480 HUNTINGTON— GUATEMALA AND THE [April i8, 



peculiar agricultural conditions. In the great forest such as that of 

 Peten, where rain falls at all seasons, the making of clearings is 

 practically impossible. In the dense jungle, such as that at an eleva- 

 tion of one to two thousand feet in the Pacific cofifee belt of Guate- 

 mala, this is usually but not always possible. It depends on the 

 length and character of the dry season in February, March, and 

 April. Two or three weeks of steady sunshine are said to suffice 

 to prepare the cut bushes and smaller branches of the trees for 

 burning, but sometimes there is scarcely a rainless week during the 

 whole year. This happened in 1913. People, who chanced to do 

 their cutting early, burned their fields and were able to plant a corn 

 crop, but many cut too late and failed. It is easy to say that every- 

 one ought to cut and burn early, but in the first place the lethargy 

 of the torrid zone leads people to put things off till the last moment. 

 In the second place, if the land is burned over too early, weeds and 

 bushes will sprout and grow to a height of a foot or two before 

 it is time to plant the corn. Hence a second clearing will be neces- 

 sary, and if a second burning is impossible the corn will be at a 

 disadvantage. 



This does not end the difficulties of agriculture in the dense 

 jungle. Thanks to the abundant vegetation and constant rains or 

 to the hot sun which causes rapid decomposition, or to some other 

 unknown cause, many important chemical ingredients are quickly 

 leached from the soil. Hence while the first corn crop is usually very 

 abundant, the second, if it follows immediately after the first, is poor, 

 so poor that it is scarcely worth raising. The regular custom is to 

 cultivate a given tract one year, let the bushes grow four years, till 

 they are perhaps fifteen or twenty feet high, and in the fifth year 

 cut, burn, and plant again. Thus agriculture in the dense jungle 

 is not only precarious, but it is forced to be extensive and super- 

 ficial rather than intensive and careful. Therefore it does little to 

 stimulate progress. In the drier regions, w^hether high or low. the 

 soil is not so quickly exhausted, especially if the absence of roots or 

 other conditions make it possible to turn up new soil by ploughing 

 or otherwise. The crops are by no means so abundant as in the 

 wetter places, but the same land can be cultivated year after year 



