HONDURAS. 597 



HONDURAS. 



CATTLE IN HONDURAS. 



REPORT BY CONSUL HERRING OF TEGUCIGALPA. 

 PASTURE LANDS OF HONDURAS. 



Large herds of cattle are owned in the departments of Ste. Barbara, 

 Comayagua, and Tegucigalpa, but the largest are held in the depart- 

 ments of Olancho, Gracias, Yoro, and Colon. 



Much of the country of Ste. Barbara presents a surface very uneven, 

 but the whole of it is covered, even the steep rounded hills from top to 

 bottom, with a living verdure, kept fresh and perennial by the mists 

 which hang about the summits, or condense into showers. In the val- 

 leys nearly every square league is abundantly watered by pure limpid 

 streams, swift and cool and healthy for cattle. Pine trees scattered 

 over the mountain sides afford all the shade that is needed, and along 

 the water-courses, palms, plantains, bananas, mangoes, and wild figs, 

 with many other plants and trees, grow most luxuriantly. Cattle eat 

 eagerly and fatten quickly on the leaves and tender twigs of the wild fig. 



In the departments of Tegucigalpa and Comayagua are a few valleys 

 of large size, oue at the city of Comayagua, which has been cultivated 

 for centuries, and was at one time a well irrigated and productive re- 

 gion, where sugar-cane, cotton, maize, rice, and fruits were grown in 

 abundance, but the irrigating ditches have been neglected and the fields 

 have become wastes, whereon the thorny cactus blossoms undisturbed. 

 In the dry seasons the plain of Comayagua resembles certain parts of 

 the Indian Territory, or of Colorado. The soil is composed of washings 

 from the volcanic hills surrounding this great valley, and of ashes from 

 the volcanoes. It is doubtless rich in the mineral elements required for 

 the growth of vegetation, and needs nothing more than water and cul- 

 tivation to make it produce an abundance of food for man. Now, the 

 grass is scant, dead and brown, yet the live stock crop it freely,' and 

 seem to find in it ample nourishment to sustain life without loss of flesh. 



The departments of Tegucigalpa, Choluteca, and La Paz are on the 

 arid slope of the Pacific. Here but little rain falls, and the pasturage 

 is, consequently, not so good as it is on the Atlantic Slope, where the 

 winds, laden with moisture from the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, 

 are forced upward to a higher and cooler altitude and deposit their bur- 

 den in frequent showers. On the Western Cordilleras the rains come 

 from the winds that blow at certain seasons from the Pacific, and when 

 these rains fall vegetation springs up in most luxuriant profusion over 

 all these hills and in all these innumerable valleys, and every rod of 

 pasture is clothed with grass, fresh and nutritious, upon which cattle 

 quickly regain the flesh lost during the drought. When a long period 

 passes without rain, as has occured in this region, stock suffer greatly, 

 and sometimes have been known to starve. 



The departments of Olancho, Yoro, and Gracias, surpass all others as 

 grazing regions, as those who have seen them readily concede. These 



