222 THE CLIMATIC FACTOR AS ILLUSTRATED IN ARID AMERICA. 



This does not end the difficulties of agriculture in the dense jungle. The first corn 

 crop from a given clearing is usually very abundant, but the second, if it follow immediately 

 after the first, is poor, so poor that it is scarcely worth raising. Perhaps this is because 

 the abundant vegetation and constant rains cause many important chemical ingredients 

 to be leached quickly from the soil, or perhaps for some other cause. At any rate the 

 regular custom is to cultivate a given tract one year, let the bushes grow four years, till 

 they are perhaps 15 to 20 feet high, and in the fifth year cut, burn, and plant again. Thus 

 agriculture in the dense jungle is not only precarious, but it is forced to be extensive and 

 superficial rather than intensive and careful; therefore it does little to stimulate progress. 

 In the drier regions, whether high or low, the soil is not so quickly exhausted, especially if 

 the absence of roots or other conditions make it possible to turn up new soil by plowing or 

 otherwise. The crops are by no means so abundant as in the wetter places, but the same 

 land can lie cultivated year after year with only short periods of rest. The cultivator 

 must work harder than in the wet places, but his success is less precarious, the efforts of 

 one year have a direct bearing on succeeding years, and permanent industry is encouraged. 



Still another disadvantage of the low, wet regions needs to be briefly discussed. It is 

 hard for mankind to get a living under any circumstances in the genuine tropical forest, 

 and he must work at least moderatelj' for one in the dry parts of tropical lands. In the 

 big jungle, however, game is abundant, wild fruits ripen at almost all seasons, a few banana 

 plants and palm trees will almost support a family, and if a corn crop is obtained at all, 

 the return is large in proportion to the labor. Thus, so long as the population is not too 

 dense, life is easy and there is little stimulus to effort. Under such conditions the state of 

 human culture is not likelj' to improve, for only by a revolutionary access of skill and 

 industry would it be possible to change from the easy, hand-to-mouth life of the present 

 to the intensive, industrious life which seems to be a necessary condition where civilization 

 makes genuine progress. 



Thus far in this chapter we have seen that the distribution of population in Guatemala 

 to-day is very different from what it was in the past. We have further seen that the physi- 

 cal conditions which make for density of population and increase of civilization are dis- 

 tributed in a peculiar fashion. They prevail in the highlands, where there is no evidence 

 that the civilization of the past was any higher than that of the present; and do not prevail 

 in the lowlands, where there is clear evidence of the existence for many centuries of a 

 cixalization far in advance of that of to-day. Moreover, the ancient civihzation did not 

 come to the country full-fledged, as did that of Spain in later times. It did not do its 

 finest work at once and then decline, as did that of the Spaniards after they had built their 

 massive old churches. On the contrary, it ai:)parently arose where we find its ruins, and 

 it endured for centuries before it decayed. The most fundamental fact is not the great 

 change which has taken place in the character of the Maya race. Nor is it the fall of Maya 

 civilization, whether from internal decay or external attack. It is merely the simple 

 fact that the highest native American civilization grew up in one of the worst physical 

 envh-oiunents of the whole western hemisphere. Close at hand, in the Guatemalan high- 

 lands on one side, and in the dry strip of northern Yucatan on the other, far more favorable 

 environments were occupied by closely allied branches of the same race, but the greatest 

 civilization grew up in the densely forested, highly feverish, and almost untillable lowlands 

 of Peten and eastern Guatemala. 



The explanation of this pecuHar state of affairs appears to lie in one or all of three things: 

 fu-st, the character of the Maya race; second, the relative abundance and virulence of various 

 diseases; and third, the nature of the climate and its effect on forests, diseases, and agri- 

 culture. It is possible to adopt the usual unexpressed assumption of historians and to 

 suppose that the original Mayas were stronger and more virile than any other race 

 which has entered the torrid zone, and that because of some unexplained stimulus, whose 



