398 Guatemala Forests. 
A great pine tree may blow over and expose under its roots a 
stratum full of potsherds and other remains. Not far off open 
pine woods may border on a dense primitive forest hardly pene- 
trable, the line between the two sharp and distinct, showing where 
the ancient axeman stayed his hewing. Pine forests also cover the 
country about the ancient city of Quirigua, on the Caribbean 
Coast, and I believe cover the fields of the dense population that 
must have supported a city so great as shown by its numerous and 
artistic sculptured remains. The city of Zikál is also hidden and 
covered up in the deep woods, with some of its walled towers yet 
reaching above the great forest trees, but I do not know whether 
these are pines. It appears then that many primitive angiosper- 
mous forests have been replaced by pine forests through the inter- 
vention of the ancients, but in the moist hot regions other angio- 
spermous forests have followed the primitive ones destroyed by 
In the valleys of the Salegn4 and Lagartero the heavy rains 
have denuded the ancient fields of their soil, leaving a stony desert 
over many square miles, and where forests can never again find a 
footing. And these curious stony regions now deserted and deso- 
late are stre vn everywhere with remains of former populations. 
In the Petten, in the northern part of the Republic, are great 
areas, bare of woods, and grass-covered, called Sabanas. These 
are also ancient fields, now unused and unoccupied except at a 
few small villages for raising cattle. The limestone hills and 
ridges remain covered with the primeval forest, and at their bases 
and also at the borders of the inhabited regions the line of division 
between Sabana and forest is as sharp as when the ancient man 
made his clearings. 
I recognize two causes that in their combined action have pre- 
vented the renewal of the forest. These Sabanas are in the mid- 
dle of the lowlands between the Caribbean Coast and the moun- 
tains. As the saturated winds reach the forests on the Coast, their 
cooling influence causes heavy precipitation, the same as a moun- 
tain. The coast rains are well-known. But as the winds go over 
the interior plains without ascending, no further precipitation takes 
place till they reach mountains ; hence the middle plain acquires 
the character of a partially dry belt, so that for several months in 
the dry season no rains occur, and the ground is parched and the 
vegetation partially dries up. 
