I9I3-] HIGHEST NATIVE AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 471 



Only some powerful stimulus, like the demand of the United States 

 for fruit, could cause such plantations to arise. The strictest super- 

 vision is necessary in order that the bushes may be cut every three 

 months, for in a year the native vegetation grows ten feet or so, 

 and if left to itself would soon choke the banana plants. Still more 

 unremitting vigilance is necessary to keep both the white men and 

 the natives in health. From the wages of every employee, whether 

 he receive fifty cents or fifty dollars per day, the Company takes two 

 per cent, to pay for sanitary measures. Every plantation has its 

 doctor and dispensary, and natives and foreigners are continually 

 dosed with quinine. Yet even so, at certain seasons of the year, a 

 single train may carry a score of staggering fever patients, the 

 present hospitals are wholly inadequate, and in 19 13 the company 

 was erecting a new hospital at a cost of $125,000. Mr. Victor 'M. 

 Cutter, manager of the Guatemala division of the United Fruit 

 Company, states that about ninety per cent, of the people in his dis- 

 trict, both natives and whites, suffer from malaria and its sequelae. 

 In spite of all precautions about twenty per cent, have the fever in 

 a serious form. 



In the entire Peten strip of the Atlantic forest, from Copan on 

 the south up through Ouirigua, the lake of Izobal and the province 

 of Peten, it is probable that the total population does not exceed 

 20.000 in an area of nearly 15,000 square miles. If the cattle- 

 raisers, mahogany cutters, gum gatherers, and banana raisers be 

 excluded, and if we include only the people who procure a living 

 in ways possible before the coming of the white man, the population 

 is reduced to probably less than ten per cent, of the figures given, or 

 only one person for seven square miles. Of course these figures 

 are a mere approximation ; there is no such thing as a census, for 

 much of the country is still unexplored, and the wild Indian tribes 

 practically ignore the Guatemalan supremacy. For day after day, 

 however, the traveler finds no inhabitants, and place after place 

 which appears on the map as a village proves to have only two or 

 three houses or to be merely an abandoned hut. Roads and even 

 trails are almost non-existent, and in most places the machete must 

 constantly be used to open up a pathway. Mr. Frank Blanceneaux, 



