32 PHYSICAL FEATURES ETC. 
Salvin then revisited his old quarters at San Gerénimo, and taking his friend Robert 
Owen, the proprietor of the Hacienda, with him, he rode over the high land round 
Quiché and Totonicapam at an altitude cf 10,000 feet. Here the climate is 
temperate, potatoes and wheat are largely grown, and on the uncultivated ground 
oaks, pines, and alders abound. Thence, crossing the Cordillera, he proceeded to 
Quezaltenango, a large town in the ‘ Altos,’ and the capital of a considerable district, 
which he describes (‘Ibis,’ 1865, p. 187) as a corn growing and sheep producing 
highland ; thence to Retalhuleu and on to the port of San José. At Retalhuleu he 
he «d such glowing accounts of the prospect of obtaining a valuable collection of 
sea-birds and fish from the lagoons on the coast that he took a passage in a trading 
barque which was going from San José to Champerico to take ina cargo of coffee and 
sugar, and succeeded in procuring a large number of specimens. 
When Salvin had finished collecting on the lagoons, he made an expedition to a 
belt of tropical forest parallel to the coast, but about twelve miles distant. Here it 
was that he specially remarked the contrast between the birds of the Pacific and 
Atlantic coasts—many of the most familiar birds of the low forest of Vera Paz, the 
Tinamide, Columba nigrirostris, and Ostinops montezuma, being entirely absent, nor 
does one find the genera Rhamphocelus or Calliste, or the beautiful Cotinga amabilis. 
Much of the forest consists of bamboo, with here and there a huge tree standing high 
above it. Between this forest and the coast the soil is comparatively unproductive, 
bearing the stamp of land reclaimed from the ocean at no very distant date. The 
long line of volcanoes suggests a recent upheaval, and the constant discharge of sand 
by every river would tend to advance the coast by slow degrees. This low country is 
very subject to malarial fever—although Salvin escaped, his two attendants contracted 
it. Salvin returned to England soon after this, early in 1863, but ten years later, in 
the autumn of 1873, he paid his fourth and last visit to Guatemala, this time in 
company with his wife; although he added considerably to our collections the route 
taken was much the same as on previous expeditions. 
In this description of Guatemala, it must be remembered that when I visited it over 
fifty years ago there were no railways. ‘There is now a railway from Puerto Barrios 
on the Atlantic Coast up the Motagua Valley to the capital and thence to the Pacific 
coast at San José, with a branch running from Mixtan near Escuintla to Retalhuleu 
and Champerico. The country, therefore, is at the present time readily accessible by 
steamer from Belize and thence from the Atlantic port by train. 
