EIVEES OF GUATEMALA. 213 



del Mico, or " Monkey Range," it reaches the coast between the E,io Golfete and 

 St. Thomas's Bay, where it terminates in the Cerro de San Gil, a conic mountain 

 said b}' the natives to be a volcano. At the point where it is crossed by the main 

 route, about 60 miles from its eastern extremity, the Minas Range is about 3,000 

 feet high. The ridge running north of the Rio Polochic takes the name of Sierra 

 Cahabon in the province of Alta Vera Paz. Towards its eastern extremity the 

 Sierra de Santa Cruz, as it is here called, develops the headland which separates 

 the Rio Golfete from Amatique Bay. 



In the north of Guatemala the last great chain is the Chama, which trends 

 north-eastwards round the sources of the Rio de la Pasion. Towards the east it is 

 connected by a few low ridges with the Cockscomb Mountains in British Honduras. 

 The passes over this sierra, which have been traversed by few explorers, are 

 extremely rugged and difficult, not so much because of their elevation as of the 

 vertical disposition of the rocky crests. North of the Sierra de Chama stretch the 

 savannas, which are continued northwards iu the direction of Yucatan. But 

 these plains are dotted over with isolated hills, for the most part wooded, rising 

 like verdant islands in the midst of a verdant sea. 



Speaking generally, the southern and central parts of Guatemala are almost 

 entirely covered with pumice in the form of tufa. The granites, mica schists and 

 porphyries are only seen here and there, on the more elevated parts of the plateaux 

 and mountains, or in the depressions eroded by running waters. The quantity 

 of pumice ejected by the volcanoes was prodigious, the deposits accumulated in 

 every part of the country having a thickness of 150 and even 200 yards. There 

 exists scarcely a single valley which has not been partly filled in, or a plateau that 

 has not been levelled by these deposits. 



On the masses of pumice lies a layer of yellowish clay, with a mean thickness 

 of twelve or fifteen feet, which has probably been formed by the surface decomposi- 

 tion of the underlying rocks. It is in these clays and in the pumice immediately 

 below them that are found from time to time the remains of mastodons and of 

 Elephas Colonibl, animals which lived during quaternary times. Hence this was 

 the e^och during which occurred the prodigious eruptions of the Guatemalan 

 volcanoes. 



Rivers and Lakes. 



The rainfall is sufficiently abundant in Guatemala to feed a considerable 

 number of watercourses. But rivers in the strict sense of the term could scarcely 

 be developed except on the Atlantic slope, where the disposition of the land and its 

 gradual incline afforded space for the running waters to ramify in extensive fluvial 

 systems. On the Pacific side, where the escarpments of the plateaux fall abruptly 

 seawards, the torrents descend rapidly through the parallel ravines furrowing the 

 flanks of the mountains. Almost waterless during the dry season, but very copious 

 in winter, these streams for the most part discharge into the coast lagoons. In 

 fact, they do not conmiunicate at once with the sea, from which they are separated 

 by sandy strips several miles long, and the seaward channels themselves are often 



