204 MEXICO, CEXTEAL AMERICA, WE^T INDIES. 



the close of the year the outlook was extremely gloomy, and all the Central 

 American states threatened to be involved in a general conflagration. 



The o-reat lens-th itself of Central America, which extends south-eastwards 

 for a distance of about 750 miles, with a comparatively narrow mean breadth, 

 seemed already to point at a future rupture between the various ethnical groups 

 in this region. Here the inhabited zone is even considerably narrower than the 

 strip of land itself. The civilised populations, Spanish or Mestizo, have nearly 

 all settled along the Pacific coast, so that, on the opposite slope, the great fluvial 

 basins of Guitemala, the northern forests of Honduras, the almost unexplored 

 valleys of Mosquitia, are, so to say, so many desert regions, occupied by a few 

 half-aavage scattered tribes. Thus the civilised peoples, those who have con- 

 stituted themselves in republican states, form little more than a slender cordon 

 of towns and villages stretching along the west side of Central America. This 

 ethnical contrast between the two oceanic slopes is in great maasure explained by 

 the physical contrasts of soil and climate. On the Pacific side are found nearly 

 all the more fertile and less humid lands, which offer a more regular alternation 

 between the dry and the rainy seasons. But other causes also tend to the relative 

 depopulation of the Atlantic seaboard. Columbus here first began to kidnap the 

 natives, and his example was followed by the West Indian planters in search of 

 slaves to cultivate their estates. Thus all the lands accessible by sea, or by the 

 rivers, were wasted, and the populations that escaped capture by the slave-hunters 

 took refuge in the remote interior. Then the Spanish settlers were naturally 

 unable to establish factories and develop plantations in a depopulated and unculti- 

 vated region. Nevertheless, they needed, at any cost, fortified stations to main- 

 tain the communications with the mother country ; but when Spanish supremacy 

 in the West Indian waters was supplanted by that of the buccaneers, these posts 

 themselves were often attacked and captured. Thus, of the two Central American 

 seaboards, the eastern, facing towards Europe, was the " dead," the western, 

 skirting the boundless waste of Pacific waters, the " living " coast. 



But the relations have greatly changed since Central America has ceased to 

 be a remote dependency of Spain. In the first place the population has increased 

 more than threefold ; at the census of 177(S the " kingdom " of Guatemala, 

 excluding the province of Chiapas, had a total population of 847,000, which had 

 risen to about a million in 1821, when Guatemala declared its independence of 

 Spain. Since that time the inhabitants of the five republics have more than 

 trebled ; the groups of settlers, formerly isolated, have been gradually brought 

 closer together by the foundation of intermediate colonies, while the Atlantic 

 slope has been partly reclaimed for cultivation, and already possesses its towns and 

 seaports. 



Before the introduction of steam navigation, the communications were rare 

 and uncertain, depending on the seasons and the winds, and even under the most 

 favourable conditions they were always less rapid than at present. The general 

 service of packets plying between the seaports and on both sides, arriving and 

 departing with the regularity of clockwork, has reduced by more than nine-tenths 



