206 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



and otlier points. Since the Central American states have asserted their inde- 

 pendence such projects have followed rapidly one on the other, all based on 

 individual or collective surveys, and promoted by costly expeditions, official 

 encourao-ement and concessions, lastly even by colossal operations actually begun 

 and actively prosecuted for years. The annals of Central America record no less 

 than a hundred plans and schemes for cutting the isthmuses since the year 1825, 

 when the Mexican Congress had the Tehuantepec region again surveyed, and 

 more accurate information brought to bear on the project brought forward by 

 Orbeo-ozo in 1771. Panama, like Constantinople and Alexandria, lies at a point 

 of paramount importance for the growing commerce of the world ; if before the 

 era of universal peace the leading nations agree to proclaim the neutralisation 

 of certain places essential to the well-being of the human race, assuredly the 

 American isthmuses will be included in the category of such territories. 



II. — Guatemala. 



This republic is by far the most important of the five Central American states, 

 for it contains nearly one-half of their collective population. Like its Mexican 

 neighbour, it still bears a name of Aztec origin, the term Guatemala (Quauh- 

 temallan), according to some interpreters, meaning " Eagle Land," though 

 a less poetic etymology gives it the signification of " Land of the Wooden 

 Piles." Others again write, U-ha-tez-ma-la, a group of syllables which would 

 mean, " Mountain vomiting water," the whole region being so named in reference 

 to the Agua (" AVater ") volcano, one of its loftiest cones. 



Guatemala corresponds very nearly to the two former Spanish provinces of 

 Quezaltenango and Guatemala, though the frontiers have been shifted in many 

 places, while in others they were never accurately determined. Those at last 

 officially adopted coincide neither with the natural geographical divisions nor 

 with the distribution of the ethnical groups. Thus the whole of Soconusco with 

 a part of Chiapas would seem properly to belong to Guatemala, of which they 

 form an orographic extension. On the other hand Peten, inhabited, like Yucatan, 

 by Mayas, and also resembling that region in the nature of its soil and products, 

 should form a political dependency of that region rather than of Guatemala, 

 from which it is separated by a steep mountain range. Towards British Honduras 

 the frontier has been drawn by a straight line across mountains and vallej's, from 

 one torrent to another, the political border coinciding wàth the natural features 

 only in the district where it follows the Sarstun river to its mouth in Amatique 

 Bay. Eastwards the territory of the republic is limited by a meandering line, 

 which runs north-east and south-west from the mouth of the Rio Tinto on the 

 Atlantic to that of the Rio Paza on the Pacific. This line follows the crests of 

 the hills throughout a great part of its course, though here and there the boundary 

 is purely conventional. Taken as a whole Guatemala, excluding the northern 

 plains, has the form of a triangle with its base on the Pacific and its apex 

 projecting towards Honduras Bay. 



