160 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



dobe houses for lighting up the one living room, the door and windows of 

 which are closed for the night. The windows are mere openings in the 

 wall, and there is never any glass or frame. Sometimes there is a' shutter. 

 When night comes, the door is closed and the family retires early, to lie 

 on the beds made of a wooden frame with a cowhide tacked over it. There 

 they all smoke homemade cigarettes and talk. 



"Once an Indian, always an Indian," applies in this country as well as 

 our own. Natives of the better class who come to this country for an 

 education go back home and fall into the same old rut. It is natural 

 to suppose that they would carry home with them some new ideas of 

 living, especially something of sanitation, but a native who graduates 

 from our universities can be found at his old home, doing things in the 

 same old way — doing without water closets, packing water from the stream 

 to the house, and never bathing except in the stream near the town he 

 lives in. Hogs, dogs, chickens and cats all swarm into the house and un- 

 der the table. They are the scavengers of the home as well as of the 

 town. 



This whole situation is well described in a historical sketch written 

 years ago by a former American consul to Central America. He says: 

 "The narrow colonial system of Spain had the effect of keeping her Ameri- 

 can possessions, and especially Central America, entirely excluded from 

 intercourse with the rest of the world. None of the improvements in the 

 arts or in agriculture, which elsewhere were effecting gradual but total 

 revolutions in the industries of nations, were permitted to reach that 

 country. Trade was monopolized by the crown, which equally undertook 

 to regulate the amount of production of the various articles for which 

 these colonies were distinguished. A single example will illustrate the 

 extent to which this jealous and oppressive policy was carried. Early in 

 the eighteenth century the cultivation of grapes had been introduced upon 

 the northern coast of Honduras with so much success and promise as to 

 attract the attention of the government of Spain, and to lead it to fear 

 that the colony might ultimately come to rival the mother country in the 

 production of wine. Orders were consequently issued to the officers of 

 the crown to destroy the vines, which orders were carried out. Since that 

 period no further attempt has been made to introduce the grape, but no 

 doubt exists of the fact that it might be produced in great abundance and 

 become an element of wealth to the state." 



"The internal trouble which followed the independence of the country 

 in 1821 has left it no opportunity to repair the errors of the previous 

 colonial system, which had so frequently suppressed its industry and pre- 

 vented the development of its resources. These commotions deterred for- 

 eign enterprise from taking that direction, while they equally debarred 

 the people themselves from making an effectual use of the limited means 

 at their command for their own improvement. 



"A great, and until remedied an ineuperable, obstacle to the development 

 of Honduras, is the want of adequate means of internal communication. 

 The roads, so-called, are mere mule-paths, often conducted to avoid large 

 and rapid streams, over the steepest and roughest mountains, where in 



