416 



HONDURAS. 



HOUSE-BOATS. 



geles Mining and Smelting Company, Valle 

 de los Angeles, resumed ore-extraction at the 

 Animas mine in August. The works consist 

 of two twenty-ton water-jacket furnaces. The 

 ore is an argentiferous galena. Many other 

 companies have been formed. 



Molybdate of lead, or wulfenite, is of fre- 

 quent occurrence in Honduras, principally in 

 the mining districts of Los Angeles and San 

 Juancito, where limestone and slate occur. 



Commerce. The American trade sho\vs a 

 steady increase, and has developed as follows: 



Condition of the Country. One of the daily 

 papers of Tegucigalpa drew, on August 30, the 

 following sketch of the happy change in the 

 republic under the present administration : 



Formerly the sanguinary ground of battles and pas- 

 sions, we meet to-day in tl'ie new Honduras, a busy 

 camp where foreigners and natives vie with each 

 other to advance this country, in as short a time as 

 possible, to the high standing which Providence and 

 Nature have destined it to occupy in this progressive 

 period. There are over eighteen foreign mining com- 

 panies at work to explore the rich r.nd precious veins 

 of gold and silver which abound in this country; 

 there are a number of improvement companies engaged 

 to cultivate the ground and to navigate the rivers; 

 and there are at present three important railroad lines 

 partly under consideration and corstruction. 



When the subject of a highway to the coast was 

 brought to the attention of Gen. Bogran, he was found 

 equal to the occasion. Simple as this need will appear 

 to the reader, it must be remembered that for three 

 hundred years this country had found in the pack- 

 mule not merely its only means of transportation, but 

 thereby all the requirements of the producer, mer- 

 chant, and householder had been met. " All roads 

 lead to Borne," and all highways started from the 

 Imperial City, and thence continued to the projected 

 point. A Latin race would naturally follow such 

 teachings, and hence Soto had a boulevard road built 

 from Tegucigalpa to the Cerro de Hule (which has 

 an elevation of five thousand feet) toward the Pacific 

 coast, extending it twenty -five miles; but as neither 

 a wagon nor the parts of a wagon could well be car- 

 ried by the pack-mule over the intervening mount- 

 ains between the terminus of this boulevard and the 

 port ; it presented simply an admirable road-bed, sug- 

 gesting possibilities if a connection were made with 

 the coast. Bogran, acting under the advice of Ameri- 

 can engineers, completed a wagon-road from the 

 Pacific road of San Lorenzo to meet this, and connect 

 the capital with the port. A force of 175 men was 

 employed for eleven months to build it around the 

 mountains to the terminus of the macadamized boule- 

 vard, and from Tegucigalpa thence fifty miles to Yus- 

 caran, which an enthusiastic expert has named the 

 '' Comstock of Central America." The work of in- 

 ternal improvements did not stop here. A New 

 York company is dredging the Aguan river and build- 

 ing canals to connect' the Olancho district with the 

 northern ports. One of our great railway systems 

 has recently had a survey made to determine the 

 feasibility of building a railway from Puerto Cortez 

 eastward, near the coast, in the interest of the fruit 

 trade; other important internal improvements are 

 being made in Olancho, and carbonate mines are being 

 opened at La Union. 



A Government decree, dated September 26, 

 amplifies and modifies a good many provisions 

 of the " Codigo de Mineria " at the personal 

 instigation of the President, who, during the 

 summer, paid a visit to the mining regions. 



Education. On September 15 was founded 

 at the capital, Tegucigalpa, in presence of the 

 President of the Republic, the Academy of 

 Science and Literature of Honduras, having 

 Dr. Antonio Ramirez Fontecha for its presi- 

 dent. Premiums of from $1,000 to $100 are 

 to be awarded at the meeting of Sept. 14, 

 1889, to the best works in Spanish on primary 

 instruction, on Central American history from 

 the Conquest to 1842, with special reference 

 to Honduras, and, finally, to a poem in praise 

 of Central Union and the illustrious Gen. 

 Francisco Morazan. 



HOUSE-BOATS. It is not to be denied that 

 the world owes very many of its most health- 

 ful and sensible out-of-door recreations to Eng- 

 land and Englishmen. Even base-ball, now 

 justly regarded as the American national game, 

 is merely a scientific improvement of "round- 

 ers," known probably to English boys centu- 

 ries ago. Canoeing as a civilized recreation 

 probably originated in Canada, but it had to 

 cross the ocean twice before it became firmly 

 established in the United States. In like man- 

 ner, the house-boat has become so thoroughly 

 domesticated that it has ceased to be an ob- 

 ject of curiosity on the little rivers, lakes, est- 

 uaries, and canals of the British Islands. That 

 it is destined to a greater and more glorious 

 career on the infinitely varied coastwise and 

 inland waters of America, may be taken as a 

 foregone conclusion. 



We are not without our house-boats in Amer- 

 ica ; but we have not passed beyond the prac- 

 tical and utilitarian stage. Every raft has its 

 ''head-works, 1 ' rude slianties, usually, where 

 the crew have their bunks and where the cook 

 does his cooking. Oyster-men often keep a 

 house-boat anchored over the beds, for protec- 

 tion or convenience, and floating boat-houses 

 are common wherever boating-clubs exist. But 

 none of these fulfill the idea of a house-boat as 

 developed in England and as presented in Mr. 

 Black's recent novel, " The Strange Advent- 

 ures of a House-boat." Such is the present 

 demand for this type of craft in England that 

 there are in London severnl builders who de- 

 vote themselves almost exclusively to their 

 construction. 



A house-boat is precisely what its name im- 

 plies a house on a boat, or at least on a float ; 

 and just as a house on land may have only one 

 room or a score of rooms, so the house-boat 

 may be merely a narrow cabin with the most 

 compact arrangements for living, eating, and 

 sleeping, or it may be a floating ' ; establish- 

 ment" with half a dozen state-rooms, dining- 

 room, parlor, and quarters for a full corps of 

 servants. 



To the lover of out-door life, the advantages 

 of the house-boat are at once obvious. It can 



