56 CENTRAL AMERICA. 



invincible idleness, and the vacillation of the 

 government, that I believe it will be long be- 

 fore anybody will be found to advance capital 

 for prosecuting such a forlorn undertaking: 

 and certainly not before civilization has made 

 some progress, not in the wild forest and 

 mountain, but in the cities and towns of a 

 people who consider themselves in a forward 

 rank of the best specimens of humanity, but 

 who are in reality as inferior to the wild but 

 generally honest son of the forest as the 

 " Gamin de Paris" is to the true peasant of 

 La Vendee. 



I shall now proceed to other subjects, 

 which, I trust, will prove more amusing to 

 some of my readers than the dryer ones which 

 have naturally preceded them ; I mean de- 

 scriptions of the haunts, habits, and modes of 

 killing or hunting the wild beasts of all sorts 

 which surrounded us on every side. Many 

 miles from any other hut, and more than 

 twenty from the nearest small village, I had 

 opportunities of making observations in the 

 wild forest that seldom fall to the lot of an 

 Englishman, and that, too, during a space of 

 two years. I had generally two Indians in 

 the smaller hut, and one slept in a corner of 

 my large one, which, being thirty-six feet by 



