and England. Communication may thus be had with the best markets for all tropical products. The lowlands are amply able to supply New Orleans, New York, and Boston with bananas, plantains, pine-apples, and coconuts, the latter growing most abundantly at Cabo de Tres Puntas on Manabique. The climate is healthful and not too hot, averaging for the year about 80°; and as there is no marked change of season, a perpetual June seems to exist. Capital alone is wanted to develop this Atlantic coast into the great fruit-producing orchard of the United States. Sugar-cane grows rapidly; and so strong is the soil that rattoon crops have been cut for twenty years without replanting, and no diminution of the saccharine yield has been noticed. Sugar can certainly be raised much cheaper here than in Cuba or in the Hawaiian Islands. One day carries the crop to Belize, four days to New Orleans, and eight to Boston or New York. Yet, notwithstanding all these advantages, the Northern farmer wears out his life in the consumptive fields of New England, where his crops grow only four months of the year, instead of settling here, where he can plant any day of the year (except saints' days, unless he employ coolies), and reap a rich harvest in due season. He sometimes goes to Florida, which is neither tropical nor temperate, which is nothing but a raised coral reef with a veneering of soil, and where frosts cut off his crops every few years. We often hear of the extreme unhealthfulness of the tropics; but is it generally known that more persons die of consumption in Massachusetts than of the most dreaded

1 Should the new product, saccharine, meet with favor, the planting of cane will follow the fate of indigo; and coal-tar will supply the sweet things of life as well as the flavors and colors. Coal is "sweetness and light"!

tropical diseases in Central America? The last time an official census was taken, Livingston had a population of a thousand, in round numbers, and the deaths of the year numbered seven, one a centenarian, and two youths who fell from coconut-trees and broke their necks; while in Boston the rate for July, 1885, was 28.1 per thousand.

The objection to being among a strange people and under a foreign government and strange laws may best be met by following me through the country, where my object was to answer these very objections for myself; and if my readers will patiently follow me, I will tell what I saw, and they may form their own opinions.

Paddle and Machete.

CHAPTER III.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT, WESTWARD TO COBAN.

THE

HE last days of October, 1883, promised good weather for the hill-country, and Frank and I again left Livingston in the only way one can leave it, by water. Our route was as before, - up the Rio Dulce; but this time we had no comfortable but heavy "Progreso." We had, however, a better craft for our voyage, a fine native canoa, cut from a single log of a wood they called cedar (which it is not); its length was thirty feet, and its beam five and a half. With two masts and triangular sails, this canoa could show good speed with a fair wind; but we cared little for her sailing qualities on the present voyage. As there were no ribs, and the thwarts were easily removed, we made the after part, which was floored, quite comfortable with a temporary roof, or toldo; our luggage was stowed amidships, while our captain and two men had their quarters forward when not rowing or paddling. We had our coffee-pot (as necessary a travelling companion in Central America as an umbrella in England) and a supply of food for a week; although we hoped our voyage might last less than five days.

The cliffs on the Rio Dulce were as beautiful as ever. Theirs is a beauty which never fades with the fading year; and yet the changes are very marked. I never

saw such a river, - a very Proteus, it presented a new form every time I saw it; and Frank, who is far more familiar with its face, tells me I have never seen it in its glory, which comes in July, when the brilliant orchids are all aglow. Now a cereus with crimson blossoms was prominent; so were the bromeliads, parasites on almost every tree. But among roses I saw the thorn. Our Caribs discovered a huge serpent asleep on a white cliff far above us. Frank, with a laudable blindness to all that was not pleasant, could see nothing but a fallen tree. I saw only a few feet of the head end, which had a diameter of about six inches; and I obstinately refused to fire at the reptile, since he was quite as near as it was desirable to have him, and should my bullet wound but not kill him, it was quite possible that he might wriggle down into the river below. Porpoises were common far up into the Golfete, where they were pursuing the abundant freshwater fish. A light sea-breeze helping us, we anchored for the night far above Cayo Paloma. Our mozo, Santiago, slept on one of the thwarts, which he exactly fitted, being slightly less in stature than the average New Englander.

Our anchor was up betimes; and before six o'clock in the morning we came to San Felipe, -a place we both had great curiosity to see; for in the absence of any definite account of the old Spanish fort, we allowed our imagination to build a very imposing, picturesque, and, withal, strong castle.

We found that Spanish castles in Guatemala were almost as unsubstantial as châteaux en Espagne; and it was some time before we distinguished the Castillo de San Felipe through the morning mist. At the outlet of

the Lago de Izabal the shores approach each other closely, - indeed, the channel is hardly a stone's cast broad; and on the northern point stands the fort built in 1655 to protect the then important commerce of Izabal from the buccaneers. It is well built of round (uncut) stone, and the waves of the lago dash against the walls, which are gradually yielding to the insinuating roots of many plants, -even a delicate blue commelyna joining in the attack that the seventeenth-century pirates began in vain. The van of this vegetable scaling-party was led by a fine papaya (Carica papaya), which now towered far above the walls with its head of ornamental leaves, but which perished soon after; and we saw only the bare stem on our return, three months later.

Passing this mediæval ruin, we came to a slight wharf of stakes, where we had to undergo a rigid inspection by the guarda, who insisted on opening our trunks, in spite of a slight shower that was wetting us. But we submitted with better grace on reflecting how little amusement of any sort the custom-house men could have in this sleepy looking place; and when the nonsense was over we sent Santiago with the coffee-pot, which he was told to have boiled over somebody's fire. He was also told to get all the food he could find; and this useless wretch brought back, as the total result of his foraging, three eggs! Coconut-trees and goyavas were abundant, but no fruit could be found. After this very frugal breakfast, — in which we did not ask Santiago to join, we walked to the little Comandancia; but the officials were not visible,

1 Its armament was approved by the Royal Seal, Nov. 7, 1658, and an order of Feb. 26, 1687, provided for its complete repair. The plan is from a sketch by F. E. Blaisdell.