896 Guatemala Forests. 
by pound. On the contrary, the mahogany-cutters, when a place 
is found with enough trees for a season’s cutting, build themselves 
a village of substantial huts and keep house, bring with them into 
the forest wives, children, pigs, chickens, dogs, and all their 
lares and penates. They may stay one year, or many. But finally, 
the woods being exhausted of suitable trees, they all depart, the 
houses decay and fall, the forest regrows and resumes its sway, 
and all that remains years afterwards are a few stunted 
banana, orange and mango trees, smothered and hidden by the 
lusty native forest. There is a large tree very frequent in the dry 
plains and low hills of the hot lands called the ramon tree. Its 
leaves are glossy green and leathery, of small size, and afford, with 
the twigs, a most nutritious fodder for cattle and mules. When 
they have it they will not touch grass. Itis sweet and mucilagi- 
nous. For months my mules have depended on it. I had nothing 
else tu give them. 
Last of all we come to the logwood, which grows only along the 
margins of sluggish rivers, lagoons and marshes and in swamps at or 
near sea-level. I know of two species, brazil-wood and campeachy- 
wood. The latter is the most valuable, I suppose, because the 
color of its decoction more closely imitates the color of the red 
wines, in whose manufacture it is so extensively used. As our 
imported wines bring high prices, logwood has a corresponding 
value. It sells by the pound. It is a heavy wood; a stick four 
feet long needs to be only a few inches in diameter to weigh 100 
pounds. On account of its peculiar habitat it is hunted by canoe, 
and when cut has to be carried by canoe to some shipping-point. 
It cannot float. It sinks to the bottom like a stone. During the 
last 300 years thousands of tons of it have been shipped from 
Belize, and by accident so many logs have sunk to the bottom 
of the harbor and been lost, that now, when it is proposed to 
‘dredge the harbor to improve it and fill up certain shallows in the 
manner of the Potomac Flats, it is believed that the recovery of 
this logwood will go far towards paying for the work. 
The second cause for the diversity of plant life I gave as the 
meteorological influence of topographical features on climate. As 
the moisture-laden trade winds from the Caribbean Sea reach the 
land, and they are deflected upwards more and more as they blow 
inland, and as the mountains rise higher and higher. This ascension 
