagres (Restrepo's " Historia de Colombia"). A portrait of the gallant "Cazique" forms the frontispiece to Strangeway's " Mosquito Shore " (1822). 40 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. to nothing, though in later times a good many British subjects settled at Blewfields, and on the river flowing into the bay. The king was virtually an English vassal, but our protectorate giving rise to much heartburning, both in the United States and in Central America, was virtually abandoned in 1859, when, most unjustifiably, the natives were handed over with their territory to the Republic of Honduras. As the Spaniards are hated by all the Indian tribes-and nowhere more than in this quarter-this forcible change of masters gave rise to great discontent, and finally to a rebellion. At last, in 1860, the VIEW ON THE SAN JUAN RIVER, NICARAGUA. whole territory was decreed to Nicaragua, though "King George's" authority is still partially recognised. The territory itself is rather undefined, much of the country between it and Honduras and Nicaragua proper being debatable ground. According to different estimates it is stated to comprise from 15,000 to 25,000 square miles. The coast is low, but possesses, in its many bays and lagoons, several good harbours. The climate, though rainy, is comparatively cool, and one of the most healthy in Central America. The pro ducts are those common to the neighbouring regions; deer, however, abound, and half-wild horses and cattle roam the savannas. Mahogany, cocoa, ginger, sarsaparilla, and tortoise- shell are exported, while the flesh of the sea cow affords a source of food to many of the Indians on the coast of the off -lying islands (p. 32). But the trade is very insignificant, the inhabitants, who number about 13,000, and are for the most part Indians and Sambos, CENTRAL AMERICA: THE MOSQUITO TERRITORY. 41 occupying themselves chiefly in hunting and fishing, or to a small extent in cultivating patches of land, or rearing cattle. Blewfields, a little town at the mouth of the river of the same name, is the capital. Most of the Mosquitian scenery is pleasing, though not equal in grandeur to that of the neighbouring States. On a stormy day the wild surf, dashing against the basaltic cliffs, which form a considerable portion of the coast, affords a pleasant spectacle. Of this character is most of the coast from Greytown to Blewfields. Between these two points high mountain ranges run in north-west and south-east direc- VIEW OF BLEWFIELDS, MOSQUITO TERRITORY. tions, and approach the water's edge, forming bold rocky headlands and deep bays ; and the rivers in this district are very short, shallow, and rapid* After passing Blewfields the country to the north gets flat and alluvial near the sea, only a few ridges and mounds of trap and limestone marking the retiring mountains. Extensive savannas prevail, intersected where rivers or watercourses traverse them by broad belts of timber. "Thouo-h of little use," writes Mr. Bell, "for the purposes of cultivation, these savannas are by no means dreary wastes; they present all the appearance of a beautiful English park: the ground here level, there rolling, and undulating in gentle hills, clothed in long but coarse wiry grass, and ornamented with clumps of the pretty 'papava' or fan palm, and * Bell: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XXXIL, p. 2i2. The map illustrating this paper is the most correct one of the territory extant. 86 42 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. groves of dark and stately pitch pines. Occasionally is found quite a European bit of scenery, where pines, live oaks, and willows, with banks of tall fern and moss, afford shelter to troops of deer and numbers of Indian rabbits that feed on the cones and acorns. As you go inland the savannas become overgrown, and gradually give place to the forest, and the land becomes higher as it recedes from the sea." These tracts, when they are of sufficient extent, afford excellent pasturage. The Indians rear cattle and horses on them, while the deer, pumas, and quails, which also abound, afford good sport. In the early dawn or the cool of the evening the deer (Cervtts Mexicanus) come out of the forest, and then the Indians, concealed to the leeward of the game behind clumps of fan palms, kill them with arrows. In Guatemala it is said that when the Indians have killed a deer they let it lie in the woods, or in some hole covered with leaves, for the space of about a week, until it putrefies and becomes full of maggots; they then bring it home, cut it into joints, and parboil it with an herb which grows there, and greatly resembles tansy, which sweetens it again, and makes the flesh tender and as white as a piece of turkey. Thus parboiled, they hang up the joints in the smoke for a while, when they eat it, commonly dressed with Indian pepper. Such at least was the account given by one of the earliest writers* on the country, but whether the description applies now or not I have been unable to accurately ascertain. Still further north — from Pearl Key Lagoon to Cape Gracias-a-Dios, and from thence to Brewer's Lagoon — the coast is a long stretch of sandy beach, with the tall mangrove trees behind. " From the sea it presents only the dreary aspect of an endless stretch of white surf, with an even line of green behind, without a knoll or headland to mark the whereabouts; and the Indians only distinguish places by certain odd-shaped trees or patches of tall cabbage palms which grow at the river mouths. In several places, however, there are very extensive and valuable cocoa- nut groves, which line the back of the beach for many miles, and yield cargoes of excellent nuts." Beyond Brewer's Lagoon the mountains again approach the sea, in the neighbourhood of Black River, Cape Cameron, and Roman attaining the height of 4,000 feet. Finally, the ranges avoid the shore till they reach Truxillo and Omoa in Honduras, where they again form the beetling cliffs so familiar to seamen as marking the entrance to these harbours. The whole country is intersected by rivers, which is not surprising, considering the amount of rain which falls on it. Though these rivers abound in rapids and falls, many of them, after the bars at their mouths are crossed, are navigable for ships a con siderable way into the interior, and all of them by canoes. Mr. Bell's description of the scenery on these rivers is so characteristic of the whole of Central America, that it would be unjust to abridge it. " Near the sea, as far as the salt water reaches, the beaches arc wooded with white, red, and black mangroves, sapodilla, Santa Maria, saba, and a hundred other swamp-growing trees, with an underwood of small prickly palms and bamboos. These grow close down to the water's edge, supporting innumerable flowering vines, which, covering the tops of the highest trees, fall in matted festoons into the water, making a perpendicular wall of foliage, covered with sweet-smelling flowers of every hue, presenting an unbroken face for miles, except where a great silk cotton-tree has fallen into the * Thomas Gage: "A New Survey of tho West Indies, &c." (1648). CENTRAL AMERICA: THE MOSQUITO TERRITORY. 43 river, leaving a dark door into the thickets inside, or a cabbage or hone palm thrusts its feathery top through the wall, as if to get a peep of the broad river. In other places the beautiful sillico, oil, or hone palm, hangs over the river for miles, making a delightful arcade under their graceful branches beneath which to paddle when the sun is scorching on the open river. As we get out of reach of the sea water the land rises, and the vegetation assumes a new aspect ; the banks are fringed with a broad band of ' kboo,' or scutch grass, above which is a dense jungle of bamboos, and above all the stately magnificent forest, which the Indians call real forest, in distinction from the tangled thickets of the lower parts of the river. Here the river winds through banks of sand and pebbles, the favourite resort of numbers of alligators, 'guanas, and river tortoises, which bask in the sun in the heat of the day. Here and there enormous silk cotton-trees crown the banks, growing among the grass a little apart from the forest; in other places the Indian fig bends over the water, sending hundreds of roots into it from its highest branches, and forming a luxurious shady retreat from the overpowering noonday heat. Higher up, the river is occasionally contracted between perpendicular rocks, overhung with beautiful ' sung-sung ' bushes and bamboos, which in some small rivers, bending over from either side, meet overhead, totally shutting out the sun, and casting a dark and ominous shade over the boiling river below, which rushes through the broken rocks and round the sharp bends with a dangerous velocity. Further on it opens out again into broad sunny reaches, the sides covered with bright green grass, among which the beautiful silver-barked mountain guava rears its lofty head, often festooned round with the pendent nests of the yellowtail, which choose this tree, as no snakes or monkeys can climb its smooth stem. Some of the rivers, as the Toongla, Twaka, and Laya Siksa, run for miles through cliffs of red clay, which the floods are constantly wearing away, so that large pieces of the banks are pre cipitated into the stream, with all their bamboos and trees upon them, which wave about in the water and make an extraordinary appearance. The forest, though pretty open in the upper parts of the river, has occasional dense patches overgrown with a small, very thorny species of bamboo, called by the Indians ' Sookwa/ interlaced with thorny vines- and cutting or razor grass. In other places large tracks are covered with a long-pointed very tall reed, with leaves like the bamboo; large trees grow scantily among them, but no other underwood. In other places are found groves of cahka and other palms, which strew the ground with prickly leaves and seeds, making it almost impassable for the barefooted Indians, which is more provoking, as these places are the resort of droves of ' warrel ' and peccaiy (two species of wild hog), whose favourite food is the prickly nuts of these palms. Covered as the ground is with wood, the only way to get a view of it is by climbing a tall tree growing on a hill ; thence you see spread out before you a sea of tree tops, undulating in small hills, with a few elevated ranges towards the westward, but falling towards the east in a level plain, which, from its uniform colour, can hardly be distinguished from the sea. The land is intersected by innumerable little streams and ravines, but the soil is deep and fertile. On the small streams running into the main rivers are situated almost all the mahogany works, as the mahogany tree seldom grows near enough to the main river to allow of its being conveyed direct to it. These streams, or creeks as they are called, present the most romantic and beautiful wood- 44 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. land scenery that can be imagined, winding through dark moss-covered rocks, through avenues of tall trunks, or under a leafy arch of bamboos and 'sung-sung' trees, and the noonday sun can only penetrate the thick foliage in small patches. In places the creek opens out, and lets down a blaze of sunshine, the more frequent from the gloom of the rest, while the banks of white sand and pebbles dazzle the eye as you emerge from the shady recesses. Here flocks of curassows, with their legs stretched out and covered with their wings, recline luxuriously in the sun, and numbers of iguanas and tortoises crawl up to warm their chill blood. Occasionally an otter emerges from the clear deep pool with a the AGOUTI (Basyprocta Agouti). prime fish, and laying it down, gambols about on the sand; flocks of little green river- swallows skim over the surface of the water uttering their shrill cry; and gorgeous humming-birds appear for an instant at the cluster of flowers that hang over the stream, then dart into the depth of the forest again. The stillness that reigns in the woods at mid-day is something awful, uninterrupted even by the tinkling of the millions of crickets or the mournful cooing of the ground dove. All Nature seems to retire to rest for a season, when the sun, having reached his highest point, sends down a flood of light and drowsy heat. On a stone in the middle of the murmuring stream the snowy white egret dozes on one leg, unmindful of the little fish that venture near; the gaudy kingfisher preens his feathers on a twig over a dark pool where he is shortly to resume his labours; and even the restless monkeys congregate in little knots on a great spreading tree, some lazily reclined on the biggest branches, some picking one another's hair. Every now and CENTRAL AMERICA: THE MOSQUITO TERRITORY. 15 then some of the more active pursue one another over the branches, then return, and cast themselves down beside the rest, and doze away for a while with their heads bent down between their knees. But when the cooler rays of the declining sun begin to slant through the trees, the woods wake up again as it were from a trance. In all directions are heard the cries of different birds and animals ; long strings of yellowtails wend their way to some favourite fruit tree, uttering their whining cry ; flocks of green paroquets rush through the trees with deafening screams, and the quain startles one with his loud shriek THE IGUANA (Iguana tubercutata). as he flies down to the ground in search of se'eds." The animals of the Mosquito territory bear a strong family likeness to those of Guiana and Northern Brazil. We need only mention, in addition to the species already noticed, two varieties of opossums, the " araree," or bush dog, a large species of weasel about the size of a fox, the ant-bear, the warree, and peccary, the agouti (p. 44), the capibara, or water hog (a rodent, by the way, not a hog at all), &c, and among the birds five or six species of pigeons, toucans, trogons, macaws, the king vulture, the beautiful banana bird, whose song notes have such variety in them, the pineapple bird, whose music is "just like a chime of church bells in a sweet silvery key, and uttered with measured composure," &c. In addition to several venomous snakes and the boa-constrictor, there is the great iguana lizard, which is found in countless numbers along the rivers. Its favourite haunt is among the Indian figs, which hang over the water. When disturbed, Mr. Bell describes them as plunging into 46 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. the water from the top of the highest trees, and, attaining a length of five or even six feet, are sometimes dashed to pieces when they happen to alight on a passing canoe. The flesh is exceedingly delicate and well flavoured, and the eggs are also rich. Alligators and a small species of crocodile abound. The latter is eaten, and though its flesh is disagreeably musky, it is white and tender. Another lizard — the "ishilly" — is also eaten not only by men, but by the hawks and eagles, and even the lordly puma does not despise them when other food is scarce. In addition to various species of fish, the manatee, or sea-cow, is common. It is extensively killed by the Indians, who preserve it by merely dipping it in the sea, and then allowing it to hang in the sun or smoke. Turtle are killed off the coast and on the islands, but their chief haunt is further to the south, and while land crabs wander about the keys at night disturbing the weary boatmen by biting their toes, fingers, and other exposed portions of the body, demolishing the remains of their supper, while during the day they have all disappeared under little tufts of grass, or at the roots of trees.* The Mosquitian Indians we have already described elsewhere.f Costa Rica. At one time Costa Rica was looked upon as the most promising of the Central American Republics — promising, that is to say, as the one-eyed man is distinguished for his perfect vision when among the blind. Perhaps it is still the best of them, but bad is the best. Its area is about 21,495 square miles, and its population was, in 1874, officially estimated at 175,000, though at the present time it must be nearer 185,000. Taking the last official estimate as the basis, there were 5,000 civilised Indians of pure blood, 12,000 negroes, and 600 Chinese, besides 10,000 to 12,000 uncivilised Indians. The population of European descent, chiefly Spanish, congregate nearly all either in or around the capital in the district of the Rio Grande. Like most of Central America, the interior of the Republic is mountainous, interspersed with plateaux and valleys. Part of the Cordillera in the north is volcanic, two of the summits — namely, Irazu and Turrialba — being over 10,000 feet in height. In the south is the range called Montana Dota, from 7,000 to 9,000 feet in height, and extending from west to east nearly across the country. Between its northern and southern branches lie the table-lands of San Jose and Cartago, a central plateau having an elevation of 3,000 to 4,000 feet. It is almost the only cultivated region in the country. In the Montana Dota are also the highest points in the country,, viz., Cerro Cheripo and Pico Blanco, or Nemu, 11,740 feet above the sea. Several rivers flow from either side of these central mountains, but the two sides of the range are widely different. On the Pacific slope the country is comparatively high, and is cut up by the Gulfs of Nicoya and Dulce. Here are found broad savannas, or llanuras, surrounded by forests, and the country is accordingly more accessible and settled. The Atlantic slope is, on the contrary, low, and covered with dense forests, which have for ages closed it to traffic, and allowed its inhabitants, the Pranzos, Bizeita and Terrbis Indians- * Bell, Hi. cit., p. 268; Squier: " Waikna, or Adventures on tho Mosquito Shore'- (1856); Strangewaysr "Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, including the Territory of Poyais" (1822) ; Bard: "Adventures on the Mosquito Shore" (1875), &c. t " Races of Mankind," Vol. I., pp. 250—259. CENTRAL AMERICA: COSTA RICA. 47 —sometimes called collectively the Talamancas — to remain in the more impenetrable regions in the state of positive savagedom and freedom. This region is cut up by the Great Lagoon of Chiriqui, in addition to a number of smaller ones " formed by the prevailing currents opposite the river-mouths," to use Mr. Keith Johnston's expression. These Indians are quite independent of the Costa Rican Government, and beyond trading a little with the Jamaica people, or with the Mosquito Indians, who come to catch turtle in the lagoons, they do not care, for obvious reasons, to come too much in contact with the whites. What has been said of the climate of Guatemala applies equally to Costa Rica — in other words, it varies according to elevation, from the feverish regions of the coast to the healthy and comparatively cool uplands of the interior. Here earthquakes are at home, and frequently commit great damage, a very severe one, in 1841, having destroyed the town of Cartago. The soil, where cultivable, is exceedingly rich, all the usual tropical crops growing in perfection, but as yet only 1,150 square miles are under culture. Coffee is the chief product, the value of that exported in 1874 being estimated at £892,S00, while the hides, timber, &e, were put down at £20,000. Like the rest of Central America, the country is still undeveloped, and though probably more peaceable than most of the other republics, yet of late years it has also had to suffer from intestine quarrels, and disputes with Nicaragua on the question of boundaries — a subject, one would think, of very secondary importance in a country where land is of so little value, and the population so small in comparison with the area it occupies. The roads are, with a few exceptions, mere bridle-paths, or mule-tracks. The chief highway is the wagon-road from Punta Arenas (p. 49), on the Gulf of Nicoya, the only port in Costa Rica worthy of the name, which leads to the capital San Jose — a town of 13,000 inhabitants — and then hence to Cartago, containing 10,000 people, on the Central Plateau. There are about forty-two miles of railway, part of an inter-oceanic line meditated, but which, owing to the invariable pecuniary difficulties which oppress these poverty-stricken Republics, has never been completed. Manufacturing industry is non-existent, but gold, silver, copper, iron, nickel, zinc, lead, and marble are found, though with the exception of gold, silver, and copper, they are in the usual undeveloped state of all things in these sleepy lands. The present constitution is the seventh that has been in force since the Republic was established, and will, no doubt, iu due time be replaced by an eighth. According to an official return, the revenue for the year ending April, 1877, was calculated at 2,236,000 dollars, and the expenditure at 2,626,427 dollars, leaving a deficit of 390,427 dollars — a state of matters which has existed for some time, and is likely to continue. In fact, the Republic is bankrupt. In 1871 it contracted in London a loan of £1,000,000, and in 1872 another of £2,400,000, for the construction of an inter-oceanic railway. In 1875 the debt contracted ostensibly for this purpose was £2,400,000, but of this sum only £1,116,000 had been spent on the line up to 1873, when the execution of the work was stopped. Since then no attempt has been made either to pay principal or interest,* so that it is not likely that the Republic will again resort to that easy method of filling its coffers, which it pleasantly calls "borrowing," * In 1875 the Foreign Loans Committee of the House of Commons reported that " except the sum retained in England out of the proceeds, the bondholders never received anything whatever in respect of the principal or interest of the debt." - 48 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. though in older and more honest times it used to be called robbery. In 1876-77 the total. exports of the Republic were calculated at 5,307,406 dollars, of which 300,000 were exported' by the Atlantic ports, and 5,007,406 by Punta Arenas. From the latter harbour in that year 4,859,154 dollars' worth of coffee were exported (see p. 47) ; hides, 64,533 dollars ; india- , rubber, 36,230; and flour, 15,421 dollars. Among the shipping the following nationalities were represented : — 93 North American, 44 English, 10 French, 5 German, 23 Colombian, &e. Costa Rica was discovered by Columbus on his third voyage, and was visited by Spanish adventurers soon after 1502. In 1821, after a struggle with the faction which wished to unite with Mexico, the fate of a battle fought at the Laguna de Ochomogo decided its erection into a separate Republic. In 1824 it joined the Central American Federation,. and when this short-lived union broke up in 1839, it again resumed its independence. Its position at one end of Central America, separated from the nearest State by an extensive waste country, is favourable, if not to commerce, yet to peace, which is even rarer in that revolution-racked land. At one time also the poverty of the people was their safeguard. Turbulent and needy men left Costa Rica alone, and while the rest of Central America was a prey to factious revolutions, " self-appointed regenerators and pretended political theorists," it enjoyed almost perfect tranquillity. But this day seems over, for in late years internal dissensions have produced continual changes, civil wars, and insurrections,. so that few of the later presidents have served their full term of office. At one period, no portion of the Spanish king's dominions were thought so miserable and profitless as Costa Rica. Less than seventy years ago, Juarros represented the district as so impoverished that he suggested that the name, " Rich Coast," had been given to it ironically in contempt of the few resources it possessed.* CHAPTER III. The Isthmus of Panama. The Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, belongs properly and politically to the Republic of the United States of Colombia, which will be sketched in a future chapter. But physically it can best be described in connection with Central America, of which it is really a part, though the chances of revolutions have thrown it in with a country whose capital lies far from the railway which has made it so familiar to thousands, who, while they know "the very noble and very loyal" city of Charles V., never heard of Bogota among the Andean mountains. I think it better, therefore, to devote a brief chapter here, before * Belly: "A travers l'Amerique centrale" (1872) ; Boylo : "Ride across * Continent" (1868) ; Peralta : "La Republique de Costa Rica" (Le Globe, 1871); Peralta: "Costa Rica" (1873); Frantzius: "Der sudbstliche Theil derRep. Costa Rica" (Petermann's " Geographical Mittheilungen," 1869), &c, as well as the works, papers, and maps of Frobel Marr, Scherzer, Wagner, Molina, Gabb, Polakawksy, and Keith Johnston, the Consular Reports, and the official publication, " Informe presentadopor el Secretario de estado en los despachos de hacienda y commercio al Congreso constitutional " (San Jose, 1877). 87 50 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. speaking of some general matters connected with Central America, to that isthmus, file name of which has at least for three centuries been more familiar to the ears of the civilised world than any of the Republics in its immediate vicinity. In these prosaic, all-wise days, one cannot fully picture the excitement which the discovery of the New World raised in Europe. In itself the tale which the bold Genoese had to tell was sufficiently wonderful, but it was exaggerated by the vague, uncertain, ever-gathering reports which passed from mouth to mouth, from sea-port to sea-port, and on to the inland capitals, until at the court of Henry VII. — who, but for an accident, might have had the unde served good fortune which fell to Ferdinand and Isabella* — the discovery was pronounced a " thing more divine than human." And what an adventure it was ! New trees, new men, new animals, new stars, to be seen. Nothing bounded, nothing trite; nothing- which had the bloom taken off by much previous description ! These early voyagers, moreover, were like children coming out to take their first gaze at the world with ready credulity, and unlimited fancy, willing to believe in fairies and demons, Amazons, and forms of a lower hemisphere, mystic islands, and fountains of perpetual youth.f And soon, amid the wild tales of the Islands of the Blest, where hunger and cold were unknown,' and nakedness therefore not to be dreaded — where, during the livelong day, the sun glowed with cheerful warmth, and the mellow nights were illumined with a moon such as even Castile and Leon knew not of, and by constellations that were strange to the mariners who first saw them — where fruits of the richest hues hung ready to be plucked, where fishes of the brightest colours swam in the waters, where gold was as dust, and precions stones as pebbles, and where the natives were "clothed with sunbeams" — the name of " Panama " was often heard. The title of " Castilla del Oro " — Golden Castle — was applied to a portion of the isthmus which is now known to be, perhaps, the most unprofitable and unhealthy portion of the whole region, and where the settlers, instead of gold, find graves. "In this realm of enchantment," writes Prescott, "all the accessories seemed to maintain the illusion. The simple natives, with their defenceless bodies and rude weapons, were no match for the European warriors armed to the teeth in mail. The odds were as great as those found in any legend of chivalry, where the lance of the good knight overturned hundreds at a touch." The memory of the cruelty of these early explorers — Ojeda, Nicuesa, Eneisco, even Balboa — and above all Pedrarias Davila, that terrible old man, still lives in the Indian memory. At present there may be about 10,000 aborigines scattered over Bocas del Toro, the northern portion of Veragua, the north-eastern shore of Panama, and almost the whole of Darien ; they consist principally of four tribes, each of whom speaks a different language, and are frequently at war with each other. They are profoundly suspicious of the whites, and some of them have not even yet abandoned all idea of once more regaining their lost rights. Until late years one of the Savaneric chiefs assumed the pompous title of King Lora * Columbus, as is well known, sent his .brother Bartholomew to open negotiations with Henry YIL, in case he should be disappointed in Spain as he had been in Portugal. On the voyage to England he fell into the hands of pirates, who stripped him of everything, and hold him prisoner for" several vears. When he finally escaped and reached London, ho was so destitute that until ho could gain a little money by the drawing of maps for sale, he was unable to appear at court in fitting style. But by this time it was too late." t Helps : " The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen." CENTRAL AMERICA: THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 51 Montezuma, and pretended to be a descendant of the famous Mexican Emperor (Vol. II., p. .240), though one can scarcely credit that this idea was of home growth. Almost every year lie used to send an envoy to Santiago, the capital of the district of Yeraguas, to protest .against any assumption of his rightful authority as lord of the land. So jealous are these Indians of Europeans, that though a Cazique, or chief of the Bayanos, used fre- ¦quently to visit the British Consul in Panama, yet, when the visit was proposed to be a-eturned, our representative was promptly informed that no European was allowed to enter their country, and that if the attempt was made it would only result in the death of the rash man, be he who he might. When in Panama I was told by a dealer in pearls and gold dust that frequently Indians arrive from the interior with small quantities of .gold dust for sale. They unroll it from the corner of a bit of cloth, look suspiciously around, eagerly grasp the coin they receive for it, and immediately expend it on some .article of use or luxury, but are notably deaf to all hints as to where they got the gold : to all queries in that direction they simply reply with the formula Quien saabe ? — " Who .knows ? " — or more politely, Non intiendo, Senor — " I do not understand, sir." Mr. Bidwell tells us that one of these " chiefs " used to visit a friend of his in Panama, and on one •occasion was presented with a coat and stick on departing for his native forests. A ; short time afterwards the presents were returned with a sad message from the poor Indian, who had been degraded by his superior for his want of loyalty to his tribe, in Jiaving accepted even these trifling presents from their natural enemy the white man. I can conceive no more humiliating commentary upon the abomination of Spanish rule in the New World than this trifling anecdote, which speaks even more powerfully for the memory •of hate which has descended to the Indians from their ancestors, than even the ghastly reprisals ~ which history records they have taken again and again upon their oppressors. The Isthmus of Panama has been the scene of many an unsuccessful attempt at settle ment by Spaniard and Scot alike, of wild revels, plunderings, aud bloodshed by buccaneer, •conquistador, and gold-digger, until in modern times its only reputation — and that one not increasing — is connected with the railway which spans the isthmus, and which in dts turn may have to give place to a canal, when the glories of the isthmus will :again revive. In early times Portobelo was the chief town on the Atlantic side, though rso unhealthy as to be the European's grave. Here the galleons from Spain entered, and here the treasures of the New World on the Pacific were bartered for the rich cargoes :brought from Castile. For forty days a great fair was held in this pestilent place. By-and-by the endless bombardings, captures, and sackings which the place sustained, •combined with the rising importance of the healthier places on the Pacific coast of the isthmus, caused Portobelo to be deserted. At the present time this town, which once •contained two castles, and 8,000 inhabitants, is all but abandoned. The same may be also said of Chagres, which, after the war of independence, was the Atlantic port through which the traffic was conducted. It is a miserable and unhealthy village, lying at the mouth of the river of the same name. It now contains only about :a thousand inhabitants, mostly Indians and negroes, and has most probably, like Portobelo, fallen to rise no more. I can conceive of no pleasant memories connected with either, though the former town was, before the railway was built, a busy place, fi-2 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. especially during the rush to California. After the railway was determined on, Colon in Navy Bay, was selected as the Atlantic terminus, and in this place all the traffic now centres. It is not healthy, as none of the low swampy shores of the isthmus are, though even this locality has defenders who will claim for it a certain salubrity. Be it so : whether one place in that latitude of America is a little more feverish or a trifle less so than another spot, is not worth disputing about. But this I know — having visited it — that it is not a desirable place of residence, though to the visitor freshly arrived from the "muggy" shores of England in February, or from the still more dreary snow-covered " States " at the same period of the year, "Colon," or A spin wall — as in atrociously bad taste the Americans insist on calling it — with its wealth of tropical verdure, looks a pleasant spot until he begins to get acclimatised and "has his fevers." The first thing which strikes the new arrival is, of course, the motley crew of negroes and native mongrels who crowd VIEW OP rABAISO, ON THE PANAMA RAILKOAD. the wharf, and next the strange mixture of the natural and the artificial, the wild and the civilised, which presents itself here. In Colon flourish— as they flourished before "the Gringo" (Yankee, heretic) arrived— the wildly luxuriant tropic trees, and yet from amid a cocao grove we can hear an engine shriek, and see the dep6t and factories of the railway company in all their intense newness and Philistinishly business aspect (p. 61). Against the rails of the Protestant Church, imbedded in the walls of which is a memorial to John L. Stephens, who spent the best years of his life in exploring the antiquities of this torrid land, leans - stolid, primitive, and old-world — an Indian, who might have been one of those who came down to look at the fierce conquistadores and their fiercer dogs, and whose ancestors were "spent" in bearing the burdens of Nunez Balboa from sea to sea. But nobody " spends " him now : there he lounges in listless grace, and dolce far niente carelessness of a workaday world. Aspinwall the Americans have named after a quondam potentate of the railway company; and thcugh for a time the Grenadian Govern ment used to return letters so addressed, under the very proper plea that no such place was known, they have now been forced to yield an unwilling adhesion to the tasteless change. Yet close by one of the gaudy hotels-all so fresh and all so prosaic-we come upon a statue erected to Columbus (p. 65), which reminds us that this new-looking town is in reality one of the oldest "cities" on the American continent, and derived its name CENTRAL AMERICA: THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 53 from the great admiral — Christopher Columbus, Colombo, or Colon. Most of the houses are built of wood, and are of course uncomfortable, as wooden houses must ever be in the tropics. " Colon," writes Mr. Consul Bidwell, " is very young and very green : the houses are green, the groves are green, the streets are green, the surroundings are green, but greener still than all are the persons, I think, who having a choice, select Colon for a residence." Everything here smacks of "the railroad." The railroad buildings are the only ones of any consequence, the railroad officials' residences are the best, and the railroad men themselves, by tacit consent, are the lords of this hot, unwholesome Hispano- American or Americo-Spanish village. Swamps are all round, and the little rural-looking lanes are always ending either in, or in disagreeable vicinity to, a swampy place, covered VIEW OF SAN PABLO, ON THE PANAMA RAILROAD (WITH IRON BRIDGE ACROSS THE CHAGRES RIVER). with a dense carpet of tropical vegetation. It is indeed built on an island (Manzanilla), and all the water used is caught during the rainy season, and preserved in iron tanks through the dry one. But as rain falls here for about some eight months in the year, there is never any lack of this element, though as to the quality I cannot vouch. Except for culinary purposes I fancy very little is consumed. I hazard this opinion from the state of the "bars," and a general acquaintance with the habits of the people. With the exception of beef, fish, and tropical vegetables, all provisions are imported either from the United States or from England — chiefly the former — while New England also yields the colonists an abundance of ice, which is appreciated in a country where the climate always "plays about between 70 and 90 degrees." Everybody — native and foreign — speaks English, and though it is by a legal fiction under the government, and subject to the laws of the United States of Colombia, and more particularly those of the State of Panama, in reality it is a part of the United States, governed by the foreign consuls who congregate here in great abundance. Moreover, it is a free port, and the inhabitants who are not connected in some way with the railway or wharf are given over to the cultivation of bananas 54 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. for the New York market. The number of inhabitants, many of whom are Jamaica neo-roes, is about 7,000. Colon must be now somewhat dull, since the Californian traffic has almost entirely been taken away by the Pacific Railroad, yet a few years ago it was a busy place when the New York steamers, and to a less extent when the West Indian ones, arrived here. An American writing in 1855 described the population as doubled by the new-comers on a steamer day. "The hotels deserted the day before, are thronged, and their hosts awake once more to the consciousness of their functions of taking-in people. Bar-rooms again reek with an atmosphere of gin-sling and brandy cock tail, while the bilious-faced bar-keeper, only yesterday prostrate with fever, shuffles across the counter a quick succession of drinks to his throng of impatient, thirsty customers; billiard-balls, temporarily stowed away in pockets, begin to circulate, driven by the full force of sturdy red flannel-sleeved arms; the shops flutter out in the breeze their display of Panama hats and loose linen garments, and adding a hundred per cent, to their prices, do a brisk business; the very monkeys quicken their agility, the parrots chatter with redoubled loquacity, the macaws shriek sharper than ever, the wild hogs, ant-eaters, and even the sloths (for all these zoological varieties abound in the hotels and shops of Aspinwall) are aroused to unwonted animation." The only pleasant feature about Colon is the Paseo-Coral, a drive made along the sea-shore, and which, morning and evening, and especially on Sundays and holidays, is a favourite resort of the inhabitants. "Any lover of the beautiful in nature," writes Dr. Otis, "will find it worth his while to make a tour of this 'Paseo.' On one side charming glimpses of the ocean and of the 'Archi pelago' (which cuts off the island of Manzanilla from the mainland) meet the eye at every turn, and at almost every point the conchologist may step out upon the coral reef and find sea shells, caves, and coral to an indefinite extent. On the other, a great variety of tropical vegetation invites the lover of botany to cull from its varied and luxuriant growth. Here and there narrow paths lead from it to little native plantations of banana, papaya, and yam, imbedded in which the native hut, with its severely simple furnishing, may be seen, and will convey to the traveller an idea of the habits and character of the native inhabitants of this country." Yet the Colon-ists are very irate if anything is said against their city. " It is very superior to Panama " (which is the rival city) ; " it is decidedly cleaner, decidedly cooler, decidedly healthier." A visit to the freight warehouse of the railway will afford the reader a glance at the articles transported across the isthmus. The handbook to the railroad describes the contents as consisting of " bales of quinine bark from the interior piled many tiers deep, and reaching the iron triangular braced roof of the edifice; ceroons of indigo and cochineal from San Salvador and Guatemala; coffee from Costa Rica, and cocoa from Ecuador; sarsaparilla from Nicaragua, and ivory nuts from Portobelo ; copper ore from Bolivia ; silver bars from Chili, boxes of hard dollars from Mexico, and gold ore from California; hides from the whole range of the North and South Pacific coasts; hundreds of bushels of glistening pearl-shells from the fisheries of Panama lay heaped along the floor, flanked by no end of North American beef, pork, flour, bread, and cheese, for the provisioning of the Pacific coast, and English and French goods for the same market ; while in a train of cattle cars that stood on one of the tracks were huddled about a hundred meek-looking llamas from Peru on their way to the island of Cuba, among CENTRAL AMERICA: THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 55 whose mountains they are used for beasts of burden as well as for their wool. A trip over the Panama railroad gives one an excellent idea of the tropics, and as it is a very leisurely journey, the traveller can observe at his ease. Indeed, the first time I crossed it we ran off the line, but in such a quiet, sedate sort of way, that we were not conscious of the fact until the conductor requested us to alight while he procured men and crowbars to raise the errant cars on to the right way again. We were then not far from Paraiso (p. 52). On every side was dense tropical ~ forest, with paths along which tall sombre-looking Indians were journeying, machete in hand, to their airy huts, which we could see on a little savanna beyond. On every side of the line grew a carpet of the sensitive plant (Mimosa), which folded up behind and ahead of us as we walked along. The sun went down, and the heat of the day was exchanged for the comparative coolness of the evening. At Paraiso a fandango, or Spanish dance, was going on, and so at that tropical "Paradise" — for so the name means — we halted until the train arrived and picked us up. But, excepting mail days, there is not even a pretence at hurry, and scarcely any — at least so it was when I knew it — at punctuality. By the Company's contract with the Colombian Government they must run a train at least once a day over the isthmus and back again. Now as the fare is £5, few people, unless on business intent, will travel by this expensive line. The result is that on ordinary " off days " the passengers are few, and, to use the familiar language of the functionaries, mostly " dead heads," that is, favoured or impecunious persons travelling with free passes ; and as the railroad gentlemen are the most liberal of people in the way of passes to all distinguished personages, and even — as I have reason to know — to some who do not at all come under that category, it is a passenger's own blame if, in the transit from sea to sea, he does not learn something of that weary road which Balboa first trod, and since that memorable year of 1512, so many thousands more gentle and simple, courageous and cowardly, good, bad, and indifferent. The first fifteen miles of the line is built on trestles over a deadly swamp, but afterwards the scenery is pleasing and the vegetation rich. Palm trees of several varieties and of bamboo are on every side, and among other plants strange to the traveller who peeps out of the carriage window, are the great orchids which climb over the trees, mingled with the purple convolvulus, and a hundred other tropical parasites. Yet this road was cut with great toil and at the cost of many men's lives. The passenger who knows the history of the enterprise cannot help thinking, as he sits in safety and comparative comfort, of the road as strewn with " dead labourers, victims of fever, exhaustion, suicide, like a battle-field." Yet, before the railway was built, the loss to life was- scarcely less. The feverish multitudes who crowded to California were often imperfectly pro vided with food, clothing, or means of transport, and often all too well provided with the- most villainous of drinks. Hundreds fell sick of fevers, hundreds more were exhausted with, the toil of the journey, while others reached Panama in the condition which an acquaintance- of the writer did, clad in a very light and not over elongated shirt, and — nothing else !' Some of the little stations alongside the railway, and which are also usually Indian villages, we have figured on pp. 52, 53, 56, 57. The present city of Panama (Plate XXII.) is not "the very noble and very loyal city" which the emperor spoke of in 1525. This was destroyed in the year 1671 by the buccaneer Sir Henry (as he is often called, Sir Thomas) Morgan, whose acquaintance we made in his comparatively respectable days as Governor of Jamaica. Previous. 56 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD to that date it had consisted of about 12,000 houses, eight monasteries, and two churches, all richly furnished, and many of them really splendid. It was the "jumping off place" for all the adventurers, north and south, and the spot to which they returned with their plunder, to revel after their career of rapine. It gi-ew rich on oppression and robbery. The site was, however, unhealthy, and when it was rebuilt again by the emperor's orders it was removed four miles westward. All that remains now of the old city is a tower and a few traces of other edifices overgrown by brushwood. But if we are to believe the accounts of the old voyagers, the new city soon equalled the old one. Dampier, for instance, grows absolutely eloquent over it : — " The road is seldom or never without ships ; besides, once in three years, when the Spanish armada comes to Portobelo, then the Plate fleet also, from Lima, comes hither with the king's treasure, and abundance of merchant ships full of goods and ^mmsm. Ami VIEW OJF THE VILLAGE OF BUENA VISTA, ON THE PANAMA RAILROAD, plate. At that time the city is full of merchants and gentlemen, the seamen are busy in landing the treasure, and the carriers or caravan masters employed in carrying it overland on mules (in vast droves every day) to Portobelo, and bringing back European goods from- thence; though the city be then so full, yet during the heat of business there is no hiring of an ordinary slave under a piece of eight a day ; houses, also chambers, beds, and victuals, are then extraordinarily dear."* The Panama of 1878 is not a city which would lead anyone to imagine that it had ever been of very great consequence. It is very sleepy, very decayed, and altogether a very tumble-down town, though viewed from the Pacific the house-covered rocky promontory stretching out into the bay has rather an imposing appearance. Ships are, however, now the exception rather than the rule in Panama Bay. It is, moreover, a city of the dead. The heavy stone houses, with their great balconies, speak of a time with which the present has very little to do; the once fine fortifications are in ruins, the great bronze cannon have long ago disappeared, the fifty or sixty barefooted ragged soldiers fail to recall the mail-clad conquistadores, but the cathedral, the churches, and the empty nunneries and monasteries bring us back to a time when Panama was " the noble and very loyal city" of His Most Catholic Majesty. The Panamenos of to-day are also very different from those of last century, and certainly widely different from the people * "Voyages," Vol. I., p. 179. CENTRAL AMERICA: THE CITY OF PANAMA. 57 whom Dampier saw. Except early in the morning and late at night a stranger sees very little of them. Nobody goes out in Panama during the heat of the day if he or she can stay at home. There is langour in the air, and unless one pays frequent visits to the railway, he is apt to forget that there is such a thing as energy in the world. Heavy wooden balconies front the houses, in which a desire to keep the in-dwellers cool seems to have been the chief ambition of the architect, for design or convenience does not appear prominent characteristics to the stranger who sees them for the first time.. The balconies seem to be the chief part of the house. All the flirting of the ladies, and much of the lazy, half- asleep smoking of the men, goes on in them. They serve as a garden, promenade, and reception- room, all in one. Sometimes the balcony officiates as bath-chamber, not unfrequently as VIEW OP OBISPO, ON THE PANAMA RAILROAD. kitchen, while most of them are utilised as a laundry and drying-ground for the family wash. One of the most disgusting sights of this — as, indeed, of most Spanish-American towns — is the chained malefactors cleaning the most frequented streets. They invariably beg from passers-by. It seems to be a recognised institution, and, indeed, the ragged guards compete with their charge for the alms of the charitable. When I say that Panama, in ' spite of the revivifying presence of Europeans and Americans, either as residents . or as birds of passage, is still a Central American town, I have probably said enough to convince any reader who has made the acquaintance of any such " cities," that it is not a model either in its moral or its municipal arrangements. In the Bay of Panama are several islands which form a pretty and picturesque group, among which are Toboga and the Pearl Islands, the latter so called because the inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the pearl fishery off their shores. This fishery produces on an average £35,000 worth of pearls per annum. The shells are also pro fitable, being sold for mother-of-pearl, but the business is, on account of the sharks and Other ravenous fishes which abound in the bay, dangerous in the extreme. The soil of the isthmus is rich, and might in many spots be used for growing cotton, cocoa, sugar-cane, coffee, &c. Dye-woods, timber for ship-building and furniture, resins, and medicinal plants abound. Maize, rice, beans, plantains, sugar-canes, cacao, cocoa-nuts, cotton, sarsaparilla) and braid _of 88 58 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. jipijapa (the leaves of Cnrludovica palmata, a species of screw pine) for making hats — though the " Panama hats " are not made here, but for the most part in Guayaquil — are among the vegetable crops cultivated. In Veraguas and Chiriqui are savannas on which cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, mules, and asses browse. In the same province gold is got in considerable quantity, while coal has been seen. Salt, silver, copper, iron, emeralds, and platina have also been noticed. Gold has hitherto not been mined in any great quantity, owing to the noxious climate in the districts in which it is found. It is chiefly extracted in the province of Panama by a few negroes, who wash the sands of the rivers Marea and Balsas. The celebrated mines of Cana, near Fuira, were once called Potosi, and yielded a great return. But in modern times they seem to have been deserted, and, indeed, there is now no road leading to the place where they are said to have been situated. Gold is, however, found in other places, and a few years ago a number of adventurers from California tried their luck in the isthmus, but with no great success, partly owing to the absence of gold, and more still to the presence of Indians and fevers.* CHAPTER IV. Central America : Men and Manners. The Indians these pages do not concern themselves with, except from a general point of view, though such is the way the aborigines have mixed their brown puddle with the blue blood of the conquistadores and their descendants, that in describing the ways of the American Spaniard we are incessantly landing in an Indian palm-thatched hut. The Spaniards in Central America bear but a small proportion to the native element, and in interest are not to be compared with these strange children of the land. We have already incidentally touched upon them as found in certain of the Republics described. As a type of many of these tribes scattered throughout South America — which we cannot even mention — we may devote a few paragraphs to a further notice of most of them, more especially, as in the work to which this is a companion and supplement, the aborigines of Central America had, perforce, to be dismissed rather briefly. Taking Squier and Roberts as the best of possible guides, we find that in Honduras the native element predominates, as throughout the rest of the isthmus. Indeed, in most parts of the State, it is difficult to say whether the Indians have most assimilated in masses to the Indians, or the Indians to the whites. In the east portion of the Republic — a area of not less than 15,000 square miles — the Xicaques and Payas Indians are about the only inhabitants. They are Roman Catholics, and live on a very good understanding with their white — or whiter — neighbours, though there are still independent villages of the tribes so-called, who, refusing to drop their ancient manners, live in the mountain * Powles: "New Grenada : Its Internal Resources" (1863) ; Bidwell : "The Isthmus of Panama" (1865); Otis: "Handbook to the Panama Railroad" (1860); Zeltner: "La Yillo et lo Port dc Panama" (1868); Haussaurek: " Four Years Among Spanish Americans " (1867) ; the various Consular Reports, as well as those of Embassy and Legation; » Geographical Magazine" (with map of the isthmus), April, 1878, &c. CENTRAL AMERICA: THE ABORIGINES. 59 pass independent, but still peaceable. Every now and then they appear in the settlements to sell their sarsaparilla, dragon's blood, and other products of the woods, along with a little gold washed from the sands of the mountain streams, or come to the •coast to engage themselves as labourers in the mahogany "works," though, when their ongagements terminate, they always return to their homes. It does not appear that the •civilisation was ever much higher than it is at present, and at no time were they on a level with the Queches, Kachiquels, and Nahuatls, who reared the "cities" we now see in ruins on the plateaux of Guatemala, San Salvador, and the western part of Honduras. At the same time they were always more civilised, and in the end, though they at first Tesisted the Spanish invaders, proved more tractable than the wild roving fishing tribes, whose homes lies along the shores of the Caribbean Sea. Their appearance is very marked. They have long black hair, very broad faces, small eyes, and that peculiar expression of sadness and docility that is acquired through long ages of oppression, to which the oppressed have reconciled themselves. The Indians all through the conquered parts of Spanish America are the same. They are, as a rule, melancholy looking people, with faces that one insensibly becomes interested in. They are industrious hewers of wood, drawers of water, and bearers of burdens, fond of living by themselves, and still fonder of the fire-water which they get from the towns, or distil after their own barbarous chemistry. They are famous for faith and probity, but are an uncommercial people, having, except in the immediate vicinity of the towns, little idea of the value of labour, and, like all their race, none whatever of the worth of time. It is always " superfluous " for them to " know the time o5 day," nor do they trouble themselves about it. The Sambos I have had occasion already more than once to speak of. They are also sometimes called the Mosquitos, but in reality are a mixed race of negroes and Indians. Their origin is peculiar. Early in -the seventeenth century, a large Dutch slaver laden with negroes from the Sambo country, in Africa, was driven ashore to the southward of Nicaragua, though some will have it not far from Cape Gracias-a-Dios. The negroes escaped, and though at first they encouutered resistance from the natives, they had afterwards wives and ground allotted to them.* From time to time their number was increased by slaves who escaped from the Spanish settlement (cimarones), or by negroes whom the planters from Jamaica brought in their various attempts to form settlements in different parts of the Mosquito Territory, while the buccaneers, who had their haunts * among them during the period of their •domination on the Caribbean Sea, " bequeathed," as Mr. Squier remarks, " a code of morality, which subsequent relations with smugglers and traders have not contri buted to improve." The Sambos have always been in a manner proteges of the British Government, and the Governors of Jamaica from an early date fostered them, as a means of annoying the Spaniards at little cost to the English. To this policy we owed the protectorate of the Mosquito shore, and the subsequent complications now at an end. The firearms acquired by the Sambos made them formidable adversaries of the Indians. This superiority the former were not slow to take advantage of, in so * Edwards: "History of the West Indies," Vol. V., p. 210 (Appendix); Henderson: "Honduras,'' p. 178; Wright: "Memoirs," &c, p. 28. 60 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. far that for years they were in the habit of descending on the Indian villages on the river banks, and carrying off the inhabitants to be sold as slaves. For long an active traffic in these captives was carried on with Jamaica, until the coast became deserted, or the Indian inhabitants' purchased security from attack by paying tribute to the fierce piratical Americo-Africans. But that day is now over for ever, and with it the Sambos have lost most of their old vigour, and are now given over to drunkenness, which is rapidly hastening their extermination, their constitution being already weakened by the unrestrained licen tiousness of their earlier life on this coast. The Sambos are of all shades between the Indian and the negro, their hair, as they approach the latter, having the woolly character more developed than when their complexion approximates to that of the Indian. The women are frequently handsome, and the children when young particularly so. Deformed children are never seen, from which fact it is shrewdly inferred that the Sambos have the ugly habit of destroying these unfortunates soon after birth. It has always been noticed that the climate of North America — and probably of the South also — is very unhealthy for cripples of aboriginal extraction. There are also some Caribs in Honduras. These are all that remain of the aboriginal inhabitants of San Vincent, one of the Leeward Islands. "During the contests between the French and English for the possession of the smaller islands of the Antilles, the Caribs of San Vincent were almost invariably attached to the French interest, and gave so much trouble to the English authorities and inhabitants, that after many contests and much bloodshed, they were finally, in 1796, carried en masse, to the number of upwards of 5,000, to the then deserted island of Roatan, in the Bay of Honduras. The cost of this deportation was not much less than £1,000,000 sterling. A few months afterwards they were invited to the mainland by the Spanish authorities, who aided them in founding various establishments on the coast, in the vicinity of Truxillo. Since then they have increased rapidly, and greatly extended their settlements, both to the eastward and westward of that port." In 1832 they rebelled, and were severely punished, while others of them took refuge within the colony of Belize. When San Vincent was first visited by Europeans, it was in possession of two distinct families of aborigines, who, however, spoke a common language. These were the Black and Yellow Caribs. It is said that this distinction was created in much the same way as were the corresponding changes in the population of- the Mosquito Shore. In 1675, or thereabouts, a Guinea slaver foundered on one of the islands in the neighbourhood of San Vincent, and the negroes, escaping ashore, mingled with the natives, and produced the "Black Caribs." Afterwards they quarrelled, with the result that the island was divided between the two races, a state of matters which continued up to the date of the arrival of the whites. After this period disturbances broke out afresh, and, to the disgrace of the colonists, wore fomented until they eventuated in open and exterminating hostilities. But in 1796 they were "a feeble folk." Common misfortunes and uncommon wrongs had forced them to unite in friendly relations, though this, fusion has not been so perfect that the original distinction is not even yet evident in their new home in Honduras. The Black Caribs are taller and stouter than the pure Caribs, and though both are equally active, industrious, and provident, which the Sambos and most Indians are' not, the former are more mercurial and vehement in their passions than the pure race. They are also more THE TERMINUS OF THE PANAMA RAILWAY AT COLON (ASPINWALL). 62 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. civilised in their habits, living in good huts, which are kept moderately clean, and according to the Caribbeans' ideas of things, even comfortable. Most of them speak Spanish, a little English, and even a few sentences of Creole — French, and Mosquito — but among themselves they always discourse in their original Carib. They profess the Roman Catholic rehgion, and have already been noted as some of the best labourers in the mahogany woods. They, however, still retain a good many of the old savage rites and customs. Polygamy is especially prevalent, each wife having a separate house and plantation, so that the habit becomes expensive. It is, moreover, not conducive to a quiet life, for if the husband makes a present to one wife, he must also make one to all his other wives. On the other hand, these ladies do not lead an idle existence. Young describes the mode of procedure when a new spouse is resolved upon. The man fells a plantation, and builds a house ; the wife then takes the manage ment, and he becomes a gentleman at large until the following year, when another plantation has to be cleared. The wife tends these plantations with great care, perseverance, and skill, and in the course of ten or twelve months has every description of breadkind in use among them. The products are entirely her own. Accordingly she only keeps sufficient at home for her husband and family, disposing of the rest to purchase clothes and other necessaries, more especially finery for herself. The men are noted for their love of dress. They wear red bands round their waists to imitate sashes, straw hats knowingly turned up, and white shirts and frocks, long and tight trousers; and when they have a cane or umbrella in their hands they regard themselves — and rightly too — with no small amount of satis faction. The women are also fond of smart attire, which, when added to great cleanliness of person, is a hopeful sign. They are not handsome, but they are pleasant in appearance. When bringing the products of the plantations for sale they dress in calico bodies and "lively patterned" skirts, with handkerchiefs tied around their heads, and suffered to fall negligently behind. Much of their time is spent in going to and from market. Just before Christmas they engage several boats, or "creers," freight them with rice, yams, plantains, &c, and having hired their husbands and others as sailors, convey their produce to Truxillo and Belize. They also walk long distances to their plantations, or in carrying their baskets of provisions to the nearest town. In the dry season the women collect firewood, which they stack in sheltered places to be ready for the wet months, industry and foresight being among the most marked characteristics of the race, and the plenty, cleanliness, and salubrity of their villages the consequent results. The Caribs have shown great capacity for improvement, though the rest of the Indian element is, if left to itself, rather hopeless, unless indeed as labourers. Above all, there is little to be made of the Sambos, the exceptions to the vile general rule being too few to do much more than prove it. They are very indolent, all the hardest labour having to be done by their wives. They are, however, skilful woodsmen, hunters, fishers, and boatmen. Captain Wright mentions that in his day— seventy years ago— the natives considered that in whatever service they might lose their lives, or die a natural death, their surviving relatives had a right to ask recompense from the employer of the dead man. It was regularly demanded even in battle. When satis factory answers have not been given, the aboriginal troops have been known to retreat in a most dangerous and disorderly manner * In Guatemala the Indians form a less hopeful element than * Squier: "Honduras," p. 177. CENTRAL AMERICA: THE ABORIGINES. 63 in Honduras. There the opinion is very general that the present race of Indians are inferior in intelligence to the negroes, and indeed there are those who will scarcely credit that they are the descendants of the men who raised the monuments of Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen Itza. But the same doubt might be expressed in the case of the Egyptian Fellaheen. Can they be the descendants of the builders of the Pyramids, or of those whose genius originated so much of what has descended to our times, though now strange to the country in which it grew into form ? Or can the barbarous and crafty Moors of Morocco be the offspring of the brilliant Arabs who introduced chivalry, arts, and letters into so much of Europe ? * The conquistadores at first expressed great admiration for the Indians, but it afterwards suited them to retract this favourable verdict, and under the plea that the gente sin razon — the race without reason — were an inferior order of beings, to oppress, degrade, and ill-treat them in every possible way, in spite of the numerous regulations enacted in the Code of Ordinances sent out by the Council of the Indies. In time the Indians, deprived of all opportunity of enjoying the privileges of subjects of Spain, or of sharing in the duties of such — forced to labour in the mines without wages or without a power of refusal — compelled to pay tribute, and subjected to humi liating punishments, and not allowed to bear arms, grew up to consider their lot one of contempt and pity, and themselves as inferior beings. The end was that they lost the virility of character which they possessed at the time of the Conquest, until it would not be possible now to restore their self-respect, " except through a series of efforts as prolonged as those which have humbled them have been continuous and implacable." The conquerors were, meantime, nurturing their nemesis, or rather that of their children. In due time the latter became independent of the mother country ; but in place of the citizens whom they sought in the Indians they only found slaves. They tried a new policy, but they tried it too late. M. Morelet tells a case which is painfully to the point : — " With a race endowed with an organisation moderately flexible, and with a rare perseverance in its habits and customs, it is easier to efface impressions than to substitute ideas, and the Indians at once rebelled against the efforts that were made to communicate them. In Guatemala, for example, the leading minds of the State conceived that the abolition of corporal punishment, so degrading to the spirit of man, would go far towards elevating the Indian character; yet, strange to say, as soon as the Indians themselves had succeeded in placing one of their representatives in the post of chief executive their first demand was for the restoration of the bastinado." But they became citizens under the Republican Government, and theoretically at least on a par with their old masters. But they were not prepared for the change, and so far from contributing to the new order of things, rather aided in its retardation. No new ambition nor emulation, was stirred within them, as the leaders of the revolution believed would be the case. All they comprehended or appreciated as to their new situation was that they were no longer under restrictions, and did not require to pay tribute. Thereupon they gave themselves to unrestrained drunkenness and general licence. For a time they did no work, and when called up to meet their obliga tions to the State, fled to the mountains, and in many cases relapsed into barbarism. In this way large villages, which in the colonial days were prosperous and peopled, became deserted. Roads fell into ruin, schools ceased to be attended, and by-and-by the civil » Morelet: "Travels in Central America," pp. 125 — 134. 04 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. sea: war and chronic revolution which have been, are, -and will mOst likely continue to be the bane of Spanish-America, followed the demoralisation of public sentiment and the prostration of material interests. This description applies particularly to the Indians of the Tierras Calientes. " Here each man cuts the timber for his own house, carries it on , his back to the spot where he wants it, puts it together with withes, and thatches it with straw with his own hands. He cultivates just enough of ground to furnish his individual supplies, or gathers them from among the natural products of the forest. His aty furniture is equally the work of his own hands, as is also the still scantier clothing which he wears. When sick, he makes use of the few vegetable simples of which his father taught him the virtues, and which he collects in the wilderness. Time with him has no value, and without hope or care for the future, his idea of happiness is a present repose. His absolute material wants are his sole exertions to action. His vague ideas of fatalism furnish him equally with an excuse for. his indolence and a basis of contentment under the circum- •' stances of his condition. He supports stoically the maladies which may afflict him, and the evil fortunes that may befall him. Death almost always finds him prepared. 'My hour is come ! ' or ' I go to my rest ; my work is done ! ' are the only observations which he makes on his approach." The "conversion" of the Indians is a mere farce. They used to be converted wholesale by the friars, but the process consisted of little more than baptism — a rite the meaning of which they had not the most remote idea of — putting a tin cross about their neck, and asking them to abandon the outward forms of idolatry. But in so far as it had some connection with a purer life, or sounder views of the relations of man to man, or the creature to the Creator, the Indian might as well remain as his father was before him. He is a Christian in form, that is all. He is bred from his childhood upward in all manner of weird superstitions — the edifices reared by his father are to him objects of awe — they are the haunts of invisible spirits, relatives of that red spectre which sighs and wails in the forest to mislead the traveller, whose path is ever crossed by what looks to his eye as fawn-coloured animals, but which are, in reality, dreadful enchanters powerful always for evil, but never for good; or at least they never exert themselves in that way. Ask him as to his belief in the immortality of the soul, his hopes of a future life, or his views on the subject of a Supreme Being, and he will remain silent. He does not see whither your questions are tending: and long religious oppression has taught the art of dissimulation at such seasons; and INDIAN, FROM THE COAST OF YUCATAN. SCKNK IN THE LLANOS OF COLOMBIA. CENTRAL AMERICA: INDIAN LIFE. 65 how golden is silence at all times ! Yet his life is not an unhappy one, or, at least, might not be. In his own way he has all that he needs. At ten he is a better woodsman than most whites who have passed all their life in the country. He then accompanies his father in his excursions, or his labours. " He is taught," writes M. Morelet, " to find his way in the most obscure forests, through means of the faintest indications. His ear is practised in quickly detecting the approach of wild animals, and his eye in discovering STATUE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT COLON. the venomous reptiles that may lie in his path. He is taught to distinguish the vines, the juices of which have the power of stupefying fishes,* so that they may be caught by hand, as also those which are useful for their flexibility, or for furnishing water to the wayfarer. He soon comes to recognise the leche Maria, the precious balm with which he can heal his wounds, and the guaco f which neutralises the venom of serpents. He finds out the shady dells, where the cacao flourishes, and the sunny eminences where the bees go to deposit their honey in the hollow trunks of decaying trees. He learns, or is taught, all these things early, and then his education is complete. When he reaches the * Sapindus saponaria, and probably also S. inmqualis. These berries are also used as a, substitute for soap, the outer covering containing the principle known as saponine in sufficient abundance to produce a lather with water. \ Aristoloehia Guaco. 89 66 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. age of sixteen or seventeen years, he clears a little spot of ground in the forest with the aid of fire and his machete. He plants it with maize, builds a little hut in the corner, and then brings to it a companion, most likely one who was affianced to him in his earliest infancy. Without doubt he has some regard to the age and attractions of his female companion, but his marriage, if the union can be so called, is based on none of these tender sentiments and mutual appreciations which, with us, lie at the foundation of the social superstructure. But it must be said to the credit of the Indian that he loves his home. His hut is his asylum, where he enjoys an authority and isolation which compensate for the contempt or the assumption of superiority of the whites." There no one interferes with his tastes or habits of life, and his children never dispute his authority, or contravene his wishes. Within his small circle his mode of life is essentially patriarchal. His Government, where he had one of his own, was the same. His food is simple — his general sobriety great. But both are owing to necessity; for when this is removed the Indian ceases to be an anchorite. Beans, tortillas, a few bananas, raw pepper for seasoning, beef cut in slices and sun-dried, a little pork, a few eggs on great occasions, and a cup of chocolate at long intervals, with such fruits as Nature herself offers, constitute the Guatemalan Indian's dietary curriculum. He lives a life devoid of excitement. His sensibilities are dull; his enjoyments are few; his griefs as rare; but neither affect him keenly. Time never weighs heavily on him; he keeps no account of it, and as a necessity does not understand that terrible disease of civilisation, for which the French could only invent a name — ennui. Yet, as we noted about the Mexican Indians, they are animated and loquacious when among their own people, though what they find to talk about in an unintermittent flow of words all day, and half through the night, has puzzled many a traveller, who only knew them previously in their impassive moods. In Yucatan, until comparatively recent times — though, I believe, not now — every Indian was compelled to cultivate about one-quarter of an acre of maize every year, under pain of having to work on the public roads until the estimated value of his labour equalled that of the average crop from the lands which they had failed to till. This was to guard against that idleness and improvidence of the native Indians which, in Central America, stand out in such marked contrast to the industry of many of the Caribs. But there was another and more barbarous mode of forcing the gente sin razon, to remember that man lives even in Central America by the sweat of his brow. This was a perpetuation of the ancient colonial law of the mita* by which every coloured person— that is to say negro or Indian— was compelled to work out a debt as the absolute slave of the creditor, who, moreover, had the power of selling the debtor to any other person until the debt, either in whole or in part, was paid. The only privilege which the debtor had was that he could appeal to the authorities for a change of master, when he could show that the one he was then under was cruel, or did not properly provide for his necessities. The result of this abominable system was that the Indian, instead of trying to free himself, got deeper and deeper into his master's debt, until finally losing all care for the future, he and his family after him became the taskmaster's serfs for life. This was, of course, simply slavery in another form, and was perpetuated by the proprietors because it afforded a ready supply of labour at little cost. In some of the districts of the country as many as * "Races oi Mankind," Vol. L, p. 318. CENTRAL AMERICA: INDIAN LIFE. 67 four -fifths of the Indians would in this manner be " compromised " to the leading pro prietors, who, having all the authority and influence in the district, exercised it in a manner which renders the condition of the unhappy Indians pitiable in the extreme. The Indians of the higher plateaux of Central America are, as we have already seen, superior in intelligence, comfort, and general condition to those of the hot-lying coast lands. In the higher upland plains — Los Altos, as they are called — we find a more active race, descendants of the old city builders, "men whose heads never grow grey," and who have aspirations beyond supplying the immediate wants of the hour. They also supply mechanics to the country, and under proper care and a better system of education could rise to be useful citizens, or at least as useful as Central America is ever likely to have. The Indians of the other republics — so far as they affect the weal of the commonwealth, and of the Isthmus of Panama — I have already touched on, so that interesting as the discussion of their lot is, we cannot spare more space to this part of our subject. What is to be the future of these Indians? The whites dominate by dint of their superior intelligence, resources, and knowledge, and in virtue of the prestige which the Conquest gave them. But the white in Central America — as seems to be a law of nature in regard to the European who lives for long in the tropics — is deteriorating. Moreover, he is greatly inferior in number to the Indians, and is not increasing so rapidly as they are. Will a day come when the Indian will arise and re-assert his rights ? That he could do so is certain. But that he has the patience — the staying power, so as to speak — necessary to accomplish this, is very doubtful. Above all, it is all but certain that he has not now the spirit. There have been rebellions of the Indians in Mexico, and even throughout Central America, in Guatemala especially, when Carrera and his savage hordes threw the country into a tremor. But I can hardly believe that there is much chance, at least in our day, of seeing such rebellions resulting in great things. Nor, infamously bad though the rule of the white man is in these regions, are there the slightest grounds for belief that the rule of the brown one would be an improvement. On the contrary, it could only result in bloodshed and anarchy. If further proof were required of the identity of the race inhabiting Central America — at least the northern part with Mexico — it would be found in the shape of the monuments in both countries. In Guatemala, when Cortes traversed the regions in which they are chiefly found, there were no inhabitants, while in Yucatan there were found, from the island of Cozumal to the frontier of Peten and Tabasco, inhabited towns in numbers, which, to use Herrara's words, were "frightful to contemplate."* Yet the ruins of Yucatan . are identical in architectural design with those of Guatemala. They are like them in their pyramidal bases, their absence of arched roofs, the use of stucco and painting in their decoration, the bas-relief cut on their walls, and in the resem blance between their hieroglyphic symbols. Again, the ruins of Yucatan are of the same nature as those of upper Mexico, which have been attributed to the Toltecs, so that it is not straining the argument too far to say that from Guatemala northward the " city builders " were of the same race. But the nature of these ruins, their appearance and *"En todas las Provincas se han hallado tantos y tan grandes edificios de canteria que espanta."— Herrara, t58 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. general display, our space will not admit of describing, except in the general sketch already given. In Palenque are found the chief ruins of this description. Weird and strange they appear in the depth of the tropical forest, and when night falls over them the imagination can easily picture them, as do the Indians, as tenanted by the spirits of their early occupants. As if to afford a striking contrast between their past and present history, the ruins during the fine season are a favourite place of resort for the fashionable people of Santo Domingo, who establish themselves here to the great damage of the monuments, which bear many traces of the sojourn of these irreverential descendants of the conquistadores. "They suspend their hammocks under the shade of the majestic trees, and swing in them indolently, listening to the murmurs of the streams, and regaling themselves with the shell-fish which are found here in great abundance." Such is the description that M. Morelet, in disgust, gives of these sensuous disturbers of the pleasures of Palen quean imagination. There are, however, still in Central America independent tribes of Indians, whom the " civilisation " of the whites — fatal gift— has never reached. Before leaving this part of our subject, we must devote a few lines to these interesting people. To the east of Peten are found the remnant of some of these tribes. They are the Lacandones. who roam over the unexplored Cordilleras, content to be left alone. The most daring of them will sometimes venture as far as the frontier to procure by barter some articles which they find themselves in need of. As a rule, however, they shun all intercourse with the whites, from whom they conceal themselves, watching their movements from their retreats in the mountains. They are still armed, as were their fathers, with bow and arrows, and so little accustomed are they to firearms, that the discharge frightens them as it did in the primitive days of their race. They are polytheists, and they are polygamists, with many of the weaknesses which attach to the love of many gods and many wives. They are remnants, for the most part, of the old stock of the Lacandones, to whom have gathered the broken fragments of Manches, Tcholes, Puchutlas, and other cognate tribes, who have chosen to abandon their ancient homes for the sake of freedom in the wilder ness. Though the region which they inhabit has been penetrated in various directions hy several ecclesiastico-military expeditions, yet it is at present almost as little known as some parts of Central Asia, or the interior of Africa. For more than a century and a half the inhabitants have ceased to be robbers, and at present only aim at isolation and inde pendence. Their ambition is limited to being let alone. If they meet a white man they ' say to him nothing more than they can escape saying, and their business being concluded, they depart to their homes by obscure and unknown paths. M. De Waldeck met some of them, and gives an account of their habits, which are by no means pleasant. Their temples or places of worship are hidden away in the forest, at a distance from their villages. Here they perform their idolatrous rites after the custom of their ancestors. Their costume is the same with that of the figures on the bas-reliefs of Palenque and Ocosingo, while, according to M. De Waldeck, their moral state is so low that no dependence is to be placed on their asservations, unless taken in the name of their ancient demi-god Ballam. It is also whispered that cannibalism has not yet become extinct amongst them, even in the regions lying close to the Spanish settlement where the priests affect to hare CENTRAL AMERICA: INDIAN LIFE. 69 1*7!^'' ^ ,They ^ ^ gmt red ^^ called alto On beine asked the reason of this practice, one of them replied, "Our ancestors killed and ate their XNDIANS TAPPZNG THE CAOUTCHOUC, OR INBIA-RUBEEK TREE (Siptoua Optica). enemies; but since the Spaniards, who are the strongest, have come, they do not allow us to continue this custom, and do not even permit us to eat what of right belongs to us-our children. Hence it is that we attack these little men of the woods, whose flesh 70 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. is equally good, and whom we are allowed to kill with impunity." But besides these Indians there is in the unexplored interior a large native population, having no relations either with the Indians or with the inhabitants of the towns, while the configuration of the country and their own ferocity prevent any one with a proper regard for what the surgeons called " continuity of tissue " penetrating into their fortresses.* The Itzaes, who for a cen tury and a half established themselves on the island of Peten, in the charming Lake of Itza where now stands the town of Flores, was also one of the tribes which for long maintained its own against the Spaniards. A retired place has always charms for the Central American Indian. M. Morelet describes him as jealous of his independence, and always concerned for the safety of what he possesses. He retreats before civilisation, and strives to conceal the results of his industry and skill in the heart of the forest. One sees with surprise that the lands around his villages are always uncultivated, and wonders where are the fields whence he draws his supply of provisions. They are often leagues away, in secluded and unknown localities ; and should their owner conceive that they have in any degree diminished in fertility, or should he be disturbed in their possession, he does not hesitate to abandon them, and seek out a new and more secure place for his plantation. Political Life. They who have perused these pages must have come to the conclusion that in Central America a "strong government" is a rarity, and as it invariably is a despotism, hardly more to be desired than a weak one. For instance, as I write there comes news of a revolution among the Spanish negroes of San Domingo, at one end of Hayti; and, as if to keep the balance true, the curly-headed Frenchmen in the sable republic, at the other end of the island (Vol. II., p. 315), are engaged in the same improving occupation. President Baez has fled, General Somebody else has " proclaimed " himself, while President Boisrond-Canal is in very hot water at home. But why the Dominicans have sprang the political mine on which they always sit, or for what reason the Haytian patriots are bombarding Port-au-Prince, we do not know, and it is very questionable if they know themselves. The politics of tropical America are among those things which many have attempted to master, but nobody has yet understood. Baron Reuter does not enlighten us, and indeed states the fact in a languid telegraphic sort of way, with no expectation of exciting anybody short of a Haytian bondholder; and even they, having never received any interest for an indefinite period, can only receive the intelligence of their debtors killing each other with a faint gleam of hopeful satisfaction. Things are always at the worst in Hayti, and they never mend. The truth is that, to a time beyond which the memory of man runneth not, Hayti has always been in revolt against somebody, or on the eve of a revolution against something, and San Domingo amusing itself by chasing out one President and bringing in another. Revolutions in these regions are about as frequent as earthquakes, and almost as useful. Hence they pall on the intellectual palate, longing for political food less monotonous. Cuba has nominally closed for the time being * "Voyage dans 1' Yucatan," p. 42; also Squier: "The States of Central America," Chap. XXV, CENTRAL AMERICA : POLITICAL LIFE. 71 a ten years' civil contest ; Hayti has burst out into what the sporting prophets would call a "double event" of the same character; Colombia has emerged from a similar disturbance; while the States of Central America, after resting from the condition of utter exhaustion in which they put themselves in 1873, are again preparing to bombard each other's towns, cut each other's throats, and commit other crimes in the name of liberty. This is a fashion they have in Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Anarchy is the normal condition of affairs ; peace and good government the exception in these unhappy republics into which the great " Empire of the Indies " shivered. Nor are we aware that there are any " lessons " to be learned from this miserable state of affairs, though the doctrinaires have never wearied of attempting to extract a moral from these very immoral political failures. One wiseacre will prove entirely to his own satisfaction that the priests are the cause of all the trouble, while another will show as conclusively that it is the neglect of true religion that has brought this visitation of pronunciamientos on unhappy Hispano-Ameriea. Next we read a doleful little essay, showing that it is the poor Indian's untutored mind that cerebrates after this unpleasant fashion, only to be presented with another treatise intended to demonstrate that it is the neglect of the Ethiopian's unconquerable itch for voting and preaching which has brought his adopted country down to its nomally low political ebb. Finally, we have perused so many articles tending to show that the mammon of aristocratic unrighteousness is at the bottom of it all, that we might have been convinced, had we not at the same time been favoured with a pamphlet or two proving quite as clearly that Spanish America was a sad warning to all who imagined that a republic was the political millennium ! The truth is far apart from any of these specious theories. The miseries of Spanish America are of a very old date; they originated in a condition of things in vogue prior to the liberation of the colonies; and the curse they are now suffering under is the damnosa hareditas which has descended to them from three centuries of misrule. What this was I have attempted to demonstrate in another place, so that I need only here sketch it out very briefly. The Spaniard is at best not an estimable individual. He is polite, but his politeness is the embodiment of haughty contempt for a world not built up of hidalgos and grandees. It is, as a late British Consul in Barcelona reported, " the diamond ring on the dirty finger." No man will so grandiosely beg His Worship, the- most excellent Seiior, to consider his goods, house, and fortune at his disposal as the average Spaniard, and yet at the same time be more astounded if his mouthful of fine words be taken to mean more than a glass of lukewarm water and a bad cigarette (p. 24) ; while, if thwarted in the smallest thing, there lives not a ruffian who will curse more freely, or put a knife under another Caballero's fifth rib more deftly or with a statelier air, than Senor Don Camillo Guzman Miguel Pedrillo, whose family papers were, with such difficulty, saved at the Flood. When we first knew them the Spaniards were a poor race, easily conquered, but so treacherous that the " victorious Sixth Legion " was generally kept by its Roman commanders as far from Hispania and mischief as possible. The Arabs brought learning and art to Spain, and the Jews brought commercial knowledge. With the expulsion of the Moors, much of Spanish art left Spain, and with the Jews many a bright intellect that the country has since been sorely in need of. Just then the New World was discovered, and what Spain had lost in brains it gained in gold. For a time the 7-1 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Mexican pistoles and the treasures of the Incas enabled the mother country to hire mercenaries, build ships, and bribe statesmen, and so maintain a hollow greatness. But when this artificial stimulus departed, then also faded away the tinsel " glories " of Spain. She sank down to the humble place intended for her in the economy of things, and became— as she is to this day and will continue to be — a conservatory for old customs, old ideas quaint proverbs, narrow bigotry, picturesque peasants, old masters, and new wine. One thing has, however, never forsaken the Spaniard, and that is his courage: it is the birthright of his race. One almost stands aghast at the daring of the conquistadores — at Cortes, Pizarro, Alvarado, and the rest of them — and horrified at their cruelty. Their INDIAN OF THE OLD AZTEC RACE. courage was something hardly of this world, and their greed of gold and utter unscrupulousness surely the belongings of what in Parliamentary language is called "another place." Every man and woman in Spain lusted for " hawksbills " of the precious metal, and no danger, no hardship, scarce any crime, restrained them in their feverish desire to get it. If any such scruples stood in their way, there were always the shavelings in their train to urge them on for "the glory of God" and the "good of the Church." Twenty-two years after the settlement of Hayti, the Carib Indians were reduced in number from— it is said— 2,000,000 to 14,000. They had perished in the gold mines— men, women, and children— for all were compelled to work. They had been slaughtered by arquebusiers, they had been torn by bloodhounds, or, weary of life, they had thrown themselves and their loads of ore over the precipices of the land they once owned, and now toiled in as slaves. In all Spanish America it was the same. In Peru, for instance, the land resounded with the melancholy song of the women bewailing the sad fate of their husbands and brothers, toiling in the silver mines, or wearing their lives away in the mita. Mothers maimed their children so that they might not be delivered to the tormentors, while the priests inflicted 100 blows of a whip CENTRAL AMERICA: POLITICAL LIFE. 73 on any one who married an idolater, so careful were the corregidors and the padres to get the most out of the red men's bodies and souls. A knight was wounded in Guiana, and the surgeons, to see how far the lance might have penetrated, equipped an Indian in the knight's armour, as a target for the spearmen. Afterwards they probed the .wounds, and made their diagnosis. Such was the use they made of those whom- Sir Walter Raleigh described as " a naked people, but valiant as any under the skies." When the Indians were all but killed off, negroes were imported, aud the importers thus unconsciously brought a Nemesis, INDIAN WOMAN OF THE OLD AZTEC RACE. which was to work them vengeance. Nor were they particular as to the colour of their slaves. A trader who could not get black men took brown ones, as was the fashion of the day. Francis Sparrow bought — as it has been my unpatriotic duty to relate elsewhere — " to the southward of Orinoco, eight beautiful young women, the oldest not eighteen years of age, for a red-handled knife, the value of which was in England, at that time, but one halfpenny." Nor were the colonists treated much better. Everything was reserved for Spain and men of Spanish birth. The Greek theory of colonies — that they were solely for the benefit of the mother country — prevailed. No Creole — that is, Spaniard born in the country — could hold any office. Every post in the gift of the king was put up to auction in Madrid, and sold to the highest bidder, who, of course, made what profit he could out of his investment in official stock. No foreigners were allowed to trade with the colonies, and, as a consequence, buccaneering and smuggling went on wholesale. Any foreign sailors 90 74 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. wrecked on the shores were treated as pirates. The colonists were discouraged from com municating through the medium of letters ; newspapers were almost unknown ; and intercourse between the different colonies was as far as possible prevented, in case the Creoles might plot against old Spain. They had, moreover, few opportunities for education, and were oppressed by the most villainous of taxes. Any person, for instance, not in possession of a Bula de Confesion, lost all rights as a citizen, or even as an individual, while justice was bought and sold. Three centuries of such oppression and misgovernment did its work so thoroughly that when the colonists, in the hour of Spain's adversity, threw off her yoke, they found the bulk of the people unfitted for self-government, and, least of all possible governments, for that which they adopted. They had been so long kept in ignorance, that they absolutely retained most of the worst laws of old Spain. In nearly all the colonies there was no religious toleration, and in few of them were foreigners allowed to settle or trade freely. So long had they been isolated from each other, that the mutual jealousies which had grown up prevented their leaguing together for the common weal. On the contrary, they split up into numerous rival republics, which have disintegrated more and more ever since. There have been continual wars of races — the Spaniard, the negro, and the Indian having each in his turn gained the upper hand, and tyrannised over the country. Public spirit is unknown, self-sacrifice for the public good a mere theory, and the greed of place and pelf all-powerful. Central America is perhaps the worst of all of these governments; Chili perhaps the best; but even Chili, though hopeful, is as yet an unsolved problem in politics. But there is really very little to choose among them. Added to this is the prevalence of the most ludicrous self-conceit, and a haughty arrogance which now and then takes the inconvenient form of insulting the consul of some great power. A President is elected, but no sooner is he inaugurated than his rival issues a pronuneia- miento, and tries to displace him by force. In Venezuela — which in a short time we shall visit — a minister of the Republic congratulated Congress that there had been only seventeen revolutions within the year. Sometimes the soldiers take the election into their own hands; at other times they try a Dictator, and, very often without trying for it, anarchy pure and simple prevails. Then arises some such scourge as Rafael Can-era, an Indo-negro mongrel, at whose name Guatemala trembled for years (p. 24). This individual has more than once appeared in these pages. He was certainly one of the most remarkable men whom Central America has produced, and in some respects one of the greatest. Yet he was a terrible politician, and, like Henry VIIL, "an expensive Herr." A traveller, writing in 1847, thus describes his appearance in the market-place of Guatemala:— "All at once the guard at the cuartel beat to arms, and the reclining soldiers leap up, seize their muskets, and range themselves stiffly along the front of their quarters. We look to see the occasion of the sudden movement, and observe approaching a man of medium height, still young, with coal-black hair and tawny complexion, who moves slowly up the arcade which leads to tbe house of tbe government. He is President Rafael Carrera, that redoubtable Indian who has overthrown the authority of the Spanish race, and who now represents the national power of the State. He is dressed in ordinary costume, without any distinctive insignia of authority. The swarm of sinister men who surround him, and whom you mistake for lacqueys, are the aids of his Excellency— sad fellows, CENTRAL AMERICA: POLITICAL LIFE. 75 who have emerged, like himself, from the lower orders, bound to his fortunes, and who, to retain favour, are ready to perform any kind of service. The President marches in silence, his head bent forward, and his eyes fixed on the ground, without responding to the salutations of those whom he meets, and disappears in the palace." Yet, that Can-era was no ordinary man is proved by the fact that, though uneducated, and without aDy political experienee, he managed to retain the power won by his sword longer than most Central American Presidents, and even in 1854 got himself declared Presidente Vitalico, or President for life, with power to name his successor. His titles, as printed in official reports, used to be, "His Most Excellent Senor Don Rafael Carrera, President for Life of the Republic, Captain-General of the Forces, General of the Treasury, Commander of the Royal Order of Leopold of Belgium, Honorary President of the Institute of Africa, decorated with various insignia for actions in war," &c. &e. For long he refused the Presidency, alleging his want of education, and the incompatibility of his habits with the lofty position to which his sycophants wish to raise him for their own advantage, or his enemies, in order that they might make a tool of him and work his ruin. He, however, finally yielded, retaining, nevertheless, to the last his round jacket and straw hat. He was active, unscrupulous, and obstinate, but though taciturn in his humour, and violent and sanguinary when roused, yet those who knew him best declare that this terrible man was not without a " qualified generosity," and that he used his power with more moderation than might have been expected from his antecedents. His origin was, like that of Rosas, the quondam Dictator of Buenos Ayres, exceedingly humble. Indeed, their enemies declare that they were dismissed from the employment of their masters for conduct which could in no way add to their reputation. Profiting by the disturbances of the country, Carrera, at the head of his Indians, and Rosas, at the head of his gauehos, both commenced their career by the invasion of the capital, and this piece of audacity being successful, they both rapidly rose into power. Rosas was, however, a man of far greater grasp than Carrera, and as a diplomatist did work which the Indian could never have been capable of had he been called upon to perform it. In 1840, General Morazin, having failed to wrest Guatemala from Carrera, had to flee with the majority of his forces, leaving 200 men in the Plaza to hold the enemy in check and cover his retreat. Next morning, after a spirited resistance, they were forced to lay down arms : then, trusting to the conventionalties of war, they were indiscriminately slaughtered. Their commander was brought before Carrera and Paez, his satellite. "They both fell upon him with blows, struck him to the ground, and forced their horses to trample on him, horribly mangling his body, while he vainly supplicated for death. Finally, Paez handed his own lance to one of the assassins in his suite, who drove it through the heart of the unfortunate man; and released him from further barbarities." This nightmare of Guatemala was murdered soon after attaining supreme power — having held authority for eleven years (1854-1865) — in the interests of the Indians, the worst of the aristocracy, and the priests, whose slave he was. When Canning boasted that he had " called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old," he did not calculate on also " calling into existence " the Rafael Carreras, and other citizens of that stamp, who, to copy the reply of the Viscount Cormerin to the Parisian Deputation in 1836, "flattered themselves they had suppressed rain because they had abolished- gutters." 76 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Hayti, for example, has essayed every form of government on earth, and the Spanish republics almost every one short of a king, though even that form of ruler has a " faction " which now and then gets the upper hand, and (as in Honduras) burns the capital, assassinates the President, while it in no case neglects to rob the Treasury when — rare chance — there is anything in it. Finally, these experimenters at government discovered the art of robbing verdant Europeans. This they pleasantly called "borrowing," but as they never paid either principal or interest, some irate gentlemen in Capel Court and elsewhere feel how insufficient is the English language to express their opinion of the transaction. What is to be done with such countries ? They are rich, but their riches are useless. They are on the high-road of commerce, but vile laws, political knaves, venal custom-houses, factious and corrupt officials, cause commerce to avoid them. They borrow, but will not pay ; they are insolent, and yet have nothing through which to punish them. Annex them? One might as well talk of annexing a nest of rattlesnakes. San Domingo has changed her nationality at least six times in seventy years ; has always had to come back to independence; and at present can get nobody to look at her with intentions honourable or dishonourable, Earthquakes are pretty active in these regions, and the tornado sometimes lively. But, somehow or other, they never altogether annihilate these homes of revolt, and the sanguine newspaper reader always relapses from cheerful hopefulness back into his pristine condition of despair. The problem of what is to be done with half of Spanish America is insoluble, and that involved in the future of the other half doubtful. Perhaps the fate of the historical cats of Kilkenny may afford an approach towards its solution ? This may be, no doubt, set down as prejudice : in that case, I can only urge the melancholy words of the great Liberator Bolivar, that the people for whom he had striven were strangers to virtue, and that he had wasted his life in ploughing and sowing the waters of the ocean! Social Life. Any general description of Central American society — that is, social life among the Europeans and people of European descent — could not be well given in the space at our disposal, and, indeed, has already been partially sketched under the head of the individual States. Still there are certain features common to the whole country. These are intense langour, exceeding exclusiveness, and a superficial politeness which, to the freshly-arrived stranger,. who knows how to take it, is wondrously pleasant. Take Panama, for example. There life if not a burden is not lightly borne. It is too hot for active out-door life; and a ride, walk, or drive can only be taken when the road will admit of it, in tbe cool hours of the day, early in tbe morning, or in the evening. Reading, that resource of dull places elsewhere, becomes, as Mr. Bidwell justly remarks, in time scarcely possible. The resident begins the day half tired, and the book surely sends him to sleep. There is also scarcely anything of what is known elsewhere as " society." The foreigners associate little among themselves, and just as little among the natives. The Panamefios are exceedingly reserved, and visits are carried on with such an amount of ceremonious etiquette that to most people they get fatiguing ; while the young men of the place, even those who have been educated abroad, prefer the amusements of dirty cafes and billiard rooms to the society of their sisters and lady friends. Sometimes a ball is got up, when anybody has energy enough to take CENTRAL AMERICA: SOCIAL LIFE. 77 the requisite trouble. Then a pretty collection of young ladies make their appearance, with gentlemen to match. But for months afterwards — unless, indeed, at an early mass — the latter will have little chance of ever seeing one of the former ; and, indeed, begin by wondering where they all came from, and end by being puzzled where they have all gone to. Yet, in most Spanish countries access to society is not difficult. In Panama, however, there are circumstances which make the people draw within themselves. Panama is the high road to every place, and the halting-place of many adventurers whom experience PECCA1UES {Dicotijes torquatus). has taught the natives to regard with profound suspicion. This suspicion they almost instinctively visit on those who do not deserve it, until in time the natural Spanish pride and reserve have become what it is in the isthmus. The morality of women of Spanish descent does not rank high in public esteem. But this generalisation has been founded on "the hasty- observations of passing travellers, who, forgetting that birds of passage do not always see the best of any country, but only that portion which lies nearest to their path, make sweeping conclusions from their very imperfect premisses. The Panamefios, as a rule, are graceful, pretty, and lady-like, affectionate daughters, good wives and mothers, and industrious, we are told by Mr. Bidwell, " to a degree which is little credited by foreigners even long resident in Panama. I have known whole families almost supported by the needlework of the daughters of the household; yet these girls were none the less young ladies ; they saw only the merit of their work ; it did not make them descend to the scale 78 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. of the couturier e in Europe. Considering the little means of education available for the better class of girls in Panama, there being no private schools, and few persons capable of teaching, there is much to be said in praise of the industrial and economical habits of the Panameiios in the higher walks of life." The poorer classes are, however, poor, but not honest. Marriage among them is the exception and not the rule : this ceremony they look upon as something reserved for their betters — for the Sefioras and the Ninas*— and hardly befitting humble folks' ways of life. The dress of the Panama ladies is now very much the same as that of their sisters • in Paris. Even the pretty custom of dressing the hair with flowers when they walked in the street has, like the Saya i manta of the Limefia, almost passed away in these degenerate days. The native labourer wears only cotton or linen trousers and shirt, and generally no shoes, but the girls are rather fond of finery. The ordinary dress is the pollera, made without sleeves, and low in front, with lace trimming on the bust. They invest all their savings in jewellery, such as charms and ornamental hair-combs, to be worn on gala days, and then pawned when they are in pecuniary trouble. Mourning is very popular, though black dresses are, of all garments, the most unsuitable for a hot climate. There is almost no recreation except cock-fighting and bull- teasing. This is not bull-fighting, for the wretched animal is only let loose in the street, or led by a cord, and teased by its hirers, though it rarely does any harm, being well held in cheek by the tormentors. To hire such an animal from a butcher is considered a delicate attention from a young man to his sweetheart on her birthday. To teach them a rough lesson, an American in Panama once let loose a bear, which he had got from California, and on being remonstrated with, he replied that he did not see why he should not celebrate the birthday of his child after his own fashion, even though his "bar" should make the Panamenos take to their heels a little quicker than their bull did. Cock- fighting is a common pastime among the more dissolute priests and the lower orders on Sundays and holidays. Fighting cocks are common objects of the country; they can be seen tied to nails at the owners' doors, and with grey parrots seem the chief domestic pets. The Central American Spaniard of to-day has little of the spirit of the conquistador in him. He has little or no enterprise, not very much courage, though some ferocity, and even the old lust of gold, which distinguished his ancestors, has given place to a craving for change, and an unwearied love of dabbling in tiresome politics, which few people in the country seem to thoroughly understand the rights and wrongs of, and which assuredly nobody outside it cares to orobe to their muddy depths. CHAPTER V. Central America : Natural Productions. In the course of the foregoing pages various remarks have been made on the different natural productions of the region. But this is a subject on which volumes could be written, * In Panama, the term Nina, or young lady, is applied aliko to married and unmarried ladies, just as Sefiorito is in Peru. Sefiora is applied to more elderly ladies. CENTRAL AMERICA: NATURAL PRODUCTIONS. 79 and, indeed, have been written, so that we can only devote a few lines more to noting some of the chief economic plants and a few of the more remarkable animals which are characteristic of Central America, referring the reader for fuller accounts to the works already quoted. The logwood — the palo de tinta of the Spaniard — the Hcematoxylon Campechianum, is one of the most valuable trees of Central America. Under favourable circumstances it grows to a height of from thirty to forty feet. Its appearance is peculiar, the trunk being gnarled and full of irregular cavities, while its pinnated dark green foliage and small yellowish flowers, which hang in bunches from the ends of the branches, add to the peculiarity of this famous dyewood tree. It grows in impenetrable thickets, and when it once takes up its abode, it monopolises the forest, no vegetation prospering under its shade. It grows rapidly, but at the same time is jealous of being artificially treated, as the numerous failures in the attempts to neutralise it in the Bahamas and other islands have proved. It is the heart-wood which is used in commerce, the sap or outside wood being of a yellow colour, the dye, however, yielded being not dark red, like that of the Brazil wood {Casalpinia) , but black, shading on purple. In the forests where it is found it is usually cut in the vicinity of a stream, down which the logs can be conveyed. But there is a total absence of care or efficient economy in hewing it, all the proprietor caring is that he should secure a sufficient quantity. Accord ingly, the chopper, who receive so much money for so much wood delivered at the port of embarkation, hews down what he can and how he can, without the slightest care • for the future. The mayoral, or agent, rejects all billets marked with orange spots, which are indications of decay, and then has the remainder weighed in his presence and the amount duly credited to the collector or chopper. The mayoral is a gentleman who does not court popularity, knowing that popularity with his labourers is only consistent with allowing them to neglect their work and indulge in their natural laziness, and thus abridge his profit, for he is paid a percentage on what he can collect for his principal. Moreover, as the labourers are always in debt to their employer, they do not go about their work with any zest, and are only too apt to avoid their liabilities by levanting after they have got sufficiently deep in the books of the logwood merchant to make this exertion worth their trouble. The wood is cut down and barked with an axe, the Indian declining, with his usual con servatism, to substitute a saw for their old-fashioned implement. Also, to avoid the knot and protuberances of the lowest part of the trunk, they cut down the tree above a yard from the ground, leaving an excellent part of the stump still standing to rot in the ground, since it is well known that this mutilated portion will never send out shoots again. At this rate the logwood will soon become a rare tree. The tree is cut during the dry season, and then when the rivers rise during the rains, the accumulated stock is transported to the coast, though in certain favoured localities the cutting and despatching of it to the ports goes on the whole year round. Of course by the construction of roads and canals, in the greater number of cases, the traffic might be made constant, but in Central America the inhabitants usually prefer to wait on Providence to exerting themselves in any new-fangled enterprises of this description. If a method could be devised whereby the logwood would cut itself and jump on board the ships, the proprietors might be inclined to listen to the project, but in a land where Crianza quita labranza — rearing cattle relieves one of labour — 80 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. is the characteristic proverb, anything in the shape of exertion is not very likely to be popular.* Rosewood (Balbergia) , lignum vitas (Guaiacum), fustic, yellow sanders {Bucida capitata), Brazil wood, a kind of dragon's blood (Ecastaphyllum monetaria), Nicaragua blood (Cpeaalpinia echinata), and the Anotta (Bixa Orellana) may be mentioned as among the other valuable dye and other woods found in this region. The gum arabic bush abounds in all the open savannas, and in the forests may be found the copaiba gum, the copal bush, the liquid amber, palma christi, ipecacuanha, and caoutchouc tree (Siphonia elastica), from which india-rubber is obtained by "tapping," or making incisions in the trunk of the tree (p. 69) ; while the long-leaved pitch pine covers many parts of country, more particularly the elevated portions of Honduras, from sea to sea. The cedar, which attains a height of from seventy to eighty feet, is extensively used for all purposes where immunity from the attack of insects is of any importance. The ceiba, or silk-cotton tree (Eriodendron anfractuosun) , grows to a vast size, and is used for many of the common "bongos" and "pitpans." Some of them hollowed from a single trunk will measure " in the clear " seven feet between the sides. Live oak, Santa Maria (Calophylltim Calaba), sunwood, sapodilla (Sapota Aehrtu), calabash, mangrove grape tree, iron wood, calabash button wood, mahoe locust, polewood almond, granadillo, many different kinds of palms, bamboos, &c. &c, are more or less abundant through Central America, while among fruits the lime, lemon, and orange are well known and extensively cultivated. Pimento, cacao, sarsaparilla, vanilla, and other staples need only be mentioned as a specimen of the various tropical crops not already touched on. The animals are much " too numerous even to mention." The dog is native, but the horse, ass, ox, sheep, goat, hog, and cat, are all importations. The horse of the country still retains > some of the Arab characteristics of his ancestors, but in Central America his lot has not fallen in pleasant places. A plague of insects enters his ears, bats bite him, and spiders attack his feet, so that the hoof separates. Deer, the peccary (p. 77), tapir, manatee, monkeys of many species, racoons, opossum, squirrels, and bats, armadillo (three species), the Indian coney, or agouti (p. 44), the jaguar, and many species of birds and reptiles which, as their names may be unfamiliar to the reader it is useless giving, are among the wild fauna of the country between Mexico and Panama. Last of all, it need hardly be added that insects are numerous and of many species. They are a terrible pest to the traveller, fully justifying Sydney Smith's well-known description, when he characterised insects as " the curse of the tropics. The bete rouge lays the foundation of a tremendous ulcer. In a moment you are covered with ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your flesh and hatch a large colony of young chigoes in a few hours. They will not live together, but every chigoe sets up a separate ulcer, and has his own private portion of pus. Flies get entry into your mouth, into your eyes, into your nose. You eat flies, drink flies, and breathe flies. Lizards, cockroaches, and snakes get into the bed, ants eat up the books, scorpions sting you on the foot. Everything bites, stings, or bruises ; every second of your existence you are wounded by some species of animal life that nobody has seen before, except Swammerdam and Meriam. An insect with eleven legs is swarming in your tea-cup, a nondescript with nine wings is struggling in the small beer, or caterpillar with several dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the bread * Morolet : lib. cit., p. 118 el seq. 91 VIEW OF THE WATERFALL OF TEQUENDAMA, BOGOTA, COLOMBIA. THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. and butter ! All Nature is alive, and seems to be gathering all her entomological hosts to eat you up as you are standing, out of your coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Such are the tropics. All this reconciles us to our dews, fogs, vapours, and drizzles, to our apothecaries rushing about with gargles and tinctures, to our old British constitutional coughs, sore throats, and swollen faces." CHAPTER VI. South America : Colombia ; Ecuador. We have now left the comparatively narrow neck of land connecting the two great divisions of the New World, and in succeeding chapters of this volume will concern ourselves solely with South America. Before, however, entering on a more detailed account of the different political divisions, it may be well to briefly indicate some of the great physical features of this region. At the same time, it will be difficult to give any general account of a region so extensive, in so far that what might be true of one portion would be far from the truth in regard to another. Accordingly, it may be best to hinge the greater portion of our general remarks regarding the geography and products, as well as the climate and governments, of South America, upon the different Republics and the Empire to be described, more especially as these political divisions are not unfrequently divided off from each other by very natural boundaries, Looking, then, at South America as a whole, we find it a peninsula, triangular in shape, leading an observer to suspect that at some former period a greater amount of land stretched to the east, and that probably the rocks known as Martin Vas, Trinidad, and Columbus, and even the Falkland Islands, are tbe remains of this slice taken away from the Atlantic shores of the continent. And here we may remark that very little doubt can exist that at one time the Pacific shores of both North and South America extended much further to the westward, though with such speculations we need not at present concern ourselves. The present land mass is in length, from north to south, 4,550 miles, while its greatest breadth — namely, from the northern point of Peru to the extreme eastern extension of Brazil — is about 3,200 miles. It covers an area of some six and a half million square miles, about one-fourth of which is in the temperate zone and the remainder within the tropics. Taking the configuration of its surface as the basis of the classification, this great region is usually divided into five great regions. These are : (1) The region skirting the shores of the Pacific. This country is in general low, from 50 to 150 miles in breadth, and 4,000 miles in length. The two extremities are fertile, while the middle is a sandy desert. (2) The basin of the Orinoco river, a country mainly consisting of plains or steppes, called llanos, either destitute of wood or only dotted with trees, but covered with a tall herbage during a part of the year. Fat, lazy cattle pasture here in thousands, as shown in the familiar scene figured on Plate XXIII. Here we see the animals half buried in herbage, or dozing under the shade of the broad-leaved Morichi palms (Mauritia fiemosa), placidly allowing the insectivorous hawks to pick out the tick-like SOUTH AMERICA: PHYSICAL WEOURAPHY. 88 parasites called garrapatos. This is a favourite occupation of these birds, hence they are well known as garrapateros. In this region the heat is intense, especially during the dry season, when the parched soil cracks into long fissures, in which lizards and serpents lie in a state of torpor. The Orinoco is 1,800 miles in length, while the area of its basin is 400,000 square miles. (3) The basin of the Amazon, a vast plain of more than 2,000,000 square miles, forming a rich soil and humid climate. It is everywhere covered with dense forests, in which live innumerable wild animals and a few savages, who subsist by hunting them and fishing the waters of the river and its tributaries. (4) The region of the Pampas. This section comprises the great southern plains watered by the Plata and the numerous streams descending from the eastern summits of the Cordilleras. The Pampas, or South American Prairies, occupy the greater part of this region. They are dry, and in some places barren, but in general are covered with a rank growth of weeds and tall grass, on which feed prodigious numbers of horses and cattle and the few wild animals which can find a shelter in its scanty herbage. (5) The country of Brazil eastward of the Parana and Uruguay, " presenting alternate ridges and valleys, thickly covered with wood on the side next the Atlantic, and opening into steppes or pastures in the interior." The great range of the Andes, which may be classed as the southern continuation of the Rocky Mountains, is the chief mountain system of South America, and extends almost from Cape Horn to the Isthmus of Panama, running approximately in 72nd meridian of longitude during the whole of that immense distance, like the Rocky Mountains, always much nearer the Pacific than the Atlantic. They thus form a great rampart, having an average height of 11,000 to 12,000 feet, and a width varying from 20 to 300 or 400 miles. " In most places the chain rises to heights of several thousand feet, and upon this chain rest two or three principal ridges of mountains enclosing lofty plains or valleys, separated one from another by mountain knots, which mark the spots where ridges belonging to different systems intersect. In one sense, the lofty plains of the Desaguadero, Quito, and others are valleys, since they are encompassed by mountains, but in a certain sense they are plateaux, since they form the broad summit of the range or platform on which the bounding ridges themselves stand."* There are three transverse ridges which pass eastward at almost right angles to the main chain, thus forming the three natural areas of the Orinoco, Amazon, and La Plata basins. They cross the continent in the parallels of 18° south and 4° and 9° north. The first, or most northern, is the Cordillera of the coast, which terminates at the Gulf of Paria. The second is the Cordillera of Parime, or, as Humboldt calls it, the Cordillera of the Cataracts of the Orinoco; it divides the waters of the Orinoco and the rivers of Guiana from the Amazon basin, and is covered with magnificent forests. It terminates in French Guiana, at no great distance from the mouth of the Amazon. On a table-land, which forms part of this chain, in about the 67th degree of longitude, the Cassiquiari forms an intermediate channel, which connects the rivers Orinoco and Negro, so that during the floods a part of one river flows into the other. The third transverse chain is that which extends almost as far as Santa Cruz, in the vicinity of the river Mamore. " South of this range," writes the author of the admirable article we have quoted, " are a * Article " America," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 9th edition. 84 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. number of ridges having an east and west direction, an average height of about 10,000 feet, and terminating in the plain near the Paraguay. This country, which divides the waters of the Amazon from those of the Plata, is a broad plateau of elevated land rather than a distinct mountainous ridge, and consists of low hills or uneven plains with very little wood, presenting in some places extensive pastures, and in others tracts of a poor sandy soil. Its average heio-ht does not exceed 2,000 or 3,000 feet above the level of the sea. The mountains of THE GREAT "elephant's EAR " OF COLOMBIA (Begonia magnified). Brazil, which are of moderate height and occupy a great breadth of country, form an irregular plateau, bristled with sharp ridges running in a direction approximately parallel to the eastern coast, connected by offsets running in a more or less eastern and western direction. They extend from 5° to 25° south latitude, and the extreme breadth may be about 1,000 miles. Between Victoria on the north and Morro de St. Martha on the south, a range with numerous curves lies a little way back from the coast, and is for the greater part of its lengt known as the Sierra do Mar. Somewhat further inland is a higher range, the different parts of which have various names, but it is best known as the Sierra de Mantique'ra, It SOUTH AMERICA: PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 85 contains the highest peaks in Brazil, amongst which may be mentioned Mount Itacolumi, famous for the gold and diamond-yielding strata in its vicinity ; the Pico dos Orgaos, which is 7,700 feet high; and Itambe, 8,426 feet. Some of the peaks are believed to be still higher. West of this the uplands of Brazil stretch far into the interior, and at length sink into the great central plain, through which flow the Paraguay and its tributaries. Roughly speaking, the height of the central plains or valleys is from 6,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea; of the passes and knots from 10,000 to 15,000 feet; and of the highest peaks from 18,000 to 23,290 feet, the last being the altitude of Aconcagua in Chili, which is generally considered to be the highest peak in America. Judging from the estimates, we may regard the bulk A I-'AKM-YAKD IN COLOMBIA. of the Andes as somewhere about that of a mass 4,400 miles long, 100 miles wide, and 13,000 feet high, which is equivalent to 5,349,801,600,000,000 cubic feet. On this basis we find that the Mississippi would carry down an equivalent mass of matter in 785,000 years. The rate of denudation in certain river basins varies from one foot in 700 years to one foot in 12,000 years. Assuming that similar rates would apply to the Andes, they would be denuded away in from 9,000,000 to 156,000,000 years. In all probability, much less than 9,000,000 years would suffice. On the other hand, the Andes would be swept away in 135,000 years, supposing that the denuding powers of the globe were concentrated on them alone. From the above data, and assuming the specific gravity of the matter forming the Andes to be 2-5, the weight of the portion above the sea may be estimated at 368,951,834,482,750 tons, giving an average of about 1,000 tons on each square foot at the level of the sea. Under Aconcagua the pressure would be about 1,780 tons per square foot at the same level, provided, of course, that it were not; — as it no doubt is — more or less modified by lateral pressure. How vast, then, must be those forces which have counteracted 86 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. such a pressure, and upheaved the ocean-spread sediments of the continent, until the Andes, that ' giant of the western star, Looks from his throne of clouds O'er half the world !' " But however vast the Andes may seem to us, it should be remembered that they form but an insignificant portion of the globe itself. Aconcagua is about toW^ of the earth's diameter, which is relatively not more than a pimple -g^th of an inch high on the skin of a tall man."* Among the other great peaks may be mentioned the following : — the Nevado de Sorata, close to Lake Titicaca, 21,286 feet; the twin-peaked Illimani, 21,181 feet; Sehama, 22,000 feet; Chungara, somewhat less; Chipicani, 18,898 feet; Arequipa, 18,373 feet; Chuquibamba, 21,000 feet; Chiniborazo, 21,424 feet; and the volcanoes : Cotopaxi, 19,500 feet; Sangay, Tunguragua, Carguirazo, Sinchulagua, Antisana, and Cayambe, the last of which (19,534 feet) is extinct, and stands just on the equator.f These volcanoes — of which the most southern active one is Corcovado, in latitude 43° 10' south — number about twenty, but of these some eight are not now active. With the exception of the Moluccas, no region in the world has so suffered from earthquakes as South America, though these, both in frequency and activity, are chiefly concentrated along the western slope of the Andes. In Peru they are most frequent, least so in Bolivia, Brazil, and Patagonia, but to an unhappy extent in Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Guianas. South America is also remarkable for its great rivers, the chief of which are, from north to south, the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Plata; though there are many others of vast extent navigable for long distances, and tributaries of all the great rivers which in themselves constitute immense waterways, such as are not found in Europe, and with a very few exceptions in Asia or Africa. Take an example : The Amazon is navigable without a rapid for 2,000 miles to Jaen where the stream is only 1,240 feet above the level of its estuary at Para. Its volume is equal to eight of the principal rivers of Asia, while the Plata most probably discharges more water than all the African rivers combined. It is needless to say that the potentialities of these rivers for inland navigation are great; and though at present the sparse population of the country and the backward state of commerce render them of comparatively little use, there cannot be a doubt but that at no very distant period they and their tributaries will be covered with thousands of steamers conveying to and from the sea the traffic which will grow up in the fertile valleys through which they flow. "The estuary of all these great American rivers opens to the eastward, and thus Providence seems to have plainly indicated that the most intimate commercial relations * The origin of the name Andes is probably lost, though various have been the conjectures on the subject. For instance, it has been attributed to the Peruvian word Anta, or taper ; Ante, copper or metal ; Antis, ths name of a tribe resident in the mountains ; and to tho Spanish Andcnes, the term applied to the terraced gardens on the western slopes of the mountains in Chili. In Northern India, curiously enough, the Himalayas are known to some of the tribes as the Andes. t Pissis: " Comptcs Rcndus," Vols. XL. (1865) and LII. (1861); "Annates des Mines,'- 5th Series, Vol. IX. (1856); Forbes: " Quarterly Journal of tU Geological Society," Vol. XVII; Rammelsberg: " Monatsbericht Akad." Wiss., Berlin, 1870; Orton : "The Andes and the Amazon" (1870); Rickard: "A Mining Journey Across the Andes" (1863); Article "Andes," in " Encyclopedia Britannica," ito. THE UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. 87 of the inhabitants of America should be with the western shores of the Old World. It should, at the same time, be observed that the position of the great rivers of America is but one example of a physical arrangement which is common to the whole globe, for it is remarkable that in the Old World, as well as in the New, no river of the first class flows to the westward. Some, as the Nile, the Lena, and the Obi, flow to the north; others, as the Indus, and the rivers of Asia to the south ; but the largest, as the Volga, the Ganges, the Yang-tse, the Hoang-Ho, the Euphrates, and the Amoor, have their courses to the east or south-east. This arrangement is not accidental, but depends most probably on the inclination of the primary rocks, which, in all cases where their direction approaches to the north and south, seem to have the steepest sides to the west, and the largest declivities to the east. We have examples in the Scandinavian Alps, the mountains of Britain, the Ghauts of India, the Andes, and the Rocky Mountains." As in North America, there is a wide difference between the two sides of South America. On the west the Guayaquil (p. 92) is the only river of any importance, and even it is scarcely comparable with the rivers of Brazil and Guiana. On the west, north of Chili, there are only two harbours — Guayaquil and Panama — worthy of the name ; while in the east there are many, exclusive of the mouths of the many great rivers which flow into the Atlantic, and which virtually form a great network of canals through which the commerce of the world can be carried all over the continent, and even into Peru, which borders the Pacific. America is thus fitted for commerce before all the rest of the world. A third of the rivers of Europe and Asia flow into the Arctic Ocean, or into land-locked lakes, like the Aral and Caspian, and thus, even should the discovery that for three months in the year the mouths of the former are accessible from Europe prove to be well founded, they are to a great extent lost to commerce, owing to the ice which forms on them and in their vicinity. America possesses only one river of consequence — the Mackenzie (Vol. I., p. 190) — which is in the same situation. Colombia. The "Estados Unidos de Colombia" were formed out of the nine states known prior to 1861 as New Grenada. Their history is that of the other Spanish republics, in so far that revolution, varied with anarchy and assassination, has, unfortunately, been too frequently the main incidents in the record of Colombia's career since it broke off from Spain in 1811. Up to 1824 it waged war against its stepmother, though before that date the elements of dissension and disintegration had entered the country, and gradually disrupted the republic of Colombia which Bolivar formed in 1819. In 1829 Venezuela withdrew from the union, and in 1830 Ecuador followed her example. In 1831 the republic of New Grenada was formed, and almost as soon civil war began and lasted at intervals, during which various states seceded, only after a time to return to the Federal fold. From 1843 to 1853 the country enjoyed comparative prosperity. But in the latter year the constitution was so amended that to every state was given the right of seceding, and of entering into merely Federal relations with the Central Republic. Some states took advantage of this permission, and civil war followed in due course. This lasted up to 1861, when the present constitution was pro mulgated ; and though it cannot be said that for any length of time the country has been l38 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. entirely at peace, yet no rebellion during the last seventeen years has been so far successful as to break up the country into its component members. This may be a small subject for congratulation, but in South America the hopes of the historian get chastened by many disappointments. The present republic consists — in addition to six territories — of nine states: Antioquia, Bolivar, Boyaca, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, Panama, Santarider, and Tolima. Of these the largest is Cauca (257,462 square miles), and the most thickly populated Boyaca (482,874) ; Santandar (425,427) ; Cundinamarca (409,602) ; and Antioquia (365,974) ; the whole area of the country being 504,773 square miles* (or more than double that of Spain and Portugal), and the population by the last census (1871), 2,950,017. Probably at the present «-,< ZS,J> _ BOTANISING IN COLOMBIA (FLOWERS OF A PALM TREE). time the population exceeds three millions, of which 100,000 are uncivilised Indians. About 330,756 square miles are north of the equator, and the rest south of it. Its revenue averages about half a million pounds per annum, while its expenditure is usually less. However, in 1877 they stood respectively at £622,924 and £555,882 ; but the foreign public debt was in the same year over £2,000,000, though it is in some authoritative documents stated at a much higher figure. The interior debt was in tbe same year over £1,000,000, the imports from Great Britain £783,183, and the exports from the same country £681,913, which is much less than ordinary. The Isthmus of Panama, already described, is, though not the most populous or largest, yet the most important of the Colombian states, but none of the towns are of great importance, and less than a tenth of the whole country is under cultiva tion. The city of Panama has 18,378 inhabitants; Santa Martha, 3,500 ; Cartagena, 7,800; Socorro, 20,000; Medellin, 30,000; Tunja, 8,000; Bogota (the Federal capital), 50,000; Ibague, 13,000; and Popayan, 16,000, These towns are the capitals ">f the different states. * Sometimes given at 320,750 square miles. fgp*a .LifW u .•¦•':\ Of. ._.. 'ara .^ .. ^1^B% Id. I M I jpTarija -Juj. 20 ».# R G "iSST ' N/E ^iSWA. 4 3drdova 30 92 Life I SOUTH AMERICA English Miles I ipo 2po 3fio -inn pno 40 [50 40 MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA. 90 THE COUNTRIES OF THE "WORLD. It would be unjust to Colombia not to point out that, notwithstanding its many troubles, it holds a high place among the South American Republics for the care bestowed on national education. In 1875 there were 2,113 public schools, with 126,000 pupils, with sixty colleges and seminaries for higher and professional instruction, the total sum voted for national education being in that year about £220,000. Perhaps it was not all spent, and, indeed, there are tales of professorial salaries unpaid, but even a toill to educate the people must be counted for something in these latitudes. In 1873-74 the post-office conveyed 358,254 letters, which gives a fractional correspondence per head to the Colombians. The chief products of the country are those derived from its extensive forests, such as mahogany, cedar, fustic, and other dye woods and medicinal plants, while gold, silver, copper, platinum, lead, precious stones, and even coal, are among the mineral riches of Colombia. Tobacco, coffee, cocoa, plantains, indigo, wheat, and other cereals, are the chief agricultural crops. Its manufactures are, however, insignificant, woollen and cotton stuffs for home use being almost the only ones o'f any note. The great plains pasture enormous herds of cattle, from the flesh of which jerked beef is extensively prepared, while the hides form an even more lucrative article of commerce to the rancheros. In 1875 £632,017 worth of gold and silver were exported, £543,128 of tobacco, £302,349 of cinchona bark, £146,458 worth of coffee, £29,997 worth of india-rubber, over £34,000 worth of copper, &c. After the comparatively full account which we have given of the State of Panama in a former chapter (pp. 49-58), and of the state of society generally in the neighbouring countries, it is unnecessary to occupy much space with a description of either Colombia or of the neighbouring republic of Ecuador. The three great spurs or ranges of the Andes, known as the Western, Central, and Eastern Cordilleras, intersect the whole country; the last-named, which is the largest, containing a number of extensive, cool, and healthy table-lands. That portion known as the paramo of Cruz Verde has an elevation of 11,695 feet. The Eastern Cordillera in its passage through the State of Santander attains in the Alto de el Viego a height of 12,965 feet; in the Alto de el Trio of 9,965 feet ; and in the Boca del Monte of 12,735 feet. The Sierra Nevada is covered with perennial snow over a great part of its summit, so that the general report that it reaches a height of 23,779 feet may possibly not be an exaggeration. The llanos of the Orinoco we have already spoken of. As far south as the Vichada they form an almost unbroken level of treeless plains, but farther south the forests encroach on them, and in places hillocks, rising to the height of from 300 to 600 feet, interrupt the dead level of these flat lands of the equator* The scenery of Colombia is, as might be expected, from such a land of river, mountain, forest, and lake, grand in the extreme. One of the most remarkable of the "show places" of the country we have engraved on p. 81. It is the Waterfall of Tequendama, formed by the precipitation of the water of the Rio Funza, by one bound, over a precipice 475 feet in height. It is situated not far from Bogota, and quite deserves the designation which * Restrepo: "Historia de la revolucion de Colombia" (1827); Berg: " Physiognomie der tropikal Vegeta tion Siid Amerikas" (1856); Mosquera : " Compendio de geograBa dos statos nnidos de Colombia" (1866); Hall: "Colombia: its Present Condition, &o.," (1871); and the works already quoted; in addition to Codazzi: "Atlas de los estados unidos de Colombia," and "Colombia: Siendo una relaeion, geografioa, topografica, agricultural, commercial, politica, &o., de aquel pays" (2 vols., London, 1822). THE REPUBLIC OF ECUADOR. 91 M. Edouard Andre applies to it, namely, that of "one of the greatest wonders of nature in South America." In the vicinity of the Fall are found a profusion of ferns, and the great flowered Begonia, figured on p. 84. Ecuador. From the ruins of the republic, established through the exertions of Bolivar, arose in 1830 that of Ecuador — literally the Equator — or, as it is sometimes called, Quito. It is needless to recount its history : the secession of a state, the pacification of another, the election of one President and the pronunciamiento of his unsuccessful rival, a revolution and an earthquake, a frothy proclamation promising all the good things in all the best constitutions which the world ever saw, followed by religious despotism, political terrorism, and a crushing censorship of the press, and finally by the assassination of a President, are among the many things which a student of Ecuadorian history is apt to consider the most striking points which remain in his memory after a perusal of its very confused chronicles. The boundaries of Ecuador are so imperfectly marked out that the estimate of its area varies from 127,205 square miles to 248,580, including the Galapagos Islands, an uninhabited group in the Pacific (containing 2,951 square miles), which are dependencies of the republic* The population can only be equally vaguely stated, but probably the estimate given by the Minister Leon in 1875, viz., that, exclusive of about 200,000 wild Indians, the popula tion was at that date 866,137,f is as correct as any that can be quoted. The mountains of Ecuador form its most interesting feature, the great chain of the Andes traversing it from north to south, its two Cordilleras running parallel to each other, "and enclosing an elevated longitudinal valley about seventy miles wide and 300 miles long, which is divided by the transverse ridges, or nudos, of Tiupullo and Assuay into the three great basins of Quito, Ambato, and Cuenca, which are again sub-divided by inferior ridges into irregular sections." In the Eastern Cordillera several of the peaks attain a height of 18,000 feet, while in the western one Chimborazo is the only one which exceeds 17,000 feet. The plain on which the capital — Quito — is built exceeds 9,000 feet in height, while Ambato is at 8,500, and Cuenca at 7,800, the two latter being comparatively barren, but the country round Quito is "clothed with luxuriant vegetation." In the Eastern Cordillera, Imbabura attains a height of 15,029 feet, and is famous for its eruption of mud and water, though the old tale that fish have also been thrown out is said by later historians to have been founded on misconception. Cayambi (p. 86) is the only snow-capped mountain in the world which is situated exactly on the equator. Antisana (18,800 feet) appears at one time to have been an active volcano of the first magnitude. It is now extinct, though smoke was seen to issue from it in 1802. Sincholagua and Ruminagui are respectively 16,360 and 15,603 feet in height. But all these pale into insignificance before Cotopaxi, the loftiest active volcano in the world. It is situated thirty-five miles south -south-east of Quito, but was scaled successfully for the first time in 1872 by Dr. * Behm and Wagner: "Bevolkerung der Erde," 1874, p. 76. t Journal de la Soc. de Statist, de Paris, January, 1876, quoted in Almanach de Gotha, 1878. 92 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Reiss, and in the following year by Dr. Stiibel. The north-east peak is 19,498 feet above the sea, and that of the south-west peak 19,429, the snow line on western and southern sides being respectively 15,180 and 15,174 feet.* Only the east side is covered with snow, the action of the trade winds denuding the western slope of its white covering. "On the southern slope," writes Mr. Webster, "at a height of 15,059 feet, a small cone, called el Pecacho (the beak), or Cabeza del Lnca (the Inca's head), lifts its bare cliffs for above a thousand feet, and from its general appearance gives some show of reason to the tradition which regards it as the original summit of the mountain blown ON THE RIVER GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR. off at the first eruption in 1532. The present summit is usually enveloped in clouds, and even in the clearest month of the year it becomes visible only for eight or ten days." Wagner describes the wind on the Tacunga plateau as usually meridional, generally blowing from the south in the morning, and frequently from the north in the evening; but that from the summit of Cotopaxi the north-west wind always prevails during the day. The gradually widening volcano cloud continually takes a south-western direction over the rim of. the crater; at a height, however, of about 21,000 feet, it suddenly turns to the north west, and maintains that direction till it reaches a height of at least 28,000 feet. There are thus, from the foot of the volcano to the highest level attained by its smoke cloud, three quite distinct regular currents of wind.f El Altar, another old volcano, is made up • Reiss: Zeitschrift dcr Deutschen Geoloy. Gessell, 1873. Stiibel : Dull, de la Soc. Geog. de Paris, 1874; quoted by Webster. + " Naturwissensch. Reisen im tropikal Amerika," p. 614. THE REPUBLIC OF ECUADOR. 93 of eight snow-covered peaks, the highest of which is 17,735 feet, Chimborazo, "the Mountain of Snow," is 20,697 feet high,* and though imposing from any point of view, can be best appreciated as seen from the Pacific : as yet its summit has never been reached, the highest point attained being 19,682 feet, at which elevation Boussingault and Hall had to bridle their ambition in 1831. Carahuairazo, in the immediate vicinity of Chimborazo, is 16,748 feet, and Quiratoa, further north, 13,510 feet. Its crater is said to be filled with a great lake, as not unfrequently is the case iu the extinct volcanoes, and it is G\THEKING CINCHONA BAUK IN ECTADOH. asserted that the surface of it has very frequently been covered with flames. The only other peaks of Ecuador which we need mention are Llanganate, 17,843 feet, Tunguragua, 16,685 feet, Ilinoza, 17,395 feet, Corazon, 15,796 feet, Atacazo, 16,000* feet, Pichincha, 14,984 feet, Coto- cachi, 16,288 feet, and Chiles, 16,200 feet high. Most of these are either active or extinct volcanoes. The eruption of Pichincha in 1566 covered Quito three feet deep with ashes and stones, though the crater having been broken down the western side in the eruption of 1660, most probably the capital will be safe from any future eruption of this magnificent, but somewhat too active, neighbour of the Quitonians. Ecuador is divided into three departments and eleven provinces. A university exists at Quito, and there are colleges in several towns, * According to Reiss and Stiibel; but Humboldt gives the height as 21,420 feet. 94 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. but education is at a low stand, and as the power of the priests is still strong, religious toleration and freedom of thought are not in a condition that call for any superfluity of enthusiasm. In the extensive forests grow the valuable cinchona trees, which yield the Peruvian bark, gathered by the Cascarillos (p. 93), who are so recklessly destroying the tree that, according to Weddel, Spruce, Markham, and Cross, they will soon exterminate it, when the world will become dependent for its quinine on the plantations now flourishing in India and Java. Cocoa is the chief crop, but coffee, cotton, orchilla weed, straw hats, yams, tobacco, fruits of various kinds, sarsaparilla, wheat, india-rubber, many gums and medicinal substances, &c, are exported. Gold, quicksilver, lead, iron, copper, and emeralds, not to mention the abundant banks of sulphur sent out by its superabundant volcanoes, are among the mineral products of Ecuador. The finances of the country have long been in such a condition that only a vague estimate can be arrived at in regard to the weighty matter of income and expen diture. In 1876 the former is reported, to have amounted to £331,000, and the latter to the unhealthy sum of £480,000. In 1877 the Republic owed £3,274,000. Ecuador does comparatively little trade with Great Britain, the United States monopolising nearly all of this, which again almost centres in the port of Guayaquil. In 1876 England received £244,517 of Ecuadorian products, and sent the Republic £225,273, which was much more than the average of previous years, and of this, cotton goods formed the staple, while cocoa and Peruvian bark, with some dye-stuffs, comprise the chief of our imports from Ecuador, a country which nature has fashioned on a magnificent scale, but which man has done poorly by. Quito, the capital of the Republic, is one of the most remarkable cities in the world, in so far that it is situated at a height of 9,492 feet above the sea. Here the climate the whole" year round is one perpetual spring. The scenery of the snow capped mountains in the vicinity is magnificent, and there is no more charming region in the world than the lovely gardened valley of Chillo, to the south of the city. The best houses are built of stone; the others of adobe, or sun-dried brick, roofed with tiles. Quito is, moreover, a most religious city. Convents, monasteries, and churches abound, and the cathedral is 'one of the finest of those in the northern part of South America (p. 96). In 1859, the great earthquake nearly destroyed the town. But it has now recovered this disaster, and has at present a population numbering from 35,000 to 80,000. Mr. Webster, to whose excellent account of Ecuador we have been much indebted, thus sums up the state of the roads they have in the country, and with this we shall conclude our brief sketch of this South American Republic :—" Artificial means of communication are still for the most part in a very primitive condition, though few countries have so little reason to be content with the natural highways by land or water. Many of the roads even between important centres of population are mere mule-tracks, altogether impassable in bad weather, it may be for weeks or months at a time, while the violent torrents which have so frequently to be crossed often present nothing better than more or less elaborate bridges of rope similar to the jhuler or zampur of the Kashmirians. The simplest of these is the taravita, consisting of a single rope, with or without a travelling rope, by which the passenger or his luggage may be hauled across. The most complex is the chimba-chaca, a rude prototype of the regular suspension bridge, constructed of four or five ropes of agave root fibre, supporting transverse layers of bamboos. The THE REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA. 95 best are hazardous to all except a practised foot, and they get out of repair in a few years. Since the middle of the century something has been done to improve this state of affairs; and a very great deal more has always been about to be done. According to Moreno's address to Congress in 1874, Ecuador had at that time 30 miles of railway, nearly 300 miles of cart road, with substantial bridges, and about 250 miles of roads fit for the ordinaiy mule traffic of the country. Wheeled conveyances are almost unknown, especially in the inland districts, the transport of goods of every description being effected by porters or mules. The first carriage was introduced into Quito in 1859, and the owner had to pay a tax for his innovation."* CHAPTER VII. Venezuela, and the Valley of the Orinoco. After a traveller has passed long enough time in Central America, or in Ecuador and Colombia, to learn about one-half of what has been told the reader in the preceding pages, he will undoubtedly have for the time being had enough of it. He will long for a life more exhilarating, and for a climate just a little cooler. Brown faces will have grown tiresome to rlim, and the most combustible of very young men, after enduring the society of mosquitoes and all the other attendant evils for six months at a stretch, will have grown blase to Senoritas of the Castilian or any other race. He will weary for England and English fogs. A Vermont pine forest will be in his eyes more lovely than all the glories of the tropics, and a sandy flat in North Germany, with the simple boors who vegetate on it, a more charming bit of scenery than any pampa of the south, where lithesome horsemen drive their beeves, lean, sinewy, and unwholesome, through the quivering hot air of the equator. But he will come back again ; they always come back again to these wild countries, unless, indeed, death, disease, filthy lucre, a wife, or some such irresistible persuasive keep " at home " the enthusiast who has once tasted of the bitter- sweets of these lands. We are in that condition : so let us return, as the cicerone of the reader who wishes to gain a glimpse of the countries lying south of Colombia. We are bound for the Republic of Venezuela and the Valley of the Orinoco, and may probably, like the buccaneer of the sea-song, bring up at " La Guayra upon the Spanish Main," a very hot town celebrated in ballad and story. We have passed Sombrero, or Hat Island, a flat rock twenty feet above the sea, and a few hundred yards long, at one time inhabited only by black lizards and sea-fowls, and where it was difficult to effect a landing except, to quote the sailing directions, " under very favourable circumstances, by watching an opportunity and jumping on a flat ledge to the cliff, and with some difficulties ascend to the summit." But a prying * Villavieencio : " Geografia de la Republica del Ecuador" (1858); Spruce: Journal of the Zinnean Society, 1860 ; Jamieson : Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1861 ; De Thoron : " Amerique equatoriale," 1865 ; Orton : "The Andes and the Amazon" (1870); Simson: "Notes of Journeys in the Interior of South America" ("Pro ceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,'' 1877); Flemming: " Wanderungen in Ecuador " (1877); Gerstacker: "Achtzehn Monate in Sud-Amerika" (1863), &c, VIEW ON THE RIVER SURINAM. DUTCH QUIANA. VENEZUELA: THE WAY THITHER. 97 soul "found that the sea-fowl had left posterity, a legacy as pay for their footing, and accordingly until lately, Sombrero was "quoted" in that odorous world which concerns itself with guano and other fertilisers. Next we are at St. Thomas; and not improbably will be glad to quit it, though VIEW or CARACAS,' THE CAPITAL OP VENEZUELA. it is :the central figure in. that group, of. isles which Columbus named in honour of. the eleven thousand virgins of sainted but apocryphal memory. The islands to the east of St. John— which are the near neighbours of St. Thomas — are "ours;" those to the east own the rule of King Christian of Denmark. Should any one be in doubt amid so mixed a political medley as to what ought to be assigned England and what to any other power, he 93 98 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. has only to ask the name. Then, as some one remarked, you will know the English islands by the roughness of their nomenclature, and their utter want of sonorous terminology. There are no French or Spanish " kickshaws " in John Bull's geographical menu, only the plain roast and boil of the cartographical world. Here, for example, is Salt Island, followed by Ginger, Cooper, and Beef Islands, or by Scrub, Guano, and Jost-van-Dykes Isles. We are now passing Anegada, or " Drowned Island," infamous for shipwrecks, and dreaded of mariners. Once on a time the bay swarmed with buccaneers, and when these piratical hunters of wild cattle and driers of their flesh were among the things that had been, wreckers came and colonised the island. Ostensibly they reared cotton and cattle; actually they breathed morning, noon, and night, like the Cornish men of last century, a silent prayer that Providence would be pleased to send a well-eargoed vessel thitherward on the long nine- mile reef, which stretches to the south-east of this isle of evil fame. On the island is a funnel-shaped well full of fwjsh water, which curiously enough rises and falls with the tide. There is here a strong westerly current. Mr. Eastwick mentions a fact which I recollect being told when passing it, by probably the same informants, that the fishermen at Anegada find sufficient cork, drifted to them from the coast of Spain, to supply their nets with floats. Bottles, too, launched in the river Gambia in Africa have been picked up on the Virgin Islands. Between the islands themselves the currents are in many places so violent, that to row a boat from island to island is a dangerous and often all but impossible undertaking. Many small craft have been swept away, and the crews drowned in the attempt. Between the eastern part of St. Thomas and the Isle of St. John there is a furious current, and the waves rise in such huge surges, that when the southern tide is in its strength, it would be impossible for any small vessel to encounter that terrible sea. Westward still is the Virgin Gorda — which being translated is "Fat Virgin' — in truth a fruitful damsel, for she supports some thousands of people sumptuously on the produce of her rum, sugar, tobacco, and copper. It is even whispered that gold, silver, and " other minerals " have been found among the treasures of this portly virgin. Then there is Tortola, with a cluster of isles in its vicinity forming a fine archipelago, where, some enthusiasts declare, all the navies of England might ride in safety — that is, if they desired to ride in any such place* This island, like St. Thomas, is suffering from drought, owing to the inhabitants improvidently cutting down the trees that at one time clothed the hills, which in the latter island run throughout its whole length. But St. Thomas, besides the want of water, suffers from yellow fever, which is almost as bad, especially as the water is at the best of times not good, though the inhabitants rarely drink any except in the form of ice in their sherry cobblers, and the ice comes all the way from Boston, a place much lauded in hot weather, especially under the cool arches of the Ice House in the main street of Charlotte Amalie (Vol. II., p. 805). Then there is Santa Cruz, thirty-two miles south of St. Thomas, but healthier, though flatter; and farther on the way * In some books, otherwise authoritative, most erroneous estimates are given of the population of these islands. For mstance, in that which I have already quoted, and shall have again occasion to do, Virgin Gorda is said to have 10,000 inhabitants, Tortola 11,000, and so on, the truth being that the whole of the British Virgin Islands had in 1871-three years after the date of the book-only 6,651 people VENEZUELA. THE WAY THITHER. 99 is Ochilla, one of the Isles of Aves, a very noted place in the guano trade, and not unknown to romance for ' < such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again, As the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish Main ; Oh, the palms grew high in Aves, and fruit that shone like gold, And the colebris and parrots, they were gorgeous to behold ; And negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee To welcome gallant sailors a-sweeping in from sea. If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the Main, To the pleasant Isle of Aves, to look at it once again." So said — or sung— the "Last Buccaneer," in Charles Kingsley's lay. Eighty miles south of Ochilla lies La Guayra, and La Guayra is iu the Republic of Venezuela. But long before that odorous apotheosis of dulness comes, as an unbeatific vision to the voyager's eyes, the most prominent feature in the landscape is La Silla, "the Saddle/' the mountain which overhangs the town. It can be seen at sea seventy or eighty miles distant, being 8,600 feet high, and the loftiest elevation between the coast and the Andes. It is the pleasantest feature of La Guayra, albeit this is one of the most picturesque towns at a distance, and one of the hottest on earth near at hand, in all the world. Seaward the breeze brings us odours of Araby the Blest — spice-laden winds I used to believe them to be, but at one-and-twenty imagination often runs riot with reason. At all events, La Guayra is, except in hot weather (which is always), not an unpleasant place to bring up in, that is to say if the visitor is partial to mixed smells, and careless of the nameless whiffs which father yellow fever. However, the outside of the town makes up for the diagreeableness of its inside. It is the port of Caracas, a mysterious thing to mariners, for it is an open roadstead, and when the northers blow a cannon is fired as a signal for the ships to weigh their anchors and run out to sea, lest a worse fate befall them. Yet a mile or two to the west, on the other side of Cape Blanco, there is a snug harbour called Catia, from whence an easier road might be made to Caracas than the present one from La Guayra. "But no," writes the Commissioner for the Venezuelan Loan of 1864, "in spite of the swell which has caused the loss of so many vessels, which makes com munication with the shore troublesome, and which stirs up the sand in a fashion that renders it necessary to weigh anchor every eight days, lest the ship should become sand- locked, in spite of the ravages of the ship-worms — the teredo navalis — la broma, as the Spaniards call them — more destructive at La Guayra than anywhere else in the world, commerce, which seems the only conservative thing in America, still keeps to its old route." There is no town which can be compared with La Guayra, unless, indeed, it be Santa Cruz, in the Isle of Teneriffe, which also lies at the foot of a great peak. La Silla appears rising, as it were, direct out of the sea, as if, to use Humboldt's words, "the Pyrenees or the Alps, stripped of their snow, had risen from the bosom of the waters." The town is excessively hot, a fact which may be realised when we say that the temperature of the coldest month in the year is four degrees centigrade higher than that of Paris at its 100 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. hottest, though when one is in those parts the conclusion usually arrived at is, that the last place visited is the warmest yet experienced, a state of belief in which the martyr remains until he visits another town, when he modifies his faith so far as to come to the conclusion that this furnace is surely more torrid by some degrees than the one he has left. Statistics and Physical Features. Venezuela is entirely tropical, and is misnamed. It has nothing at all of Venice about it, and even if it had, is not " little Venice," as its name signifies, for- a region full of piled-up mountains as great as the Alps, containing forests larger than France, steppes as great as those of Gobi, and an area altogether four times that of Prussia, can have little in common with the picturesque city on the Adriatic. But like many other designations, that of Venezuela originated in a mistake. The conquistadores, when they first visited it, found the Indians of the shallow " Lake" of Maracaibo living in "lake dwellings"* — huts built on poles in the water. This suggested a likeness to Venice, and hence the name and the misnomer. The history of the republic need only be given briefly, for in its essential features it is that of the other Spanish American countries which we have had occasion to touch on and may have yet to describe. Its independent life dates from 1830, when the Confederation formed by Bolivar broke in pieces, and its present constitution is, to a great extent, that of the United States, though, as if to better provide for easy revolutions, rather more laxity or liberty is allowed to provincial and local governments. Since 1817, there has been almost continuous civil war — the federalists desiring a strong central government ; the conf ederalists the greatest possible independence of the twenty-one states ; the leaders of both parties, power and pelf. On that particular point they have hitherto displayed remarkable unanimity. The area of the Republic is estimated at 403,261 square miles, and the population, by the last census (1873), at 1,784,197. f The chief cities are Caracas (the capital, p. 97), 48,897 ; Valencia, 28,594; Barquisimeto, 25,664; Maracaibo, 21,951; Maturin, 12,944 ; San Carlos, 10,420; Merida, 9,727 ; Cumana, 9,427; Ciudad Bolivar, 8,186 ; Coro, 8,172; Barcelona, 7,674; and La Guayra, or Guaira, 6,763 inhabitants, in addition to about 24,000 foreigners resident in, or passing through, the country. Of the States, Guayana is the largest, but Guarico is the most thickly populated. Tbere are, in addition, three territories organised on the principle of those of the United States. The Custom House, which is the chief source of revenue, yielded, in 1875, £690,000, while the national income in the same year was 6,702,080 venezuelanos, or £1,340,116, and the expenditure £1,228,626. The public debt is somewhere about £20,000,000, of which about £7,000,000 is due to foreigners, chiefly Englishmen, but on this the interest is never paid with any regularity, or, indeed, even when paid, to the full amount promised on the bonds. The financial affairs of the nation are in a lamentable condition, internal wars, and the support of a ¦ * Engravings of those curious dwellings are given in " The Races of Mankind," Vol. I., pp. 276, 277. t Tejera; « Mappa fisico y politico de los Estados Unidos do Venezuela" (1876); " Venezuela pinctores esoa e illustrada" (1875); Codazzi : "Rapport sur les Travaux Geographiques dans la Venozuola " (1841); Dance: "Four Years in Venezuela" (1876); Meulomans : "La rcpublique do Venezuela " (1872); Thirion: "Les etats- unis de Venezuela" (1867); Eastwick: "Venezuela" (1868); Spenco : "Land of Bolivar" (1878); "Consular Reports," &c. A RIVER SCENE IN VENEZUELA. 102 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. large army and militia completely disordering the affairs of a country never very orderly or very ready or able to meet its obligations. The total commerce of Venezuela was in 1875, valued at 31,000,000 venezuelanos, or about £6,200,000, the exports exceeding by nearly £215,000 the imports. Cocoa, cotton, sugar, indigo, dye-woods, &c, are among the chief exports, cocoa and coffee figuring in the first rank, though ores — chiefly of copper — and the precious metals are also among the articles which Venezuela sends to foreign countries. The chief export trade is with Germany and the United States. It imports mainly from the United States, France, and England. But with Great Britain the Venezuelan export trade is trifling. In 1875, for example, only £37,136 in goods were sent to England, while the imports (£733,404), which were less than those taken from the United States or France, were almost exclusively on account of German houses, which now monopolise the trade of Venezuela. In 1876, the exports had increased to £54,878, but the imports had fallen to £679,163. This is infinitely less than should' be expected from such a country, lying within the tropics, having one of the richest soils in the world, abounding in all kinds of mineral and vegetable riches, and possessing a climate which ranges from that in which perpetual snow is capable of lying, down to the greatest heat which the thermometer records of countries inhabited by civilised men. The great range of the Andes runs through it from north to south, forming its western limits, and from this cardinal chain there branches, as already noted, three tributary spurs gradually diminishing towards the east until they are lost in the wide plains of the Apure and Guayana. Yet these smaller sierras are by no means of minor importance. That which begins at Merida possesses peaks which tower to the height of 15,798 feet above the sea. The sierras to the north of it are separated from the Ande& by the Great Lake, or Gulf, of Maracaibo, the area of which is 6,300 square miles. The most northern of these, namely, that beginning in Coro, runs seaward, and is apparently submerged, for it again reappears in the islands of Tortuga and Margarita. As might be expected, all this region is watered by innumerable streams flowing from the Andes and from the sierras mentioned, and unite to form the great river Orinoco, which bisects Guayana, and as it passes Ciudad Bolivar pours, according to Codazzi, even when at its lowest, " a flood of 240,000 cubic feet of water per second towards the ocean, or as much as the Ganges brings down when at its highest." There are thus in Venezuela three great regions, according to the classification of Colonel Codazzi, its best orographer. First, there is the alpine region of the Andes, which lies between 6,000 and 15,900 feet above the level of the sea. In this region are the Paramos, or Cold Deserts, where an icy and furious blast chills the blood. During the civil wars whole regiments have perished in attempting to cross these wastes. Yet at the foot of the mountains are immense woods, in which the cacao tree (Theobroma) grows wild. In this region, too, are the sabanas, or plains of the Barinas, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which rise in successive stages. At the summit of each stage are table-lands that might be cultivated. There is no population, however, save in the centre. There coffee, potatoes, wheat, barley, and most of the cereals and legumes of the temperate zone are grown. The second region, which begins at a height of 1,S90 feet above the sea, is that of the Cordilleras, or mountain-chains, which run parallel to the coast. Among these chains VENEZUELA: ITS PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 103 are the rich valleys of Fui, Araguas, and Valencia, and here in the deep black mould of marvellous fertility grow the crops of coffee, cocoa, maize, cotton, indigo, sugar-cane, yucca, and plantain, which make Venezuela known to the markets of the world. The third region into which Codazzi divides his native country is that of Parima, or Guayana. In shape it resembles a great convex dish, " elevated and corrugated by lines of hills which are sometimes regular, sometimes broken by gigantic rocks, covered with grass, or bare, and in the shape of pyramids, towers, and ruined ramparts." This is the great region of virgin forests, of which there are here alone 5,104 square leagues. Besides the vast sabanas (or savannas, as they are more familiarly called) of Apure, there are pastures thus described by Don Ramon Paez : * — " They are characterised by a luxuriant growth of various grasses, which, like those of the Portugueza, preserve a uniform verdure throughout the year. These grasses, some of which are soft and pliable as silk, are most important in the economy of cattle-breeding. The prodigious increase of animals in these plains is owing mainly to the superiority of the pastures over the llanos, whence the farmer is compelled to migrate with his stock every summer. There are three varieties of grass which in richness of flavour and nutrition can hardly be surpassed by any other fodder plants of the temperate zones. In the early part of the rainy season the grana- dilla, a grass reaching to about four feet in height, with tender succulent blades and panicles of seed, not unlike some varieties of broom-corn, starts with the earliest showers of spring. It grows with great rapidity, and is greedily sought by all ruminants, but being an annual, soon disappears. In the alluvial bottom-lands, subject to the periodical inundation, two other grasses, no less esteemed for their nutriment, have an uninterrupted growth and luxuriance, which the hottest season cannot blast. These are the carretera, named from the beautiful prairie goose that feeds on it, and the lambedora, so termed on account of its softness." These sabanas form part of a great plain which stretches away for a thousand miles to the foot of the Bolivian Alps, though not unbroken, for in the midst of it rises a plateau called the " Mesa " of Guanipe, the height of which above the sea varies from 870 to 1,392 feet, though around it are many secondary plateaux, from which issue tiny rills of water, which do not sink into the soil, as the traveller when he first sees them showing themselves from beneath the palm-trees might suppose would be the case. "Far from being lost, they grow and grow till they become streams, and then uniting, form rivers. In fact, the whole land is full of springs, and the map indicates the course of one thousand and sixty rivers, all navigable, of which seven are of the first class, thirty of the second, twenty-two of the third, and nine hundred and sixty-three of the fourth." f Codazzi divides Venezuela into three zones — the agricultural, pasture-land, and forest zones. The first could support seven millions of people ; the pasture-land is of course less thickly occupied, and its economic return is naturally limited by the herds which each individual grazer may put on it; last of all is the forest zone, of which only a moiety has been cleared, and the area is not likely to be greatly increased for some time to come. Yet of its area of 18,214 square leagues, 3,000 are jclassed as hilly, oh which sheep might graze; 797 as sabanas, fit for cattle; 12,000 as * "Life in the Llanos of Venezuela"- (1861). t Eastwick: "Venezuela, or Sketches of Life in a South American Republic," pp. 242—246. 104 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. dense virgin forest ; and, with the exception of about nine or ten leagues which are cleared, the rest consists of steep mountain or lake. This zone is capable of supporting sixteen millions of people. Of the twenty-one provinces and three federal territories it is only necessary in this sketch to notice at any length that of Guayana, which is not only the largest, but the most important of the political divisions of the Republic. The Orinoco Valley. Far away in the Sierra Parime rises this great river, but as yet its sources are a mystery; for the aborigines, driven to the wall, and cowed into submission on the lower reaches of the Orinoco, still maintain their own on its upper waters. Other tribes, who consider themselves guardians of the upper waters, are the Guasicas, who have hitherto been so successful in their resistance, that the exact sources of the Orinoco are yet among the mysteries cf geography. The river is joined by many tributaries, but the length of its main course cannot be less than nearly 2,000 miles. Of this distance it is unin terruptedly navigable from the sea to the point where the Apure joins it, a distance of 777 miles, when a number of "raudals" or cataracts bar the way to vessels, though these once passed, the depth of water, and the smoothness of the river, allow of navigation for many hundreds of miles more. Altogether, according to Wappaus,* the Orinoco is joined by 436 streams, which are entitled to the appellation of rivers, and by upwards of 2,000 others of a smaller volume. These drain an area of 650,000 miles. The delta begins to form 150 miles from its mouth, at a point where a branch flows north to the Atlantic. Several of the mouths are navigable, but the main channel is usually considered the Boca de Navios, which is divided by a number of islands into two channels, each of which is two miles in breadth. The town of Bolivar, 250 miles from the sea, marks the limits to which the tide reaches. Here the river is four miles wide, and usually about 390 feet deep. On the upper water of this Venezuelan flood the scenery is varied, owing to the elevated character of the country, but from cataracts downward to the mouth, the land scape on either side is extremely monotonous, consisting as it does of llanos on the left bank, and dense forests on the right. The Orinoco, therefore, though not a river of the extent of the Amazon, yet vies with it in its capabilities as a highway of commerce. By it and its tributaries the continent might almost be crossed, while southward the Casaquiare, which is navigable almost to the Amazon, gives an inlet from the coast of Venezuela right into the heart of the great empire of Brazil. The navigation of this stream will in some future age become a busy industry. Already it is large, but nothing to what it must attain to were the resources of the country on either side of the current sufficiently developed. States op Venezuela. Through the State of Guayana this mighty river flows. In 1873 the population of the province was given at 34,053, and its area at 208,369 square miles. It is thus, though * " Republiken von Siid-Amerika," p. 47. VENEZUELA: ITS STATES; THE ORINOCO BANKS. 105 by no means the most thickly populated district of Venezuela, yet infinitely the largest of all the provinces into which the Republic is divided. It is also one of the THE MIRITA PALM (Mauritia /teroosa) OP TROPICAL AMEKICA. richest. Cotton grows wild, the forests abound in fine dye and cabinet woods, cattle are bred in such quantities that all Europe ought to be supplied with beef from the herds that pasture on the llanos, while it is a tradition as old as the days of Raleigh that in the province of Guayana are rich gold mines. It was in this region 94 106 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. that Raleigh sought for the city of El Dorado, as the Spaniards had done before him. Milton even refers to the ¦' Yet unspoiled Guayana, whose great city Geryon's sons Call El Dorado." * Guayana is not unspoiled, for the gold mines of the Yuruari, in the Caratel district, yield considerable amounts of the precious metal, both for alluvial and quartz mines. Guayana being separated from the other provinces of Venezuela by the Orinoco, is practically independent of the revolutions at Caracas, and for a South American State enjoys com parative immunity from the endless revolts which rack these uneasy lands. The appearance of the country is flat in the extreme. Near the mouth of the river the forest seems to rise almost out of the water, so little is it elevated above the level of the bed. Here there are scarcely any open spaces, dense forest being the rule, and llanos the exception. Birds are frequent in this primeval jungle, the commonest being a species of kingfisher, called chequahu by the natives, while the scarlet ibis is a frequent object by the water's edge (p. 101). A few Guarano Indians have their homes in the unhealthy delta, and slender-looking houses their homes are. " A roof of thatch, supported by four or six upright poles, constitutes the dwelling-place of the redskins. Here they sling their hammocks, on which they lounge by day and sleep at night. They cultivate a httle sugar-cane, and a few plantains, fish, or they sit in the canoes, and 'loaf about, without any other settled occupation. About a dozen of them came down to the shore to see us go by. Their clothing was most scanty — nothing more than a few square inches of calico fastened by a string round the waist. A yard or two of calico, and a ball of string, would furnish the clothing of an entire family. Their personal appearance is not pre possessing ; the skin is of a reddish-brown colour, the cheek-bones projecting, the nose aquiline, and the hair black and straight." f Such at least is Dr. Le Neve Foster's opinion. There is nothing except these Indian hamlets and a few plantations to interrupt the serried mass of forest on each side of the river, and the labourers who turn out to see- the steamer pass, or the few boats making their way up or down the current, are about the only objects connected with man to show that an attempt has ever been made to "spoil" Guayana. Higher up the river towns begin to appear — Barrancas, with a wooden cross in front at the water's edge, and behind a few wooden houses and palm-trees, Guayana Vieja, La Tablas, and higher up Angostura, or Ciudad Bolivar, the capital of the province. Still, the scenery is not striking; low hills bound the view, some showing grassy slopes, with a few trees, and others covered with forest ; but the river itself is a magnificent stream, muddy, it is true, but a mile or two in width, and impressive from its magnitude, if not from the beauty of its banks.J Ciudad Bolivar is not a place to haunt the memory, though for Guayana it is an important town. The streets are regularly laid out at right angles to each other, paved with rough stones, and with a brick footpath at either side. The stores are of stone or brick, all whitewashed, and roofed with red tiles. The streets are sleepy in * '.'Paradise Lost," Book XL, v. 406. t See also Plassard : " Bulletin do la Sociote de Geographic, Paris," 1868, p. 568. X "Illustrated Travels," Part IX., p, 262, VENEZUELA: ITS STATES; THE ORINOCO BANKS. 107 the extreme, no carts being seen in them, and all the transportation of goods being effected by means of men and donkeys. The streets along the river banks are, however, brisker. Here lanchas, or river boats, may be seen landing hides from the upper Apure, which are afterwards to be transhipped on vessels bound for Europe or North America. In addition to hides they load with deerskins, tonka beans, balsam of copaiba, and possibly the famous Angostura bitters, though we believe that most of this staple is now made in Trinidad, and a good deal much nearer Europe — to wit, in Hamburg. Bolivar is, in some works on Venezuela, stigmatised as the home of yellow fever. These malaria-haunted towns of the tropics have so much to answer for in the way of iniquity that a little more or less will not seriously make or mar their reputation. However, the strict accuracy of the geographer ¦compels us to admit that in this respect Ciudad Bolivar has been unjustly treated. There is yellow fever within its bounds, but not often. Alligators, however, make up for the absence of "yellow jack," and there are tales of river-side people in this delightful place having been snapped up by the spectacled cayman while standing at the doors of their own houses. Whatever may be the evil reputation of Guayana, at present one of its earliest explorers had a very different opinion of it, for Sir Walter Raleigh thus writes : — " Moreover, the countrey is so healthfull, as one hundred persons and more which lay (without shift, most slugglishly, and were every day almost melted with heat in rowing and marching, and suddenly wet againe with great showers, and did •eate of all sorts of corrupt fruits, and made meales of fresh fish without seasoning, of tortugas, of lagartos, and of all sorts, good and bad, without either order or messure, and besides -lodged in the open ayre every night) we lost not any one, nor had one ill-disposed to my knowledge, nor found anie calentura, or either of those pestilent diseases which •dwell in all hote regions, and so nere the equinoctiall line."* Maturin has an area, including Cumana and the territory of Marino, of 17,494 miles, and at the last census had a population of over 54,000. Cattle and salt are its staple products. Close by as Aragua, on the southern slopes of the Carepe Mountains, is the celebrated cave of Guacharo or Carepe. This cave is altogether 1,385 yards long, and from 70 to 80 feet in height. In the first part of it are found innumerable multitudes of the tirds called Guacharos,f from the young of which in Humboldt's time the Indians made 160 bottles of fat oil yearly; The roof and sides are covered with stalactites. A shallow stream 15 to 20 feet wide runs through this part of the cave. The second part of the cave is uninhabited but the third is full of stalactites, and is inhabited by the curious animal called Lapa, which is exceedingly good to eat. Cumana (55,479 people) is remarkable for the many good harbours which it possesses, and its capital, a town of the same name, with 5,000 inhabitants, is one of the oldest of the mainland towns. It is also the focus of all the earthquake distur bances of this region, and has more than once been overthrown during the great com motions which so frequently shake the whole country. Coffee, cocoa, cotton, sugar, and * "Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtifull Empire of Guayana," p, 112, t Steatornis Caripensis, generally referred to the family of the goat-suckers, but differing widely from all the other members of the Caprimulgidw, in having a strong bill, and in being a fruit-eater. It is also, unlike most frugivorous birds, nocturnal in its habits, spending the day in deep dark caverns like that of Guacharo. 108 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. tobacco are its chief articles of commerce, but it also exports horses, cattle, salt, and petroleum, and a little cinchona bark. In the sixteenth century the pearl fishery was carried on to some extent in the calm water surrounding the island of Nueva Esparta, but it has now dwindled away to notshing, and its place has been taken by the turtle fishery. The sea so abounds with fish, that nets 200 yards long are drawn twice a day, and according to the information furnished by Mr. Eastwick, usually bring up from ten to twelve hundred weight of fish, and sometimes so many that it is necessary to cut the meshes and let some escape. The State of Barcelona (13,812 square miles, and 101,396 people) has much the same products as Camana, Guarico, Bolivar, Guzman Blanco, and the federal district of Caracas (around the capital), which, taken together, have an area of 33,986 square miles, and a population of 474,294, chiefly engaged in cattle rearing, though also exporting coffee, chocolate, sugar, indigo, and tobacco. The district around Victoria, a pleasant town of 9,000 inhabitants, is among the richest in the country. It is surrounded on all sides by calcareous hills, and by the most luxurious plantations, and richly cultivated gardens and fields. The State of Apure is inhabited by the Llaneros, who are said to make the best horsemen in America. It is 18,896 square miles, in extent, and possesses about as many inhabitants. Nearly the whole population is devoted to cattle rearing, and hence the "plainsmen,'" passing the greater part of their life in the saddle, are only surpassed as horsemen by the gauchos of the Pampas, further to the south. One of their countrymen, Ramon Paez, thus describes them : — " Cast upon a wild and apparently interminable plain, the domain of savage beast and poisonous reptiles, their lot is to pass all their life in a perpetual struggle, not only with the primitive possessors of the land, but with the elements themselves, often as fierce as they are grand." The Llaneros, probably owing to the fact that they are a mixed race, spring from a commingling of the Spaniard, Indian, and negro, possess a healthier and more vigorous constitution, and more energy than either the Europeans or Africans, or even the Indians, whom assuredly they excel in activity and aptitude for labour. The climate of Apure is, however, by no means conducive to industry. It is hot, though healthy. From December to February the sky over it is cloudless, but from April to August the rain falls in such torrents that during the greater part of that period the whole country is little better than one vast lake. The province then becomes impassable to all except the hardiest and most experienced of the natives. Numberless cattle are destroyed by the jaguars, the alligators, and by the yet more troublesome Caribe fish, or are drowned in the waters. Notwithstanding this, the herds abound to such an extent as to surpass all powers of description. Some idea of their number may, however, be formed from the following circumstance. It has been found impossible for any cattle owner to brand more than ten thousand animals in a year. But there were, eleven years ago, at least ten pro prietors who had more than that number born in their herds annually. Consequently, they were allowed to purchase the privilege of claiming all the unmarked animals near their pastures. Now, if we consider how great must be the herd which supplies more than ten thousand fresh animals every year, and that certificates are issued to ten proprietors of their having such a herd, while many other claimants to the certificate exist, and that several thousand proprietors who possess herds of various classes below that first rank, it will be STEAMBOAT TRAVELLING ON THE ORINOCO. HO THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. evident that the cattle must be reckoned by hundreds of thousands, if not by millions. Zamora is among the most promising of all the Venezuelan States, since it possesses, in addition to its broad grazing lands, rich arable soil, and great commercial facilities, owing to the Hiver Domingo, which communicates with the Apure and the Orinoco, flowing through it. It has also numerous waterways in the Conagua, Apure, and other rivers, navigable waters, up and down which float a considerable trade in coffee, cocoa, hides, indigo, timber, rice, cotton, maize, sugar, potatoes, chuck-peas, tares, shoe-leather, drugs, Indian barley, brandy, horn, mules, horses, cattle, and a host of other agricultural products, with, of course, the usual amount of European goods, which the people receive in exchange for the products of their lands. Portugueza and Zamora comprise between them 23,845 square miles, and have respectively 79,934 and 59,449 people. Cocoa, indigo, coffee, and cotton are the articles to which they are devoted. Cojedes and Carabobo, in conjunction, have an area of 8,119 miles, and a population of 85,678 and 117,605 respectively: they possess some of the richest soil and most beautiful scenery in the Republic, while their climate is reported to be " delightful." Yaracui and Barquisimeto comprise 9,352 square miles, and 143,818 and 71,689 people respectively, are chiefly mining, woodland, and pastural States, though in the valleys cocoa, cotton, and indigo grow, and on the hills some of the finest corn in the country. Falcon is a province of 10,253 square miles, and claims 99,920 people. Trujillo (4,328 square miles, and 108,672 people), Guzman Merida (67,849 people), Tachira (68,619 people, and, with the previous State, 10,848 square miles in area), Zulia, and the territory of Goajiro (28,934 square miles, and with populations of respectively 59,235 and 29,263), and the territory of Amazonas (13,583 square miles, and 23,048 people), are the remaining political divisions of the Republic of Venezuela. Zulia is the province bordering the Gran Lago de Maracaibo. This lake, though it has an outlet to the sea, is fresh, but its well-timbered shores are unhealthy, and the soil generally sandy and poor. The entrance is impeded by a bar, which renders it difficult for vessels drawing more than nine feet of water to enter from the sea. These divisions of the Republic have, however, been so often altered in extent, name, and so forth, that it is somewhat difficult to keep abreast of the tergiversations of the Venezuelan politicians or topographers. A State or two more or less, reconstructed by the desire to do honour to the "patriot" of the hour, must, however, to those outside the circle of the politics of Little Venice, be a matter of the least possible importance. Among the most remarkable features of tbe country is the Lake of Tacarigua, not far from the town of Valencia. The lake was in Humboldt's day over thirty miles long, but it is now only twenty-three. To his list of islets must now be added seven new ones, so that in little more than half a century the water must have sunk sufficiently to lay bare seven new places. In 1810 Valencia was only three miles from the lake; it is now nearly eight. At one time, indeed, the lake seems to have covered the site on which the city is built, but the rapid evaporation (130 inches per annum), the cutting down of the wood, and other causes mentioned, have rapidly decreased the feeders of this fine sheet of water. It is dotted on its borders with good plantations and much fine land. The water of the lake is fed by fourteen small streams, but is brackish,i and contains four different kinds of fish. It is calculated, from what is known regarding VENEZUELA: ITS STATES; THE LAKE OF TACARIGUA. Ill the diminution of the water in it since Humboldt's visit, that in 100 years the lake will have dried up. This process will leave at the end a great tract of very fertile country, while, supposing the streams which at present feed it sufficient for irrigation, the productiveness of the valley of the Aragiia will be increased. The country would also increase in healthiness, for the fevers now so rife on the borders of the lake will disappear. But, on the other hand, should the streams dry up, when the moisture of the air caused by the present great evaporation discontinues, then, notwithstanding the fact of there being ninety feet of rich black soil here, the cultivation must inevitably cease to a great extent. Were the waters of the river Pao, diverted from it into the Portugueza during the seventeenth century, again brought back, the beautiful lake might be maintained; but the Venezuelans do not seem to have the public spirit or the energy necessary to perceive a feature of the country which has been tersely described as " a glittering expanse of silver water, studded with fairy islets, rich masses of foliage of every hue, a city in the distance that seemed built of white marble, and hills that gradually swelled into blue mountains." Caracas (p. 97) is in its build like most other Spanish American towns, and were "it not for earthquakes, epidemics, insect plagues, triennial revolutions, and bell ringing, there would be few more desirable localities for a residence." Valencia is not so pleasant a place — healthy enough, cheerfully situated, but very hot. Mr. Eastwick describes it in no glowing terms : — " Nature does the business of watering the streets gratis. I had a specimen of her performance in this line on my return from visiting the churches. The sun was shining brightly when I entered the Franciscan monastery, and I stopped there only a few minutes; but on my coming out the scene was changed. In a minute or two, with scarcely any warning, clouds came swiftly over the hills : there was a sound of very subdued thunder, a sharp shower for about a quarter of an hour, and out came the sun again. This process happens daily, sometimes twice a day, in this delightful climate, when the temperature never varies more than four degrees of Fahrenheit; — from 78° to 82°. In this respect Valencia resembles Singapore. Yet, the - sun being vertical, it is not safe to be exposed to its rays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. One day a native of the country paid me a visit with his face literally flayed. l It 's all from riding about in the sun,' said he ; 'so you, who are a stranger, must not attempt it. A young American, who came to Valencia last year, thought to harden, and was continually in the sun; but he died mad, just after he had told us that he had got the better of the climate.' " But in these tropical countries one town is very much the same as another town. They are all hot, all dirty, and all the home of the fourth plague of Egypt. Some Venezuelan Traits. The first of these I should characterise as an aptitude for getting into debt, borrowing and never paying. Not that this is any way peculiar to the Republic in question ; all the South American Governments are similarly guilty, or at least were, for the world has now got wiser than to lend them any money. The impecuniosity of Venezuela and its efforts to get money are ludicrously pathetic. " Horrible situation ! " (we are quoting an official address of a late President) "not only the army was in want of the necessaries of life. Civil officials had no pay. The widows and orphans who had been pensioned were dying of hunger. The wives and 112 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. children of tbe soldiers on service eeuld obtain no means of support. We called on the Custom House at La Guaira for money, and the answer was— There is none ! We applied to our citizens, and found that not a dollar could be raised without the most vigorous measures. What recollections ! What agony ! What horror!" They then got relief by a loan, but in 1865 we find the Minister of Finance declares that "Venezuela agonises for the means of support." " The public revenue," writes tbis gushing official, " will be, instead THE VICTORIA REGIA WATER-LILY OF TROPICAL AMEKICA. of an advantage, a calamity, if it continue to be the aim of all who thirst to grow rich at the expense of the country." ' But that is just what the Venezuelans, like most South Americans, invariably do. La mejor hacienda es el Gobierno mal administrado is a proverb which requires no translation in these lands; for every one knows what is the meaning of the best estate being the government ill-administered. Nobody looks for an official to be honest, and indeed to rob the country is not considered dishonest. Mr. Eastwick some years ago went to Venezuela to relieve the Venezuelan " agony " for the want of money, and if possible to get some interest for that which he and his fellow victims had already lent the impecunious republic. " How is it," he asked an intelligent native, whose father had VENEZUELA: WHY ALWAYS IN DEBT. 113 been an Englishman, and therefore still retained something of an intelligence not utterly warped by prejudice and self-conceit, "that this country is so wretchedly poor, and so eternally borrowing money ? You havn't a particle of shame. Your Government House looks like an East Indian go-down. Your great men make no display, and as for your soldiers, one would think that the last successful campaign had been against the fripiers, and that the victors were carrying off the plunder on their backs. It is evident that you Venezuelans are not extravagant, and it is plain that you have great resources if you knew how to use them. Your soil is the richest in the world, and has never been trodden by any invader since the Spaniards were driven out. Then what is the reason that you are always borrowing from other countries? How is it, too, that while the United States of North America have made such progress, the population in your republic is all but stationary, the seas and rivers without steamers, the country without roads, and commerce languishing ? " In substance I have already given the answer (pp. 70-76). The people want energy, and they want public spirit. The Spaniards kept them at peace, and gave them a kind of prosperity. But they also kept them ignorant of the art of self- government, and set them an example of the narrowest policy, and the worst of all political economy. When they were ousted from the country four-fifths of the population could not read, for there were no schools, and even in the capital there was no printing-office until 1816. But even had the Venezuelans had a better political training, it is doubtful whether they would have been any better financiers. The Creoles have many good qualities, but a love of physical labour is not one of these. They are sharp-witted enough, but if the country were to be dependent on their labour, it might go to ruin : the Indians and the mixed breeds do all this. Again, the taxes levied by the Spaniards — the alcabala, or excise, the armada and corso, or coast taxes, the medias anatas, or deductions from salaries, the mono polies of salt, cards, cane, liquor, and tobacco, and numerous other imports — were all so odious to the new nation that as soon as they declared themselves independent, they made a clean sweep of them, leaving only the customs to supply a public revenue. Now, of all taxes which a country with a coast line of 2,000 miles could have imposed, this was, per haps, the worst. Smuggling goes on wholesale. Of 200,000,000 dollars worth of goods imported into the country during the first sixteen years of independence, 129,500,000 dollars worth were smuggled. These are official figures. In addition, such are the venality and corruption of the custom-house officers, up to 1852 it was calculated that 101,500,000 of dollars were stolen by these revenue collectors. At present the loss to the government by contrabands and frauds of all kinds is believed to be not less than 6,000,000 dollars per annum. But this is not based on accounts published in Venezuela. If other countries did not publish the amount of their exports to Venezuela no one would really know what is brought into the country. It is only by comparing the home fictions with the foreign statistics that the real extent to which the government is cheated is known. Take one example : — The custom-house returns only show a consumption, per head, of a quarter of an ounce of soap per week, which, even making a liberal allowance for the uncleanliness of the proletariat, is giving them too little of this taxed toilet requisite. Again, it is well known that the district of Caracas alone consumes a hundred barrels of flour a day, yet the custom-house makes out that the daily con- 95 114 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. sumption of all Venezuela is not sixty-nine barrels. Hence the treasury is chronically empty, and there are no remittances to the capital except from La Guayra and Puerto Cabello, where the Federal Government exercises some control. The other States coolly appropriate the customs revenue for their own purposes, considering that they are committino' an act of great generosity, and not a little of softness also, when they send anything to the Federal Treasury in Caracas. "Of course the only resource is to borrow in foreign markets." The Venezuelan Constitution — like most paper toys of that description — looks well enough in books, but works badly in practice. The individual States attend hut little to the orders of the general government, and Caracas, as Humboldt long ago pointed out, is so situated as to be unable in so wild a country to exercise much control over the individual States of which it is the federal capital. Add to this the overweening conceit of the people. If still waters run deep, some one remarks that the patriotism of the Venezuelans must be very shallow, for it is very noisy. They consider themselves— as Colonel Chollop did his countrymen — " the flower of the airth," and talk accordingly. To the English the Venezuelans were indebted for their freedom, and to English money for the doubtful benefit of being saved from an early bankruptcy, and as a matter of course no nation is looked upon with such jealousy as the English, albeit all foreigners are disliked, probably for one reason, among others, that they cherish Old World notions about the propriety of a nation paying its debts. Here is a case in point : — The Quebrada mines, once the private estate of Bolivar, is now the property, by purchase, of an English company. A railway has been built, and among means taken for jthe development of the district, the new and flourishing part of Tucacas has been established. Yet it is in vain that we look for any acknowledgment of this in the Caracas newspapers. On the contrary, we learn that the entire enterprise was due to the President of the day — to his talent, liberality, and— save the mark — to his engineering skill and public spirit. The name of Englishman is never mentioned. Even when, at the inauguration of these works, President Blanco thought fit to speak in generous terms of those whom Bolivar, after the decisive fight of Carabobo in 1821, called "salvadores de mi patria" — saviours of my country — the press did not care to report his words. It is true that honest journalists have sometimes found that there were inconveniences in plain-speaking, and the Calabooze of the country is, as Mr. Mercer remarks, "an institution which most are satisfied with hearins- of, and with which they have no desire to make acquaintance. Again, because they have succeeded in throwing off the Spanish yoke, it does not follow that they have achieved liberty, and they would do well to be less persistent in their mockery of that sacred word." Hence British capital does not affect Venezuela. Its connection with that country has been too often one of schemes begun and never finished, or more fortunate, of "concessions" granted, but not accepted, to the extent, at least, of money being sunk in them. The Venezuelans hate Trinidad, because it gives shelter to their malcontents, and they hate Curagoa, because there Dutch enterprise comes out in only too strong relief to their listlessness. I am well aware that contrary opinions have been expressed, and, indeed, I have before me at the present moment some of these eulogia of the Venezuelans. It will, however, be generally found that the gentlemen holding or affecting to hold these views are concessionnaires of railway, mining, telegraph, or other grants, and are inspired by that gratitude which VENUZUELA; ITS ARMY. 115 Rochefoucauld defined as a " sense of favours yet to receive." It might be curious to ascertain these gentlemen's opinions twenty years hence. The " ingratitude of republics " has grown into a proverb, but of all republics, those of South America are the most unmindful of the favours they have received. Possibly, also, they are marked among nationalities for possessing but few citizens deserving very well of their native land. Still, Bolivar did great things for "Colombia," albeit in private life he was contemptible, and even not faultless, if we are to credit the testimony of his contemporaries in his public career. * Yet he was allowed to die in exile in want of the necessaries of life. Possibly his •countrymen in whose behalf " he ploughed and sowed the sea," imagined that by giving him lofty titles, such as " Liberator," they had fully recompensed him for his toils and his losses. In the same way they decreed General Falcon the title of " Gran Mariscal," and Paez the empty glory of being called the " Illustrious Citizen," yet Paez, like Bolivar, died in that exile in which he passed the greater portion of his life. The people are lazy beyond anything which we in the northern climates can imagine. The only toil they are fond -of is fighting. Hence the planters try as far as possible to get women as labourers, for they work nearly as well, and cannot be taken for soldiers. It is recruiting that ruins the agriculture of the country, and hence the landowners are very apt, when they hear of a revolution having broken out, to pack off to the mountains all their able-bodied labourers, who return when the dogs of war have satisfied their appetite for blood and liberty. The army ¦of Venezuela consists nominally of 5,000 men, but every citizen from the eighteenth to the forty- fifth year inclusive must serve in the national militia, by which later civil wars have been ¦ almost entirely carried on. Miserable-looking militaires they seem to be, from the account •of an eye-witness. Here is a picture — not flattering : — " I have seen troops of all nations, civilised and uncivilised, from China to Peru, but never any like these. Some of the •officers, indeed, were tall and well made; but the men were the strangest figures — lean old scarecrows and starveling boys not four feet high, the greater number half naked, with huge strips of raw beef twisted round their hats, or hanging on their belts. Their skins seemed to have been baked black with exposure to the sun, and their arms and : accoutrements were of the most wretched description. Yet they were not contemptible — far from it — rather weird, repulsive — a sight to make one shudder. My first thought on seeing them was ' what could want, miasma, exposure, or fatigue do to harm these animated skeletons? Could anything make the'm blacker, grimmer, more fleshless, more miserable ? ' But in this very wretchedness consists their strength ; for European soldiers could not exist when these men would thrive." For long Venezuela was divided into •democrats and aristocrats, or oligarchs — " Godos " (Goths), and " Epilepticos " (Epileptics) — as the slang phrase was. The colours of the one party was yellow, of the other red, and such was the fury which civil strife excited in these half-civilised militiamen, that a child or a woman wearing the obnoxious colour would have run as excellent a chance of being slaughtered as the wearer of an orange waistcoat does on St. Patrick's Day in Cork. The, Venezuelans are in private life a very hospitable and rather kindly people. But no * " Journal of an Expedition 1,400 miles up the Orinoco," by J. H. Robinson, late Surgeon in the Patriotic .Army (1822), p. 301, &c 116 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. sooner do they get into uniforms than it is dangerous' for a humble civilian to approach them. In a linen jacket, Don Jose is most harmless, even when intoxicated; in a scarlet coat, El Capitan is a truculent mortal, fierce to behold. This makes Venezuela in war time rather an uncomfortable place to live in, as the chances are that your tailor will be a colonel ; indeed, a traveller describes being measured for a pair of trousers by one of these military sartorial magnates, clad in full uniform, spurs, sword and all. He was a most dignified personage, and his dignity was doubtless charged in the bill. And here, it may be remarked, that Venezuela is an unconscionably dear place, custom-house extortions making imported goods necessarily expensive, while labour amongst so lazy a people is also naturally an expensive commodity. Yet immi gration is for Englishmen and Americans not desirable. An energetic high-spirited race could not long tolerate the laissez alter disposition of the government, the instability of the law, and the utter listlessness of the people. The country has now enjoyed a comparatively long interval of peace. But how long this will last it is impossible to say. Roads which do not exist on a great portion of the country, and railways which must for a long time to come be mere dreams, may alter the state of matters. But meantime wise men will leave Venezuela to the Venezuelans, notwithstanding its riches, which are varied and great. What these are we have already" indicated, and some of the more remarkable, which are common to the neighbouring countries, we may have occasion to refer to in the next chapter.* CHAPTER VIII. Guiana: British, Dutch, and French. "A swampy forest, as big as France and Spain put together, with a huge drain running through the middle of it, full of snakes, jaguars, and alligators, with plantations here and there, and a sprinkling of savages who think ant paste a luxury," was the unflattering description of the country we are now about to describe, ' given, we believe, by a Hibernian officer fonder of epigrammatic conciseness than of strict accuracy. The borders of Guiana— under which we do not include, of course, the Venezuelan State of the same name— is an ill-defined region stretching along the coast, south of the Orinoco, and back some distance into the region which naturally belongs to Venezuela, though the greater portion of the colonies of Britain, Holland, and France, which go under that name, are formed out of a huge slice of North-eastern Brazil— comprising, in all, nearly four and a-half degrees of latitude— the coast-line being 650 miles long, and the extent inland from 280 to 550 miles. The coast is in general low, and covered by a dense bush of mangrove and curida (Avicennia nitida), behind which rise up lofty palms, with their feathery heads, and here and there the tall chimneys of the sugar plantations. Inland, a low, unbroken level,, covered with a rich tropical vegetation, extends from ten to forty miles. It is wholly * For the Botany and Zoology, seo more particularly A. Ernst: "Estudios aobre la flora y Fauna de Venezuela1' (187G). GUIANA: ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES. 117 VIEW OF THE KAIETUR EALL, BRITISH GUIANA. alluvial, and rests at depths varying from 50 to 200 feet, on granitic rocks; tbe strata, consisting of clay, sand, and vegetable matter, are impregnated with oxide of iron and salt, except along the banks of the rivers. These carry out to sea large quantities of 118 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. sediment, which, mingling with that borne along from the mouth of the Amazon by the equatorial current, and colouring tbe sea 100 miles out, have no doubt produced, in long ages, the vast alluvial deposits which form the broad maritime belt and rich settled districts of the colonies (Bryce). These settlements are usually along the banks of the rivers, and a few feet below their level, so that they have to be protected from overflow by means of levels. Behind the alluvial districts extends a wall of sandstone, making, no doubt, the old shore line, when the coast lands were still under water. Still further inland is another ridge of hills, probably marking a still older range of sea cliffs. From this range stretches back a table-land which gradually ascends until it reaches a height of 2,500 feet. The rivers in their descent from this elevation form a series of cataracts which usually stop all navigation, at a distance of from 50 to 100 miles from the sea. The cataracts of the Orinoco belong to this series. The highest of the Guianan cataracts is the Kaietur Fall, of tbe River Potaro, a tributary of the Essequibo, where a great body of water tumbles over a cliff 822 feet high, 741 feet being perpendicular descent* (p. 117). From this plateau the mountains rise in irregular groups, and are lost in the mountain system already described, or in the great llanos of the Orinoco, Rio Negro, and Amazon. The climate is foggy, though a European soon gets acclimatised to it. The land breezes are the most dangerous, because they bring miasma from the low-lying lands in the interior. For the same reason the sea breezes are healthy, as they sweep off the fever-breeding vapours that would otherwise collect in the hollows of this flat region. Cayenne, or the French section of the country, is the worst, but no part of a country which has a rainfall of from 128 to 103 inches, and a temperature varying from 100° on the southern coast to 60° on the hill districts in the interior, can be free from intermittent and bilious fevers and ague. Yellow fever is, however, absent. Earthquakes are not uncommon, but comparatively mild, though the hurricanes which desolate some of the West Indian islands are unknown. There are rarely any springs, the inhabitants depending on stored-up rain-water. The various rivers communicating often by navigable channels, which ramify all over the cduntry, make travel, which would otherwise be difficult, much easier than in many of the more mountainous regions to the north, or even to the south, where, owing to the impenetra bility of the forests, people living only a few miles from each other have to spend a day in going up one river and down another before they can pay visits. The forest region proper only commences in Guiana about forty miles from the coast, and clothes the mountains to their summits. They contain many valuable trees, such as the mora (Mora excelsa), the king of the forest, which reaches a height of 120 feet, the greenheart, or siperi (the timber of which makes fine planking, while the seeds are febrifugal), the bully tree, the cumara, or tonka bean, the carana, or cedar-wood, the hucouya, or iron-wood, the letter-wood (a costly timber valued for veneering), the simiri, or locust tree, the yaruri, or paddle- wood, and many other species. Sir Robert Schomburgk, one of its earliest and ablest explorers, so lucidly describes this region that I may be allowed to conclude this general sketch of Guiana by an extract from one of his reports :— " Tbe coast, washed by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, is covered with mangrove and curida bushes, and presents a verdure of perpetual * C. B. Brown: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. VI., p. 122, and " Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana" (.1876). BRITISH GUIANA. 119 freshness, forming, as it were, a seam or fringe to the rich carpet behind. These are enlivened by numerous flocks of the scarlet ibis, the white egrette, and the splendid flamingo, which, disturbed at the approach of an intruder, soar into the air, or perch on tbe summit of the trees. Where cultivation has not stamped its seal on the landscape, the marshy plain changes to savanna, resembling the meadows of Europe, watered by rivers and limpid streams, interspersed by groups of palms or tufts of trees. On ascending the great rivers, which have been happily called the ' veins of the country,' we find them covered with verdant isles; and as we approach the primitive forests the landscape assumes the features peculiar to the tropics. It appears as if the power and strength of productive nature, in recoiling from the Poles, had collected itself near the equator, and spread its gifts with open hand, to render its aspect more imposing and majestic, and to manifest the fecundity of the soil. Gigantic trees raise their lofty crowns to a height unknown in the European forests, and display the greatest contrast in the forms and appearance of their foliage. Lianas cling to the trunks, interlace their wide-spreading branches, and having reached their summit, their aerial roots descend again towards the ground, and appear like the cordage of a ship. Clusters of palm-trees, of all the vegetable forms the most grand and beautiful, rise majestically above the surrounding vegetation, waving their pinion-like leaves in the soft breeze. Nature, as if not satisfied with the soil allotted to her, decorates with profuse vegetation the trunks and limbs of trees, the stones and rocks. Even the surface of the water is covered with a carpet of plants, interspersed by magnificent flowers. What could better give an idea of the luxuriance and richness of the vegetation in Guiana than the splendid Victoria regia, the most beautiful specimen of the flora of the Western hemisphere (p. 112) ?* The calm of the atmosphere, where frequently no breath of wind agitates the foliage, no cloud veils the azure vault of heaven, contrasts strangely with the hum of animated nature, produced by insects of every kind. The humming-bird, with its metallic lustre, passes rapidly from blossom to blossom, sipping the nectar of fragrant flowers, or sporting with the dewdrop which glitters on its leaf. It is usual to deny to the birds of the American forest all melody. Many are the feathered songsters which enliven the forest. Although they may not vie with our nightingale in melodiousness of tone, they are not devoid of it. Night approaches, and displays the firmament with all the splendour of the Southern constellations ; the musical notes of birds now give place to the chirping voices of crickets, the sound of the tree-frog, lizards, and reptiles. Thousands of phosphorescent insects flutter among the foliage, emitting a light which, if it does not illuminate, assists to increase the characteristic features of a tropical night." f British Guiana. This colony is sometinjes called Demerara, although in reality it includes the settlements of Demerara, Essequibo,''-%nd Berbice. It extends from east to west about 200 miles, and * This magnificent lily, now not uncommon in our hothouses, was introduced into Europe by Sir Robert Schomburgk, from the River Berbice, in 1837. In conjunction with azure-coloured Pontedera, various bladderworts, a species of Polygonum, Pistia, and various grasses, cover the whole surface of the river, so as to impede navigation. t " A Description of British Guiana," p. 31. See also his " Reisen in B. G." (1840-1845) ; Dalton: " History of B. G." (1855) ; Appun: " Unter den Troppen" (1871) ; and for natural history, the works of Bancroft, Stedman, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, Charles Kingsley, and Barrington Brown. 120 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. though its boundaries between Venezuela and Brazil respectively are undetermined, yet it has been eomputed to contain an area of 76,000 square miles.* The territory was first partially settled by the Dutch West India Company in 1580, and from time to time has been held by Holland, France, and England. In 1802 it was restored to the Dutch but in the following year retaken by Great Britain, to whom it was finally ceded in 1814, Under the Dutch, Demerara and Essequibo constituted one government, and Berbice another NEGRESSES OF DUTCH GUIANA. This arrangement continued in force under the British administration down to the year 1831, when the present mode of administration came in force. The Dutch law is, however, still in force in civil cases, but the criminal law is administered without the intervention of a grand jury, though otherwise in the same manner as in Britain. The government is also essentially that of the old Hollandish days, and it works so well that the Demerarans are quite content to live under the system which the Batavians devised. The only two towns of any importance are Georgetown and New Amsterdam, and the cultivated districts are confined to the coast and a short distance from the river banks. At one time coffee and * If the Brazilian and Venezuelan claims were admitted this area would be reduced by 50,000 square miles. BRITISH GUIANA. 121 cotton were extensively cultivated, but at present the colonists concentrate themselves on the production of sugar, rum, molasses, and rice, and on the exportation of timber. In 1875 there were exported £1,668,378 worth of sugar, £349,397 worth of rum, £79,281 worth of molasses, £86,972 worth of rice, and £45,170 worth of timber. The country may be said to be prosperous. In 1865 the revenue was £379,392, and the expenditure £300,894. Then for a few years the income fell off, while the expenses increased. This unsatisfactory state of matters ceased in 1869. In the latter year the revenue was £311,377, A VILLAGE IN FRENCH GUIANA. and the expenditure £293,636. From that time tbe revenue has steadily increased, though at the same time the expenditure has swelled out to proportions even greater. For instance, in 1874 the first stood at £475,885, and the latter at £485,893;* in 1875 it was £352,137, and £355,979. In the same year the public debt was £403,537. In 1875 the imports were valued at £1,837,158, and the exports at £2,337,122, most of which were to the United Kingdom. In 1871, the total population was 193,491, of whom 113,570 were natives of the colony, 13,385 of the West Indian Islands, 7,925 of Madeira and the Azores, and 9,635 of "other places." In 1875 the population, exclusive of aborigines, was estimated at 212,000. In addition, there were "under indentures" the following "coolies" and labourers : — 33,360 natives of India, 3,875 Chinese, and 362 Africans; 37,597 in all. In 1871, the aboriginal 96 * Exclusive of the sums raised for and expended by the planters on immigration of coolies. 122 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Indians were estimated at 7,000, though the best authorities carry the number as high as 20,000 or 21,000, but the number of the tribes within the British territories vary, and are at all times very uncertain.* The coolie system has, of course, been a very contested one. One set of philanthropists, who love the negro better than the planter, declare that the Asiatic is a vicious individual, a corrupter of good morals, and an eater of the Ethiopian's bread. Another set quite as acrimoniously points out that the coolie is treated despitef ully by the planters, who have accordingly had to be looked after by Royal Commissions, and generally taught their duty. We daresay the men who have been so long accustomed to consider a white face as a patent of nobility do not go out of their way to coddle the indentured Asiatics. But on the whole they are tolerably well off, and quite as well as ever they were in their own country. They are not moral, certainly, and in no point of view an example to any virtuous family. But as they were not brought from the East to be ensamples to the planters or their ex-serfs, their morals are not a subject about which the Demerarans particularly distress themselves. Moreover, as there are within the bounds of the colony clergymen of almost every Christian sect — in addition to Mahom- medans and Buddhists — the planters devote themselves to sugar and rum with a light heart. Whether the colony deserves the eulogium of Mr. Anthony Trollope as being "the actual Utopia of the Caribbean Sea," it would perhaps be rash to say. Utopias are rare nowadays in these regions. Still, in energy, wealth, and self-reliance, British Guiana presents a marked contrast to the absence of all these colonial necessaria vitce in Jamaica. Dutch Guiana. Surinam — as this colony is sometimes called — is immediately south of the British colony, from which it is separated by the Corentyn river. It has an area of about 60,000 square miles, and a population of over 70,000, including 17,000 " boschnegers," or bush negroes, descendants of the Caribs and runaway slaves. In 1875, the exact civilised population was 51,329. The deaths exceeded the births in that year, of whom only 5,000 are Europeans, and about the same number Chinese. Its products and general appearance are much the same as those of British Guiana. The country is not, however, so well developed, and in the hilly regions of the interior and south the country is held by the bush negroes, or runaway slaves, and is altogether uncultivated. In 1S76 there were 300 plantations, while the expenditure was £94,047, or nearly £24,000 short of the revenue. This deficit had to be met by the mother country. Slavery prevailed up to 1863, when the Govern ment emancipated the slaves at a cost of £25 per head, which was paid to their "owners;" but for ten years afterwards the freedmen were put under Government surveillance (p. 120). The Dutchman carries his " institutions " with him everywhere. Hence British Guiana has canals, dykes, sluices, irrigation, and all other good things Batavian, which she inherited from the Dutchmen who laid the foundations of her prosperity. But when the voyager first approaches the Dutch Guianan coast he is rather astonished at the absence of any signs of cultivation, or even of human habitation. From Berbice to the Pomeroon — or near to it— the eye meets a succession of tall chimneys marking the coast-line and the spots where industry lias * Colonial Office List (1876); Statistical Tables relating to tho Colonial and other Possessions. Part XV., 1871-5 (Parliamentary Blue Book, 1878). DUTCH GUIANA. ]23 converted the haunts of alligators, snakes, and mosquitoes into a thriving colony. Along the Surinam shore nothing like this is seen. The explanation is, however, easy. A long range of swamps, difficult to drain, shuts off the coast of British Guiana from the high lands of the interior. Hence cultivation is chiefly limited to the former region, and the plantations in it are placed side by side on the long strip between the ocean in front and the morass behind. In Dutch Guiana circumstances are different. There, the swamp is on the coast. Accordingly, most of the plantations are either on the river banks, or back from the shore, where the voyager cannot see them. Paramaribo, the capital of the colony, on the Surinam River (Plate XXIV.), is a thoroughly Dutch town of 23,000 inhabitants, clean, comfortable, tree-embosomed, and even handsome. There is about it, according to Mr. Palgrave's account, a sleepy lotus-eating air, " very calm and still, yet very comfortable and desirable withal." The traveller who lands here feels as did those who — " In the afternoon .... came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon." The atmosphere is like that of a hothouse and of a vapour bath combined. The air you breathe up these Guianan rivers is the air of a country only b\ degrees north of the equator — which has blown over the great moist plains, brimming river marshes, and dense forests that constitute nine-tenths of the Guianas and Brazil. Fifteen miles of wood and swamp cut off from the sea-breeze what there is of it in the tropics. Hence in Paramaribo the air is that not of wind-swept Barbadoes and dry Antigua, hut that of the "moistest among all equatorial continents." Yet the place is said to be not unhealthy, and as the wealth that pours out of it shows, all energy is not washed out of the people in the steaming perspiration which pours out of their lank bodies. Surinam is really Holland under another sky, just as Paramaribo is Amsterdam, or the Hague by other waters. "This it is," writes Mr. Palgrave, "that gives Paramaribo its twofold character at once European and tropical, Dutch and Creole — a blending of opposites, a dual uniformity, an aspect that when first beheld leaves on the mind an impression bordering on unreality, as if place and people were imaged in a hot, unpicturesque dream. Yet Paramaribo is no dream, nor its inhabitants dream-shapes : very much the contrary. In fact, no capital town throughout the West Indies, no offspring of European strain, French, English, Danish, or even Spanish, so generously or truthfully represents the colony to which it belongs as Dutch Paramaribo. Contrary examples are easily adduced. Thus, for instance, Jamaica is pre-eminently the land of English country gentlemen, of magistrates, landlords, farmers, and in tone, ways, and life, an English country district; while Demerara is in no small measure an English, or, rather, I should say, a Scottish manu facturing district; Barbadoes an English parish magnified, not an island. But neither Jamaica, nor Demerara, nor Barbadoes, possesses a correct epitome of itself in Kingston, Georgetown, or even Bridgetown : each of these three seaports has a character of its own, distinct from, and in some respects opposed to, the colony at large. This is due to many causes, and most of all to the mixed multitudes of trades, the camp-followers of enter prise, who, under whatever banner they congregate, acknowledge in heart and life no flag but that of individual self-interest. These are they who muster strongest in the 124 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. generality of colonial towns, especially seaports, and tinge, if they do not absolutely colour, the places of their resort. And thus from the merest port of call along these shores to Georgetown, where it is decidedly at its maximum a something of a restless make-shift egotistic ' Cheap Jack ' admixture, obscures, or at least jars with, the public- spirited nationality, unsettles the population, debases the buildings, ungroups the unity, and deforms the beauty of place and site. With Paramaribo it is otherwise." The colony itself is a Crown colony — that is to say, the Governor gets his appointment from the King, and holds himself responsible to the Colonial Office at the Hague alone. There is a House of Assembly, of which he is President, composed of four members nomi nated by himself, and nine elected by the people, who pay taxes to the amount of forty guilders per annum. Its powers are, however, merely advisory, or deliberative, and really exercise little check upon the Governor. Still, the country is justly ruled, and not over taxed. In 1873, there were actually under cultivation 27,817 acres, of which over one-half was assigned to sugar, one-half again of tbe remaining land to cocoa, and the residual quarter divided among coffee, cotton, bananas, and the mixed gardens of provision grounds. Population is wanted for the colonies. Coolies are imported, but they do not altogether meet the want, while the negro and the half-wild race of the bush negroes are not yet thoroughly available for cultivating the land. The land is rich — beyond the power of its fertility being exaggerated — but it is impossible for white men to cultivate it. Various attempts of the kind have been made, but all of them have been failures. There are no mines as yet known among the mountain ranges in the south of the Guianan territory, and long may they remain undiscovered should they exist. It is now nearly three centuries since Bacon pronounced the sentence, which subsequent experience has only ratified, that "the hope of mines is very uncertain, and useth to make the planters lazie in other things." Mining would soon ruin Surinam, and even the gold diggings in Venezuela have not acted favourably on the European colonies in their vicinity. French Guiana. Cayenne, or French Guiana, lies between the rivers Maroweyn and Oyapock, which separates it from the Dutch colony on the north, and Brazil on the south. Its area is 28,000 square miles, though its boundaries are not well defined, owing to the Dutch and Brazilian Governments claiming portions of it. In 1874, its population was 16,414, the division according to sexes being 7,839 males, and 8,575 females. This is not more than half of what the population was in 1868. There were in the same year 76 marriages, 454 births, and 1,236 deaths* In addition to the mainland there are several islands off the coast, the chief of which is Cayenne, which is the capital and almost sole port. Its physical geography presents no marked features to distinguish it from the divisions of Guiana already described, nor are the products different, viz., ornamental woods, rice, maize, coffee, cocoa, sugar, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper. The colony has been occupied by the French since 1633, though it is only since 1854 that Cayenne has been made tbe chief penal settlement of the country. Any one condemned to eight years' * "Tableaux de la population ot des colonies francaises pour l'annee, 1874." VIEW OF THE ORGAN MOUNTAINS, IN THE PROVINCE OF RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL. 126 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. expatriation must reside for the rest of his life in the colony. As a matter of fact he; generally escapes; but he is not expected to do so. However, such is the nature of the- climate, aggravated by the conditions of life among the convicts, that the mortality is. very great, though, as the Government does not include the deaths in Cayenne among the; general tables of mortality, there are no data to go upon. CHAPTER IX. The Empire of Brazil: The Amazons. In the year 1499, Vicent Yanez Pincon, one of the companions of Columbus, sailing; southward of the lands which were then known to the Spaniards, when near St. Augustine's; Cape sighted what is now known as the Empire of Brazil. He went as far south as- the Amazon river, but made no settlement, contenting himself with taking possession of the country in the name of his most Catholic Majesty. The possession was, however, short lived, for next year Pedro Alvarez Cabral, admiral of a fleet sent by the King of Portugall to follow up the discoveries of Vasco de Gama in the East Indies, again took possession' of the country in the name of his sovereign, and the Portuguese retained it as one of their colonies for more than three centuries, with some more substantial results than the formal flag-hoisting of El Capitan Pincon. This was on the 28th April, 1500. But like- his predecessor, Cabral founded no settlement, and after acquainting the court with his; discovery proceeded on his way to India. The honour of colonising Brazil must be givem to the celebrated Amerigo Vespucci, a man much maligned, on account of the tradition that in some manner or another he plotted to get his name applied to the new continent,. and thus deprived Columbus of the just honour to which he was entitled. Be that as it may, Vespucci, who had entered the service of the King of Portugal, remained in Brazil — or as it was at first called Vera Cruz and Santa Cruz — four months, and finally, after building; a fort and leaving twelve men to garrison it, set sail for Lisbon with two ship loads of Brazil wood, monkeys, and parrots. Its history may hereafter be briefly summed up. Colonies were established under the auspices of the Crown, in 1531, and in 1549 a colonial government was formed. After the annexation of Portugal to Spain, in 15S0, Brazil suffered, much from the enemies of that country, the Dutch and French nearly capturing the province.. The restoration of the house of Braganca to the throne of Portugal resulted in the erectiom of Brazil into a principality, and the title Prince of Brazil was conferred in 1640 on. the heir apparent to the throne. In 1807, when Napoleon declared war against Portugal,. the Prince Regent, afterwards Joao VI., took refuge with his family in Brazil- Restrictions were then removed from her commerce, and in 1815, on the fall of Napoleon, Brazil was raised to the rank of a kingdom. In 1821, the King, to avert threatened revolution, promulgated a new constitution, and soon after returned to Portugal,. leaving his son, Prince Pedro, regent of Brazil. This was the first instance of a colony being the seat of Government of its mother country, and it is likely to be: BRAZIL: ITS HISTORY. 127 -the last. For, suspecting that when the danger was past, Dom Joao intended to abrogate the constitution which he had given to Brazil, and to recede from the honour which he had done it in bracketing with Portugal and Algarves, as being his " united kingdom," a -revolution broke out in April, 1821. Either through fear, policy, or ambition, the Regent Dom Pedro sided with the Brazilians, and was declared "Perpetual Defender" of the ¦country. He furthermore announced its independence, and though the Portuguese made a feeble attempt to regain possession, the Brazilians rapidly carried all before them, and before the end of 1823 the authority of Dom Pedro, who had been proclaimed Emperor, was recognised throughout the whole country, which, at that time, also comprised part •of the present Republic of Uruguay. But the troubles of the new empire were not yet at an end. Republican movements began to gain ground. The ex-colonists feared ¦absolutism on the one hand, and anarchy on the other. Finally the Emperor signed the liberal constitution which the Assembly had prepared ; the King of Portugal was formally proclaimed Emperor of Brazil, only immediately to abdicate in favour of his son, the actual monarch of the Brazils, who accordingly was crowned, and the country acknowledged as an independent sovereignty. The Government is an hereditary and constitutional monarchy, with a legislative body, consisting of a Senate of 58 members, appointed for life, and a House of Deputies, containing 122 members, elected for four years. The Deputies are chosen by provincial electors, who are themselves chosen by the people. The Senators are chosen also by the provincial electors in triple lists, from which three candidates the Emperor selects one, who holds office for life. In 1826, Dom Pedro I. became, by the death of his father, King of Portugal, but resigned the Portuguese crown to his daughter, Donna Maria. In 1831, after reverses, during which it lost Uruguay, and the country was on the eve of civil war, he abdicated the throne of Brazil in favour of his son, the present Emperor, Pedro II., then five years of age. The empire was governed by a regency till 1840, when the present Emperor was declared to have attained his majority. The history of his reign is written in the rapid development of the resources of the empire, the erection of public works, the growth of commerce, the abolition of the traffic in slaves, and the provisions made for their gradual emancipation, the encouragement given to immigrants, and the establishment of a complete system of education. Since the transition period of 1821-25, when the country was hovering on the brink of that restless political doctrinarianism and anarchy which has overtaken all the other South American countries, Brazil has enjoyed the blessings of a stable government, internal peace, and on the whole a greater degree of prosperity than we are accustomed to associate with the Latin nationalities of the New World. In 1865, in concert with the Argentine Republic and Uruguay, it declared war against Paraguay, a disastrous conflict which ended, in 1870, in the utter prostration of that unhappy little republic, and the appropriation of a considerable portion of its territory by the Argentines. The immediate cause of the unfortunate war was the seizure, by the Dictator Lopez, of a Brazilian vessel in the Paraguay River, followed by an armed invasion of Brazil and the Argentine Republic. It involved on Brazil immense sacrifices of men, and an expenditure of upwards of £50,000,000 sterling. 128 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. Physical Geography* Imperio do Brazil — literally the land of the " live coal " — occupies three-sevenths of the South American continent, and covers an extent of contiguous territory 3,287,964 square miles, greater than that directly under any government except Russia and the United States, though, of course indirectly, England governs an infinitely greater portion of the world if India be taken into account. The boundary lines of the empire touch the borders of all the South American republics except Chili. The greatest breadth of territory is 2,470 PALACE OP THE EMPEROR OP BRAZIL AT PETROPOLIS, NEAR RIO DE JANEIRO. miles, and the greatest length 2,600 miles, the coast-line being 4,750 miles, while the interior is extremely varied in aspect and formation. Brazil is, in general, a mountainous country, three * In drawing up this account I must confess my obligations, in addition to the memoirs and books wKich will be acknowledged in their proper places, to tho authentic information drawn up by the Brazilian Com missioners for the Philadelphia Exhibition, to some excellent articles in the Philadelphia Ledger and Transcript, July 14th, 1870; Kiddor and Fletcher: "Brazil and the Brazilians" (1857); Bates: "Naturalist on the Amazons" (1863); Wallace: "Amazon and Rio Negro" (1853); Keller: "The Amazons and the Madeira;" Burton: "The Highlands of Brazil" (1869); Agassiz : "Journey in Brazil;" Hartt: "Scientific Results of a Journey in Brazil" (1870); Liais : " Climat, gcologio, faune, ct geographie botanique du Brazil" (1877); Orton: "Andes and Amazons" (1870) ; Pareira : "Situation social, politique, et economique de l'empire du Bresil" (1865); Constatt; " Brazilien, Land und Leute" (1877); Saint-Adolphe : " Diccionario Geografico do Brazil" (1870); Selya- Longchamps: "Notes d'un Voyage au Bresil" (1876); Scully: " Brazil, its Provinces, and Chief Cities, &c. " (1868) I SCENE ON A TRIBUTARY OF THE RIVER AMAZON. BRAZIL. 25 BRAZIL: THE AMAZON RIVER. 129 great mountain ranges (p. 125), and their spurs occupying over one-third of its surface; but it is also remarkable for its vast plains, extensive valleys, and large rivers. The highest mountain (Pico do Itatiaiossu) has been reported to have an elevation of from 6,250 to 10,300 feet above sea level, and there are several above 5,000 feet, in height. There are no known volcanoes in the empire, although parts of the soil are of volcanic formation. The THE PASH1CBA, OB PAXIUEA PALM OP BRAZIL. ToeSi ,b P WateVed\th: f°Ur «"* fl«M basins being those of the Amazon, the 2 500 noo i' G Sa° FranCiSC°- ^ AmaZ°n aDd its tributari- ^ain nearly 2,500,000 square miles, or more than a third part of South America, including about Thoua^S on J* A ' ' ^^ *?*&¦**. Wilderness" (1877); Brown and Lidstone : « Fifteen OwTfh I ^ ^Amazon and ^Tributaries" (1872) ; Bigg-Wither : "Pioneering in South Brazil » £8 77 > ; the works of Hemdon, Edwards, Markham and others; the great "Flora Braziliana," and numerous Ses m^!ZZ:: ^^ ^^ "**¦'"«"«' ** ''^graphical Society', P^ ' j££ 97 130 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. one-fourth the area of Brazil, and has a course through the empire of nearly 2,300 miles. It is one of the wonderful rivers of the globe. It empties itself into the ocean with such velocity that navigators, after losing sight of land, may yet drink of its waters, its volume overlying — so it is said — the surface of the ocean for fifty leagues from shore. Beyond the frontier of Brazil the Amazon continues to be navigable by steamers for upwards of 1,188 miles, in the territory of Peru. The river and its tributaries are navigable, by steamers, through an aggregate length of more than 25,000 miles, and bj' smaller craft for double that distance. The river is altogether 4,000 miles in length, is more than 150 miles wide at its mouths, and far in the interior is so broad that its navigation is often dangerous on account of the tempests which overtake vessels before they can reach the shore. The Tocantins has a course of about 1,500 miles, and the Araguaya, its principal affluent, extends about the same distance. The Parana, in the southern, and the San Francisco, in the central part of Brazil, are also large rivers, with numerous affluents. Steam navigation, subsidised by Government, has been established on many of the rivers, and the Government has been engaged for several years in surveys and engineering works, designed to improve navigation, or to carry passengers and freight around falls and cataracts, that obstruct navigation. Without these works, however, Brazil, with its forty-two harbours and numerous navigable streams, is well fitted for carrying on foreign commerce and developing its interior resources. Most of the rivers are subject to periodical floods, but the flooding of the Amazon does not interfere with naviga tion, as its affluents do not swell simultaneously. This river — called also the Maranon, Orellana, or Solimoens — is the largest in the world, and though it is doubtful whether it will ever play in the world's history so important a part as the Nile or the Mississippi, or even for long . to come as the La Plata, yet it is peculiarly fitted for navigation. The winds for six months in the year usually oppose the current, so that a Tessel can either float down the river by taking advantage of the latter, or ascend up by aid of the sails. Steam has, however, minimised the importance of this physical feature of the great river, though to the Indians and the smaller craft which ply along it this circumstance is still held in useful remembrance. While the tide is felt 400 miles from its mouth, the force of the current can be perceived 200 miles out to sea. Near the mouth is experienced the effects of the great bore, or proroca, which La Condamine thus graphically describes :— " During three days before the new and full moons, the period of the highest tide, the sea, instead of occupying six hours to reach its floods, swells to its highest limits in one or two minutes. Presently you see a liquid promontory twelve or fifteen feet high, followed by another and another, and sometimes by a fourth. These watery mountains spread across the whole channel, and advance with a prodigious rapidity, rending and crushing everything in their way. Immense trees are sometimes uprooted by it, and sometimes whole tracts of land are swept away." The region through which the river flows is for the most part covered with the densest forests, impenetrable unless by the aid of the axe, to man, but abounding with jaguars, panthers, bears, and an immense variety of other wild animals. The Indian tribes of the empire also find a home here in comparative peace, and though they have still a great many of their pagan, rites, the Jesuits— Spanish and Portuguese— have affected them so far as to coat their barbarism BRAZIL: PLANT LIFE. 131 in some cases over with a varnish of Christianity. The river abounds in fish and turtles, while the alligators, which are also numerous, may be often seen floating on the surface like great logs of wood, or lying asleep on the muddy shores or sand-spits, which here and there relieve the terrible monotony of ever umbrageous growth. In the valley of the Amazon, however, are also found great grassy llanos, and also many selvas, or marshes, which the river periodically overflows, so that between the Negro and Madeira at the time of the annual rise, the river covers a great part of the adjacent country, and has really no determinate limits. The name Amazon — or as it is sometimes written Amazons or Amazonas — has nothing to do with the fabled ladies of Asia Minor, nor with their coal-black sisters of the kingdom of Dahomey. The word is derived from the Indian word Amassona, or " boat destroyer," a term which the tribes near the mouth not unnaturally applied to the devastating bore already spoken of. Strictly speaking, this name ought only to be applied to the river below the place where the Rio Negro joins it ; above that point, on to where the Maranon and the Ucayale unite with it being by native usage called the Solimoens. The other two names are derived by Francis Orellana, one of its earliest explorers, and Maranon who first visited the upper waters in the year 1513. Yafiez Pincon (p. 126) was, however, its real discoverer, but the mariner had dreams of great things awaiting him in other lands, and so, like many who have come after him, sailed away from the mouth of the great river to explore those Indies with which his name is now so little connected. Physically, as well as politically and socially, Brazil is in many respects widely different from the other parts of South America. It is in the first place the largest political division of that part of the continent. It is the only monarchy in America — if we except the European colonies — and the sole region in which the Portuguese language is spoken. It is physically remarkable in so far that it is exempt from the volcanoes and earthquakes which are so familiar to the regions lying north of it, and equally it is free from those long and widespread droughts which make at times so much of America little better than a desert. Moist winds always blow upon the Atlantic, hence most of the country yields rich harvests to the agriculturist, though some parts of the vast empire are arid, and unfavourable to vegetation. Its rivers, moreover, though greater than those of the rest of the continent, are yet in some cases not suited for the purposes of commerce. With the exception of the Amazon, most of the Brazilian rivers are impeded by shallows and cataracts, and, moreover, the best of these do not flow into the ocean direct, but as tributaries of other rivers. The humid atmosphere causes a luxuriant vegetation, and these two combined make the ordinary roads all but impassable, so that with all its teeming riches, the vast empire is not so well supplied with means of reaching the interior as some of the other parts of the continent less well watered, and poorer in resources. The Plant and Animal Life of Brazil Is remarkably luxuriant; — perhaps the most luxuriant in the world. More than 17,000 species have already been described, and doubtless many more remain to be discovered. In the valley of the Amazon, the area of a circle 1,100 miles in diameter is covered with one dense mass of arboreal vegetation. Prof. Agassiz reports having seen 117 different kinds of valuable woods cut from a piece of land not half a mile square. The chief ornament 132 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. of the forests is the palm, represented by from 300 to 400 species, which supply the Indians with all that they need in this life, including food, drink, raiment, shelter, weapons, tools, medicines, &c. The Morichi Mirita, or Ita palm (Mauritia flexuosa, p. 105), affects swampy grounds : the Guarani Indians almost live upon its sago, while its fibre wood and sap supply them with house, bed, and board. Among the others may be mentioned the Pashiuha palm (Lriartea ventricosa, p. 129) — the peculiarity of which is that its roots shoot and spread out just above the ground, and then grow obliquely downwards — and the Carnaiiba palm (Coper nicia cerifera). Of the latter every part serves some use, while from the leaves is extracted a wax which is exported to the amount of £150,000 annually. The very numerous varieties of valuable and useful woods found in Brazil were well repre sented at the Philadelphia and Paris Exhibitions. The chief agricultural products are coffee, sugar, rice, cocoa, cotton, tobacco, and herva-mate, and corn, wheat, and oats yield enormous returns to the husbandman, but have not yet become articles of export. Fruits are most abundant, and include those of nearly all climates. Bananas, yams, figs, lemons, oraDges, and grapes grow in nearly all the provinces. Brazilian nutmegs, tonka beans, and Maranhao cloves are common on the Rio Negro, in the basin of which are numberless trees valuable for the oils and resins they yield. There are several species of vanilla, and the palm-yielding piassaba, used extensively in textile fabrics, and the bombax, producing silk cotton, also grow there. Among the other endless vegetable products used as food, for medicine, or for economic purposes, we can only mention the cow tree (Brosimum Galactodendron) , a species of the order of artocarpads. In Venezuela it, however, attains perfection. It is there known as the Palo de Vaea, or Arbol de Leche, and in the vicinity of Caracas attains the height of 100 feet, and grows in large forests. It derives its name from the milky juice which is obtained by making incisions in the bark. The milk closely resembles that derived from the cow, and, indeed, is used as a substitute for it. Unlike many vegetable " milks," it is perfectly wholesome, and even nourishing, and, in addition, possesses a pleasing balsamic odour. After a few days' exposure to the air it turns sour, and putrefies. The same name is also some times applied to the Hya Hya (Tabemcemontana utilis), also of South America. The vegetation covering different parts of Brazil is known by various names. For instance, the mattas are the heavy forests which clothe the moist low-lands of the north, and which also occur in belts over the central and southern portions of the country. The catingas are the open woods of the highlands, which lose their leaves during the dry season, and gradually merge into campos geraes, or open plains, or prairies, and rounded hills covered with grass, and scattered with bushes. The term sertao is now applied to the dry hills, stony parts of the campos unsuited for agriculture, while to the agricultural belt of the Eastern provinces the term Beira mar is familiarly applied. "Trees split for paling in the neighbourhood of Rio Janeiro" writes Mr. Keith Johnston in his excellent description of Brazil, " sends forth shoots and branches immediately, and this whether the position of the fragments be that in which they originally grew or inverted. On the banks of the Amazon the loftiest trees destroy each other by their proximity, and are bound together by rich and multiform lianes ['bush ropes']. I" the province of Maranhao, the roots, grasses, and other plants extending from the shores of pools, weave themselves in time into a kind of vegetable bridge, along which the passenger treads, unaware that he has left the firm earth, until the jaws of a cayman protrude through BRAZIL: PLANT LIFE. 133 the herbage before him. The vegetable productions of Brazil have a strong analogy with those of Guiana. The most common are the Compositce, Leguminosce, Euphorbiaceae, Rubiacece, Aroidece, and ferns of the most varied forms. The vegetation of the valleys differs from that of the campos, as it again does from that which occurs in the sertdos. Along the coast the mangroves are the most numerous and prominent species. The most marked peculiarity of this class of plants is, that the seeds begin to shoot before they drop from COMBAT BETWEEN A JAGUAR AND AN ANT-EATER: A SCENE IN A BRAZILIAN FOREST. the parent plant, and that the drooping branches strike root into the soil. They are never found inland, except where the surface is scarcely elevated above the level of the sea. They flourish from the Rio Grande do Sul to Maranhao, converting the land into a morass wherever they are allowed to flourish unmolested. Immediately behind them numerous families of palms raise their graceful heads. The underwood in the neighbour hood of Rio Janeiro consists principally of crotons. Every large river of Brazil has its own appropriate form of vegetable life, giving a peculiar character to its banks. The vegetation of the Amazon may be divided into three classes: — (1) That which we find on the islands; (2) the vegetation upon the banks overflowed at regular intervals by the 134 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. stream, and (3) that which stands high and dry. The difference between them consists in the character of the bark and the stems of the plants. Brushwood and herbage are nowhere to be seen; everything tends to the gigantic in size. The most varied forms group awkwardly together, crossed and intertwined with leaves. The preponderance of trees with feathery foliage, and with glossy, fleshy leaves, lends alternately a tender and luxuriant character to the scene, which is in every other respect painful from its monotony. Repre sentatives of the most estranged natural families grow side by side. It is only on the islands, where the willow and some other plants are found, that we are reminded of the uniformity of our northern vegetation. Cocoa trees and the vanilla, Capsicum fruteseens, and different kinds of pepper, the cinnamon and sanauma (p. 137) trees, and the Brazilian cassia, abound. The flora of all the tributaries of the Amazon is similar to what we have described, until the traveller ascends above the falls, and finds himself in another region. The source of the Madeira alone offers a partial exception, retaining a vegetation indicative of extensive plains, lakes, and morasses. The vegetation of the southern campos is widely different. On the plains of the southern provinces, we find scattered about strong tufts of greyish- green and hairy grasses, springing from the red clay. Mingled with these are numerous- herbaceous flowers of the most varied colours and elegant forms. At intervals, small groves of trees seldom exceeding twenty feet in height, so distant that the individual form of each is easily recognised, with spreading fantastic branches, and pale green leaves, break the monotony of the scene. Solitary myrtles, and numerous varieties of pleasing fruits, and now and then a cactus, add to the variety. A similar vegetation, but with a richer variety of plants, occurs in the diamond district. On the western declivity of the Serra do Mar, and along the upper banks of the Rio Sao Francisco, extends a wooded ' catinga* country, of a character entirely different from that which is found in the valleys below, Malvce, Euphorbiaeos, Mimosw, and the like are the prevailing types on the Rio Francisco. Cactuses, palms, and ferns abound on the Serra do Mar. In this district the ipecacuanha flourishes best. It is, however, in the glowing steppes of Pernambuco that we find the cactus predominant. In the valley of the Paraguay the most striking feature is presented by the water plants, which, in one river, are sufficiently strong to impede the navigation of a stream both deep and broad. " The zoology of Brazil is scarcely less remarkable than its botany. Among the animals not indigenous to the country are the horse, ass, sheep, hog, and dog. Herds of horned cattle roam more than half wild over the vast plains of the interior, and game abounds in the wooded regions. Among the wild animals of Brazil are cougars, ocelots, wolves, deer, sloths, agoutis (p. 77), armadillos, several species of opossum, vampires, jaguars, ant-eaters (p. 133), the anta, or tapir, the largest South American mammal, the capibara, or water hog, the largest known rodent, otters, and nearly sixty species of monkeys. Of birds, there are the king vultures, eagles, hawks, kites, owls, turkeys, geese, ducks, toucans, a great variety of parrots and of humming birds, the American ostrich, and an infinite number of small birds of brilliant plumage. These, with the Brazilian butterflies, beetles of brilliant colours, thousands of less gaudy but not less pestilent insects, are familiar in a score of museums, and much too familiar to the non-entomological traveller. Poisonous serpents, alligators, and turtles abound in the valley and waters of the Amazon, and the rivers and lakes are stocked with an endless BRAZIL : ANIMAL LIFE ; COMMERCE AND RESOURCES. 135 variety of fish, many of which are as yet undescribed. One of the largest fish is the Pira men, which forms the principal food of the people of Para and Amazonas. Commerce and Resources. The mineral resources of the empire include nearly all the useful metals, coals, and many kinds of precious stones and building stones. Of these probably the hematite iron ores are the most valuable. Iron is found in large quantities in deposits which may be easily and econo mically worked, for we are told that they are near extensive forests, " which," to quote the official document referred to, "being cut down constantly, reappear within from six to ten years." The resources of the most important iron foundry of the empire are remark able. " Ore of excellent quality ; carbonate of lime for fluxes ; refractory clay for building furnaces; sufficient water power for the more important engines, and very good forests," are all found in close proximity to each other. Quarries of excellent marble are found in the vicinity, and comparatively recently a coal mine was discovered within about twenty miles of the works. Bituminous coal is found, and there are also beds of lignites, bituminous schists • and peat, of which there are large deposits in Brazil. Most of the coal is rather poor, but at Arroyo dos Ratos, in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, it is worked on a small scale for the use of the steamboats which ply on the Lagoa dos Patos, or on the rivers. An English company also works the mines of Candiota in the same province. Gold is found in paying quantities, and is exported; platina, irridium, palladium, tellurium, bismuth, and arsenical pyrites, silver, copper, mercury, manganese, and lead are also exhibited. Many of these are found in paying quantities. Tin and zinc have been found in small deposits. There are a large number of precious stones, including diamonds, emeralds, sap phires, rubies, topaz, beryls, black, blue, and green tourmalines, crystals of remarkable purity, fine amethysts, chalcedonies, opals, agates, and jaspers. Among the other mineral deposits are mica, asbestos, graphite, sulphur, saltpetre, rock salt, alum, building stones, including several kinds of sand stones, granites, and marbles. The commerce of Brazil has grown and is growing with the development of its resources. The ports of Brazil, chiefly by the influence of Great Britain, were opened to all friendly nations in 1808, and the Government, to encourage commerce, has thrown open the coasting trade to foreign* flags. The average annual value of the imports and exports, including bullion and specie, from 1839 to 1844, was £10,578,580, the total value of the imports in the years from 1872 to 1876 averaged £17,000,000, and that of the exports in the same period £17,500,000. The commercial transactions of Brazil with other nations from 1864 to 1874 show a balance in favour of Brazil of £33,843,470, though during that period of ten years the empire maintained a five years' war with Paraguay. The inter-provincial coasting trade followed the foreign maritime trade in its progress, the average importations from 1864 to 1869 being valued at £570,812, and the average importations from 1869 to 1874 at £10,284,350. These official data embrace only a small portion of the inland trade, as all merchandise, before being exported and after being imported, passes through many hands. Of the principal nations engaged in the foreign maritime trade of Brazil Great Britain carries 51 136 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. per cent, of the imports and 45 per cent, of the exports; France, 19 per cent, of the imports and 13 per cent, of the exports ; the United States, 4£ per cent, of the imports and nearly 21 per cent, of the exports ; Portugal, 5 per cent, of the imports and 4f per cent, of the exports; Germany, Austria, and Hanseatic cities, 5 per cent, of the imports and nearly 3 J per cent, of the exports; the River Plate, 9 per cent, of the imports and 4| per cent, of the exports. In 1876 Brazil exported to Great Britain £5,178,386 worth of goods, and in return imported £5,919,758 worth of British manufactures and other produce. Both these figures show a falling off from the six or seven years. Raw cotton, coffee, and unrefined sugar form the chief Brazilian staple which we import, the quantity of the former (cotton) being in 1876, 476,512 cwt., valued at £1,497,225. The sugar imported in the same year was 1,279,462 cwt., worth £1,220,362. In return Brazil takes from us manufactured cottons, wrought and unwrought iron, linens, woollens, &c. The custom duties, in accordance with the suicidal policy of South America — political economy being an unhealthy plant in the New World — ranges from 40 to 50 per cent. "The practice of sucking the marrow out of the agricultural organisation, by the imposition of enormous export duties, has rendered the accumulation of capital an impossibility.* At the commencement of 1877, according to Martin, there were 1,438 miles of railway open to traffic, and 800 more in course of construction. In the same year the number of miles of telegraph constructed may be given at 3,890. Brazil possesses every climate found within the tropical and temperate zones, the low lying regions being very unhealthy, and utterly unfitted for Europeans, while the higher lying regions are very salubrious. Yet so great is the empire that it is estimated that not over one acre in 200 is under cultivation, and in some of the provinces, especially those near the sea, the amount of grain raised is not sufficient to feed the population. The forest supplies the greatest vegetable riches of the country. Page after page could be filled with the mere names of the economic plants of tbis immense country, and yet the list would not be exhausted. Cocoa grows wild, and is exported to a considerable extent. The Ibiripitanga, or Brazil wood (Ccesalpinia Brasiliensis) , which takes a beautiful polish, and yields a fine dye, is a Government monopoly, and hence known as the pao de rainho — the Queen's wood — has been so recklessly cut in the regions near the coast, that it is not now so abundant as it once was. The trumpet-tree (Cecropia peltata), the tapea, or garlic pear-tree, the laurel, the soap-tree, the various palms, the banana, custard apple, guava, the various kinds of nuts, including the Brazil nut (Bertholletia e.rcelsa), and the well- known indiarubber tree, may be included among the better-known products of the Brazilian forests. The Brazilian indiarubber is derived from a number of species of Siphonia (principally S. elastiea, Brasiliensis, lutea and brevifolia) and probably other trees. Siphonia elastica is the guava tree, S. Brasiliensis the one common in the forests of Para, though on the Upper Amazon the two latter seem to prevail. They are called by the Brazilians seringa • trees— the locality where they grow, a seringal — from the Portuguese word seringa, signifying a syringe, the caoutchouc having been originally used in making these instruments. The trees vary from 25 to 70, or even 100 feet in height, and all yield a milky juice, though * Consular Report, 1874, cited in Martin's "Statesman's Year-Book" (1878). 98 THE SANAUMA TREE OF THE AMAZONIAN FORESTS, BRAZIL. 138 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. the " gum " which is yielded by this juice is not equally good in all of them. In some it is too brittle for economic purposes. The raw seeds are poisonous to man and the lower animals, though the macaws eat them greedily, and they are accounted excellent bait for fish. Long boiling, however, deprives them of their poisonous principles, and renders them palatable. Though M. de la Condamine made us acquainted with "indiarubber" as early as 1736, it is only within the last forty or fifty years that it has become an important element in our arts and manufactures. The white juice is collected by making an incision in the bark of the trunks, and collecting it in little earthenware vessels. The milk is then poured upon moulds, and immediately held over the dense smoke made by burning the nuts of the urucuri palms (Attalea excelsa and Cocos coronata) until it is sufficiently hard to bear another coating, when the process is repeated until the requisite thickness is obtained. The moulds are then removed. This accounts for the blackness of the indiarubber as we see it in commerce; the coagulation is, however, solely produced by the heat of the smoke, and Mr. Cross is of opinion that equally good indiarubber could be produced by putting the milk in shallow vessels, and evaporating the watery particles by the heat of boiling water. Formerly these moulds were — according to Mr. A. Smith — always in the form of shoes or bottles, and hence one of the kinds of caoutchouc is known commercially as bottle-rubber; but they are now frequently shaped something like battledores for folding linen, only thinner. In 1873-74, 14,819,890 lbs. of this "gum," valued at £1,069,477, were exported. In 1875-76, the amount was a trifle less, but as the cultivation of the tree has regularly commenced, we may, in time, expect the amount to be largely increased, and the business put on a less precarious, and altogether a more satisfactory, footing than the present haphazard method of collecting the "gum," and the consequent reckless destruction of large numbers of half-grown trees, without any effort being made to replace them. Mr. Cross, who introduced the caoutchouc-yielding Castilloa tree from the Isthmus of Panama into India, was, in 1876, employed to collect the Siphonia plants of Brazil, with a view to their cultivation in India. He gives an interesting account not only of the plant, but also of the social surroundings of the people in the indiarubber region, which, in connection with the subject of Brazilian products, may be usefully annotated here and there. Para, which is " jumping-off " place to the Seringals, is a city on the southern bank of the Amazon, eighty miles from the ocean, of about 40,000 inhabitants. Everything is dear, and notwithstanding the reputed fertility of the Amazon valley, nearly all the necessaries of life are imported. The butter and fish come from Norway, rice and flour from the United States, while sugar, coffee, and mandioca are brought from the southern ports of Brazil. The import duties — in some cases amounting to 25 per cent. — make everything expensive. The houses are for the most part built of mud, roofed with tiles. " The windows are chiefly formed of wood, hinged at the top, and push out from below, whence the inmates unseen obtain views of the street and passers by. Throughout the course of the day many of the occupants are invariably congregated behind these window lids. The great bulk of the citizens go out more ostentatiously dressed than the people of London, the attire considered essential being a fine black coat and hat, with snow-white ironed vest and trousers, and fancy French boots. Those who do not conform to the style of dress are stared at. Even at the beginning, I did not agree with the fashion, and afterwards was further removed from it, by being BRAZIL: INDIARUBBER AND COFFEE. 139 almost daily bedaubed over with the mud of the gapos [or deep gully-like natural ditcnes, which often penetrate for many miles into the interior of the vast forest region surrounding the city, and are daily filled by the tide]. Coloured females and slaves may be seen stepping into carriages perfectly loaded with large necklaces and glittering ornaments, and even the families of foreign residents are often dressed in the most excessive and extraordinary manner. Merchandise and other effects are removed from one place to another in the old primitive way, thus employing many hands who earn high wages. Emigrant Portuguese, of whom there are about 5,000, are mostly the carriers, boatmen, and shopkeepers of the place. The supply of water for the city is carted through the streets in barrels, and sold at the rate of three halfpence per poto. The poto contains twenty-one English imperial pints. Within twelve hours after being deposited, the water is found to precipitate a greenish substance, amounting to nearly one-fourth the quantity, which is not removed even if filtered through several folds of stout cloth. In the courtyard of the majority of the houses is an open cesspool, which, in such a glowing atmosphere, may assist in developing much sickness. Dysentery, yellow fever, and various other forms of a typhoid character, appear to be permanent, though of late there has been no serious outbreak, and the place is reported more healthy than formerly. Tetanus and other forms of nervous affections are of frequent occurrence, especially among the native-born population." The province of Para, and the islands scattered over the lower portion of the Amazon, are the chief indiarubber collecting localities. The trees, when often tapped, present, up to a height of ten or twelve feet, " one swollen mass of warty protuberances and knots, covered with thick scales and flakes of hard dry bark." The collector makes use of a small axe-like instrument an inch broad, which, at each stroke, cuts through the bark, and into the wood for fully an inch. A layer of wood forms over the injured part at the expense of the bark and general vitality of the tree. " The newly-formed wood is again cut into and splintered, and so the process is repeated on each successive layer, until the trunk becomes merely a mass of twisted, wrinkled wood, with very thin bark. In this condition hardly any milk flows from the cuts, and although for years a few green leaves may continue to sprout from the points of the twigs, yet the tree may be considered as dead, and, in fact, finally withers away. It is therefore the injury done to the wood, and not the overtapping, which lessens the flow of the milk, and ultimately causes the death of the tree. The cuts in the wood are, of course, unnecessary, since the milk is only met with in the bark." * Coffee is another Brazilian staple. At the Philadelphia Exhibition there was an immense display of this in a pavilion made of raw cotton, and in the Paris Exposition there was even a finer show of the different qualities cultivated throughout the empire. The coffee tree seems to have been introduced into Brazil about the middle of the eighteenth century, the seeds having been carried from French Guiana to the Amazon, where the cultivation was only undertaken after the promulgation of the decree of May, 1761, exempting the new product from custom house duties. It was not, however, until 1810 that it got into favour outside the bounds of the country in which it was grown. * Cross: Geographical Magazine, 1877, pp. 133 and 183, where wiU be found the best account I am acquainted with of the method of gathering and preparing the indiarubber milk. See also Markham : Geographical Magazine, 1876, p. 31, for an exhaustive account of the arrangements for introducing the trees into India. 140 THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. This was owing to the superior modes of cultivation introduced by Dr. Lecesne, a planter expelled from San Domingo, who had settled near Rio. At present Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Minas Geraes, and other Brazilian provinces contain immense forests of coffee trees and for the preparation of the product the latest improved machinery is used. Coffee grown on the high lands of Brazil is preferred for its aroma to that grown in the bottom lands. Both the washed and sun-dried coffee of Brazil find ready sale in the commercial cities