390 Guatemala Forests. 
curious tree looking like a gigantic laurel bush, much twisted, 
gnarled and recumbent, with a smooth red bark, peeling off like 
the buttonwood. 
Another tree of limited range is the Pinabete, a spruce. I 
have noticed it on the Pacific side, at elevations of 9000 feet. 
It has given its name, Pinabete, to a range of mountains on which 
it is common. 
At the upper limit of the temperate belt begins the occurrence 
of the cedar, or cypress, a lofty tree of large diameter, forming an 
extensive forest on the table land of Serchil, east of the volcano 
Zajumulco. In single trees and groups it occurs on many moun- 
tains, and especially in the great steep mountain ravines. This 
tree is much used by the natives in their constructions, being 80 
easily worked. It is especially used for making planks. These 
are made by edging a section of a trunk of proper length on oppo- 
site sides until the finished plank remains. The trees are of such 
diameter that a single width serves for benches, tables and doors. 
A cedar, perhaps a different species, grows in the hot country, 
and is used to make cayukas, or dug-out canoes, and oars. They 
are light and durable, and large trunks make canoes that carry 
many people or heavy loads of corn or salt, perhaps four or five 
tons. They are very sea-worthy, I have safely crossed a lake in 
one in a storm when the waves ran three to four feet high. 
The most characteristic tree of Guatemala is one whose name or 
botanical relations I have not learned. It is the tree that densely 
covers all the higher summits. In the case of pines, cedars an 
oaks, it is a question whether the forest is primeval, or has grown 
upon ground once cleared and cultivated, but these summit forests 
have clearly never been touched by man, and in the deep recesses of 
these woods among mossy rocks, in dripping mists and -shut in 
from the sun one can feel that he is where no human being has 
ever been before. These trees have large and lofty bare trunks, in 
appearance like our white oak, but the tops, from the small, glossy 
green leaves and the dense spray look like the box, and we call it 
the “box-tree.? Where these forests occur I have never found 
any ruins, and I am sure man has never occupied that ground. On 
those table lands and slopes where the forests of this tree have been 
cut off, they do not appear to grow again, but are replaced by 
pine, or remain clear and afford pasture for flocks of sheep, from 
which the Indians derive the wool for their clothing and blankets. 
