^9^3-y HIGHEST NATIVE AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 475 



again find abundant traces of an ancient race of relatively high 

 culture. The ruins are by no means equal to those of the Peten 

 strip, and there appear to be few hieroglyphics. Nevertheless they 

 belong to the same civilization although to a later stage subject to 

 foreign, that is Nahua, influence. At places like Baul and Panta- 

 leon great blocks of hard basalt have been found carved with scenes 

 of sacrifice, or chiseled to represent gigantic faces whose peculiar 

 types of slit nostril, high cheek, or projecting mouth can still be 

 recognized in individual Indians. 



The seaward portion of the Pacific 'belt needs little further com- 

 ment. Beginning with jungle where the modern towns and ancient 

 ruins come to an end, its shoreward portion is covered with dense, 

 low bushes among which short bamboos are often conspicuous. 

 Although dry and parched in the winter season, much of it becomes 

 a vast swamp when the rains swell the mountain streams and cause 

 them to spread out over its flat expanses. Mosquitoes then abound 

 causing fevers which are often of the " pernicious " type accom- 

 panied by hemorrhages of blood producing immediate death. Prac- 

 tically the only inhabitants are a few cattle raisers, who are described 

 as the lowest of the low. In the past, conditions were apparently 

 no better, for we find no trace of ruins here. 



Before we consider the possible causes of the contrast between 

 the past and present, it will perhaps add to the clarity of our ideas 

 if our six belts are arranged in tabular form. 



It is worth while to emphasize the strange contrast between past 

 and present. The belts immediately along the Atlantic and Pacific 

 coasts may be left out of account, since in the past, just as at present, 

 they appear to have been too forested and too feverish for human 

 occupation to any great extent. To-day the other four divisions 

 stand in the following order so far as progress, achievement, and 

 density of population are concerned ; first the highlands, second the 

 dry valleys, third the cofifee belt, fourth the Peten strip. In the past 

 the ruins tell a very different tale,— the Peten strip stood first, then 

 the coffee belt and the dry valleys, and last of all the highlands, the 

 reverse of the present order. To-day, in Central America, the phys- 

 ical conditions under which mankind tends most to increase in 



