370 REYIEWS — NOTTS ON CENTRAL AMERICA. 



destiny of their populations. The nature and extent of this influence receives a strik- 

 ing illustration both in the past and the present condition of Central America, At 

 the period of the discovery, it was found in the occupation of two families of men, 

 presenting in respect to each other the strongest points of contrast. Upon the 

 high plateaus of the interior of the country, and upon the Pacific declivity of the 

 continent, where the rains are comparatively light, the country open, and the cli- 

 mate relatively cool and salubrious, were found great and populous nations, far ad- 

 vanced in civilization, and maintaining a systematized religious and civil organiza- 

 tion. Upon the Atlantic declivity, on the other hand, among dense forests, 

 nourished by constant rains into rank vigor, on low coasts, where marshes and 

 lagoons, sweltering under a fierce sun, generated deadly miasmatic damps, were 

 found savage tribe3 of men, without fixed abodes, living upon the natural fruits of 

 the earth, and tae precarious supplies of fishing and the chase, without religion, 

 and with scarcely a semblance of social or political establishments. 



It is impossible to resist the conviction that the contrasting conditions of these 

 two great families were principally due to the equally contrasting physical condi- 

 tions of their respective countries. With the primitive dweller on the Atlantic 

 declivity of Central America, no considerable advance, beyond the rudest habits of 

 iife, was possible. He was powerless against the exuberant vitality of savage na- 

 ture, which even the civilized man, with all the appliances that intelligence has 

 gradually called to his aid, is unable to subdue, and which still retains its ancient 

 dominion over the broad alluvions, both of Central and South America. His means 

 of sustenance were too few and too precarious to admit of his making permanent 

 establishments, which, in turn, would involve an adjustment of the relations of men 

 and the organization of society. He was therefore a hunter from necessity, noma- 

 dic in his habits, and obliged to dispute his life with men who, like himself, were 

 scarcely less savage than the beasts of the forests. 



Civilization could never have been developed under such adverse conditions. It 

 could only originate where favorable physical circumstances afforded to man some 

 relief from the pressure of immediate and ever recurring wants — where a genial 

 climate, and an ea=ily-cultivated soil, bDuntiful in indigenous fruits, would enable 

 him not only to make his permanent abode, but to devote a portion of his time to 

 the improvements of his superior nature. 



Such were the circumstances which surrounded the dweller on the high plains of 

 Honduras and Guatemala. There, wide and fertile savannas invited to agricul- 

 ture, and yielded to the rudest implements of cultivation an ample harvest. The 

 maize, that great support of aboriginal civilization in America, was probably indige- 

 nous there, and was thence carried northward over Mexico and the Floridas by 

 the various families who established themselves in those regions, and whose 

 languages and traditions point to the plateaus of Guatemala a3 their original seat. 



The natural conditions which favored the development of mankind in one portion 

 of Central America, and rigidly suppressed it in another, are still active and po- 

 tential. The Spaniards stopped not to maintain an unequal struggle against savage 

 nature on the Atlantic slope of the continent, but established themselves upon the 

 dryer, more salubrious, and more genial Pacific declivity. The Mosquito Shore 

 still remains the haunt of savages, whom three hundred years of contact with civi- 

 lization have failed to improve; while the State of San Salvador sustains a popula- 

 tion twice as great in proportion to its area as any other equal extent of Spanish 

 America, and relatively as great as that of New England itself. 



