America. The climate is very healthful and agreeable, and the frequent communication by two lines of steamers. with New Orleans, one line with New York, and another with Liverpool, make it an important business-centre. All the fine coffee from Alta Verapaz and the fruit from the plantations on the Chocon and Polochic is shipped here; and the product might be indefinitely increased. The drawbacks are a bar with only a fathom of water at the mouth of a river navigable otherwise for many miles by the largest steamers, no wharves, little enterprise on the part of the native inhabitants, and a frequent seabreeze in the afternoon, which sometimes makes landing through the rough water on the bar unpleasant. The population is about two thousand, chiefly Caribs; and long inaction and complete lack of enterprise have produced a people poor and careless of riches if obtained at the price of labor. As in all similar places, there is no lack of adventurers of the lowest character.

All this matter is not, however, learned at once, and observation must be depended on rather than report; for the merchants of Livingston see the prospects of their town in very different lights when talking with a mere visitor or with a possible rival in the small but very profitable business. As a stranger, I was told that the place was an el dorado; that limitless crops grew without urging from a soil of unequalled richness; that the climate was salubrious, and eternal summer reigned; that business was brisk, and constantly increasing under wise laws and a favoring government. As a settler, the song was sung to me in a minor key: labor was not to be had; no good lands could be obtained; the steamers were the tyrants of the place, and all earnings were eaten up by

freights. Then there were the warning cries of those unfortunate men who wanted to make money in a newly opened country, but had not the necessary courage and endurance for a pioneer. They had not met success, and they had not grit enough to seek it. Micawbers far from home, they waited for something to turn up.

The process of finding out about the place was not an unpleasant one; it was what we had come for, and we began it the first day at breakfast. While we lodged in our house on the hill, we took our meals-with the exception of early coffee and rolls- - in the town at the house of Señor Castellan; and they were in genuine HispanoAmerican style. Eleven o'clock is the hour for almuerzo, or breakfast, and thus the time for ceasing work and taking the needed midday rest. Late in the afternoon came the comida, or dinner,—differing from breakfast only in the occasional provision of dulces, or sweetmeats. The menu was constant; an oily soup, beans black or white, beef or chicken stew with chillis, fish, bread, and coffee, formed the almost unvarying round. Our waiters were two little boys, one the son of our host, the other his ward. With our coffee we generally had fresh milk; but when the supply of this failed, a can of condensed milk took its place. Not infrequently the sugar also failed; and then one of the boys ran to the nearest store and bought half a pound of a coarse brown kind, and replenished the saucer that did duty as sugar-bowl. No supply of anything was ever kept in the house.

Our dining-room was dark, the only light coming from the open doors at either end. There was but the earth, hard trodden, for the floor, and the furnishing was simple enough, - a rough table and half a dozen rickety