472 HUNTINGTON— GUATEMALA AND THE [April i8, 



who for six or seven years spent a large part of his time in travehng 

 through Peten in search of mahogany, probably knows that province 

 as thoroughly as any one. He thinks that the population does not 

 exceed 10,000, and that at least 95 per cent, of it consists of cattle 

 raisers, mahogany cutters and gum gatherers. Nowhere has he seen 

 a village of more than a hut or two in the genuine forest, and no- 

 where do people practice any real agriculture in the forest as opposed 

 to the jungle. South of Peten, along the line of the railroad from 

 Puerto Barrios to Guatemala, for sixty miles from the Atlantic 

 coast until one comes to the poor little village of Los Amates, there 

 would not be a single inhabited place were it not for the railway 

 itself and the banana plantations of the United Fruit Company. Los 

 Amates lies on the edge of the forest where it breaks down into 

 big jungle. 



Whatever may be the exact figures as to population it is evident 

 that heavy rains, dense vegetation, and malignant fevers to-day render 

 the Peten strip of the Atlantic forest almost uninhabitable. Yet in 

 the past this was by no means the case. Practically all of the great 

 Maya ruins outside of Yucatan lie in this strip or in its northern 

 and northwestern continuation in the Mexican provinces of Chiapas, 

 Tabasco and Campeche. Copan, one of the most remarkable of the 

 ancient cities, lies on its edge, although not actually in it; Quirigua 

 lies within it, although only a few miles from the border ; and Seibal, 

 Tikal, and a score of others as far as Palenque in the north, lie well 

 within its dense jungle and forests. These places were obviously 

 towns of importance, such as grow up in interior, agricultural dis- 

 tricts far from important lines of communication only when there is 

 a considerable population round about. How dense the former 

 population may have been we cannot estimate, for the cover of 

 vegetation is so thick that we have no idea of the exact number of 

 ruins. It is scarcely an exaggeration, however, to say that for every 

 family now supported by ordinary agriculture, there was probably a 

 village or hamlet, in the days of the Mayas, and for every modern 

 village a city. 



Turning now to the relatively dry portion of Guatemala, the 

 second of our three divisions, we find it divided into arid bush 



