The Future of Central America 297 
opposite direction. Where all were free to choose, the idle 
would go away from the influences that urged them to 
industry, the sensual from the restraints of morality. Many 
will, however, smile at the objection I have to emigration to 
Nicaragua, when they perceive that it is founded only on the 
ease with which people can live in plenty there. There is 
one form of colonisation that will be successful, and that is 
the gradual moving down southward of the people of the 
United States. When the destiny of Mexico is fulfilled, 
with one stride the Anglo-American will bound to the Isthmus 
of Panama, and Central America will be filled with cattle 
estates, and with coffee, sugar, indigo, cotton, and cacao 
plantations. Railways will then keep up a healthful and 
continuous intercourse with the enterprising North, and the 
sluggard and the sensual will not be able to stand before the 
competition of the vigorous and virtuous. Nor will the 
Anglo-American long be stayed by the Isthmus in his pro- 
gress southward. Unless some such catastrophe happens as 
a few years ago threatened to cover North America with 
standing armies as in Europe, which God forbid, not many 
centuries will roll over before the English language will be 
spoken from the frozen soil of the far north to Tierra del 
Fuego in the south. 
The fine steamer that the enterprise of Mr. Hollenbeck 
had placed on the lake, and which he had named the Elizabeth 
after his amiable wife, had been wrecked a short time before 
I left the country, and Mr. Hollenbeck’s own health had 
greatly suffered by the labours he undertook in endeavouring 
to get the vessel off the sunken rock on which it had struck. 
Notwithstanding this and other misfortunes, enough to try 
a man’s mettle to its foundation, his native pluck carried 
him through all his difficulties, and he was away to the 
States to get new vessels and blow another blast at fortune’s 
iron gates. Whilst I write these last few pages I learn that 
a new steamer ploughs the lake, and that his transit service 
is again in complete working order. Success attend him. 
The result of the wreck of the Elizabeth, so far as I was 
concerned, was that I had to take a passage down the lake 
to San Carlos in a bungo packet, so full as to necessitate 
closer acquaintanceship with many amiable Nicaraguans 
