28 GUATEMALA. 
both the river and the native town, where are also the 
stores and the hotels. 
All descriptions of a growing town must be unsatis¬ 
factory, so rapidly does the population and topography 
change; and a few words may convey all the geographical 
knowledge needed. Rolling ground, which might easily 
be drained, but is not; streets generally at right angles, 
none paved, and most of them exceedingly muddy in 
wet weather; fences of the rudest form, mostly sticks 
bound together with vines ; houses with walls of adobe 
or of wattle, in both cases covered with mud plaster 
and whitewashed, none of them over one story, but with 
high roofs thatched with palm ; yards, but no gardens; 
stores here and there built of boards from New Orleans, 
and occupied by foreigners, — French, Germans, Italians, 
Americans {del Norte); a dilapidated chapel on or 
among the neglected foundations of an intended church; 
beyond this the barracks on a beautiful point; children 
of all ages playing in the dirt and merrily greeting 
the passer-by w T ith their black, shiny, healthy faces; 
palm-trees, mangoes, sapotes, bread-fruit, oranges, anonas, 
bananas, and coffee-trees scattered without order, and 
wholly uncultivated, — make the external features of 
this place. No vehicles are in the streets, though a 
few horses roam untethered through the town. Every 
burden is carried on the heads of men or women. The 
house-doors are all open; but the interior is generally 
too dark to disclose much of the inner mysteries to the 
stranger. Westward from the town lies the new Campo 
Santo, and beyond this the almost impenetrable forest. 
The situation of Livingston is good, — at the mouth of 
one of the finest rivers of the Atlantic coast of Central 
