394 Guatemala Forests. 
And now comes to our notice the silk-cotton tree, or Ceibo, with 
its great buttressed trunk and its wide-spreading branches. This 
tree is very common in all the lower forests down to sea-level. 
The wood is light, and often used for dug-out canoes, but they 
last only two years without decaying. There is another tree, with a 
beautiful straight cylindrical trunk, whose wood is so soft and 
elastic that an axe almost sinks into it at one blow, and can hardly 
be pulled out again. There is still another peculiar tree whose 
wood is so hard that, in spite of efforts, I have never known one to 
be cut down, the cutters always giving up in despair, and when it 
has to be removed the Indians build a fire'around it, and keep it 
up until the monarch falls. 
Already before we pass below 3000 feet the sugar cane and 
cotton are planted, but coffee at 6000 and cane at 4000 are on rare 
occasions killed by frosts, as happened winter before last, produced 
by the same cold waves that carried destructive frosts to lower 
Florida and Cuba. Also now occur all the well-known tropical 
fruits, — mango, orange, lime, pineapple, plantain, custard apple 
and banana, and they improve downwards to sea-level. 
Below 3000 feet, in the tierra caliente, we are in a torrid climate. 
Everywhere, except in the dry belt, vegetation is exuberant, over- 
powering. Itis a hard and expensive struggle to keep ground 
open enough for cultivation, and neglected ground soon reverts to 
forest. Even in inhabited parts all the unused spots of ground are 
so covered that houses and fields are hidden in a general view, and 
it seems a marvel where all the people live who are known to in- 
habit the place. But the greater part of Guatemala below 3000 
feet is now uninhabited, and covered with rampart forest, primitive 
or secondary. Two ancient cities are found in this forest, and at 
many other places are remains, showing that in ancient times @ 
dense population existed where now is forest. 
These forests at sea-level have been described by others in terms 
of admiration and rhapsody, as by Charles Kingsley, and I need 
not undertake it. I have travelled by canoe up and down various 
rivers for some 800 miles, on broad expanses with views over 
desolate marshes, and in profound narrow channels hemmed in by 
lofty precipices, and under a leafy archway, the branches of trees 
on the two banks meeting overhead. Sometimes two, opposite 
fallen trees will bar the way, and an opening has to be cut. A 
