380 



GUATEMALA. 



GUEROKNIERE, DE LA. 



Public instruction still continues to be ener- 

 getically * extended; schools are fast multiply- 

 ing in every portion of the republic ; and 

 neither labor nor expense is spared in remov- 

 ing any obstacles which may yet stand in the 

 way of the adequate education of the masses. 



It has already been stated that Solola has 

 35 public schools ; it may here be added that 

 Zacatepeque possesses 37 primary schools, and 

 one night-school for adults, the aggregate at- 

 tendance at all of them being 1,910. Vera 

 Paz boasts of 34 schools, 7 of which are for 

 females; and Santa Rosa has no less than 56, 

 of which number 8 are for females. The total 

 number of schools in the republic at the end 

 of 1874 was 541, of which 183 were for fe- 

 males ; and the aggregate attendance in both 

 was 6,312. The reorganization of the univer- 

 sity was seriously talked of. 



Agriculture, in the mean time, participates in 

 the general prosperity. Coffee and sugar plan- 

 tations are becoming more numerous from 

 year to year, and the crops of both of those 

 commodities have doubled within the last few 

 years. 



The production of rice having been limited, 

 owing to the lack of suitable machinery for 

 cleaning it, four large machines have been in- 

 troduced at Government expense. 



Among the many articles sent to the Chilian 

 Exposition were cotton, sarsaparilla, vanilla, 

 hats, beer, and stuifed birds. Cotton, though 

 it grows well in the coast-regions, especially on 

 the Atlantic side, is not yet cultivated in suf- 

 ficient quantities for export ; but the home con- 

 sumption is pretty fairly supplied. The sar- 

 saparilla-plant abounds on the banks of the 

 Polochique and Motagua, and is the object of 

 an active trade through all the northern ports, 

 though the commodity generally goes in com- 

 merce under the name of Honduras. No small 

 proportion of the vanilla is of spontaneous 

 production, the beans being gathered from 

 wild plants by the Indians in Vera Paz, who 

 use it largely in beverages, the common other 

 ingredients of which are chocolate and pimen- 

 to. Sulphur is, of course, very plentiful in the 

 immediate neighborhood of all the extinct 

 volcanoes, and yet it is little used in the repub- 

 lic and still less exported. Some four or five 

 species of palm-leaf are used in the manufact- 

 ure of hats. 



The manufacture of beer has become an in- 

 dustry of considerable importance ; the English 

 system of brewing has in general been adopted ; 

 and the beverage is reported to be productive 

 of excellent effects, hygienic and moral, in the 

 people. 



The grapevine finds in many parts of the 

 country a genial soil ; and large vineyards are 

 in process of plantation with shoots imported 

 from California. The algalia-plant (Hibiscus 

 Abel moschus), the seeds of which are so exten- 

 sively used by French perfumers, is cultivated 

 in Esquintla ; and the seeds bring, in the port 

 of San Jose", $10 per quintal (100 Ibs.) the 



odor of the seeds bears some analogy to that 

 of civet. 



Since the commencement of the importation 

 of horses from Chili and the United States, 

 the prices of horses have been raised to a 

 standard hitherto unknown in Central Amer- 

 ica. A few years ago $100 was the highest 

 price paid for any horse ; and nowadays horses 

 commanding from $500 to $1,500 are quite 

 common. 



A decree having been issued on April 6th, 

 determining the recognition of the " Cuban 

 Republic " as a nation, in which Guatemala 

 had done nothing more than had already been 

 done by the other Spanish-American republics, 

 a special envoy arrived at the capital from the 

 Spanish Captain-General at Havana, demand- 

 ing that the decree be immediately revoked. 

 There was a rumor that General Barrios's gov- 

 ernment had so far yielded as to dispatch an 

 envoy to the court of Madrid to treat the ques- 

 tion in a manner at once satisfactory and hon- 

 orable to both nations. 



For the initiatory steps taken by Guatemala 

 toward the reestablishment of the Central 

 American Confederation, see CENTRAL AMERICA 

 in this volume. In addition to the informa- 

 tion there to be found, it is only necessary here 

 to say that the plenipotentiaries from the five 

 republics were to meet in Guatemala city on 

 January 15, 1876, for the purpose of deliber- 

 ating on the subject of the proposed union. 



President Barrios decided to signalize the 

 celebration of the fifty-fourth anniversary of 

 the independence of Central America (Sep- 

 tember 15th) by remitting one-fourth of the 

 punishment to which prisoners of both sexes 

 had been judicially condemned. 



GUfiRANGER, DOM PROSPER, a French 

 Benedictine monk, born at Mans in 1806 ; died 

 January 3, 1875. He was destined at an early 

 age for the Church, and entered in 1830 the 

 Benedictine Abbey at Solesmes, of which he 

 became the abbot and historian. He wrote 

 " Institutions liturgiques " (2 vols., 1840-'42), 

 " 1'Annee liturgique " (6 vols., 1842-1859), 

 " Memoire sur la Question de Flmmaculee Con- 

 ception de la Vierge" (1850), "Histoire de 

 Sainte-Cecile " (1853), and other theological 

 works. Gu6ranger regarded it as the aim of 

 his life to restore the literary reputation of the 

 Benedictine order in France. He was, how- 

 ever, unlike many of the great Benedictine 

 scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries, a decided opponent of the peculiari- 

 ties of the Gallican Church, and made incessant 

 effort to replace the Gallican liturgies in the 

 French dioceses by the Roman. This led to 

 an animated controversy with M. Guerard, 

 who sharplyjittacked Gueranger in his BiUio- 

 tJieque de VEcole des Chartes. 



GUllROKNTfiRE, VISCOUNT Louis firaarsi 

 ARTHUR DUBREUIL HELION, DE LA, a French 

 writer and politician, born in Limoges in 1816 ; 

 died December 23, 1875. He went to Paris 

 quite young, where he formed an intimate 



