18 
GUATEMALA. 
hundred and forty-eight miles. This loan, amounting in 
1876 to $27,000,000., was as complete a swindle as has 
ever disgraced American finances; but the people of Hon¬ 
duras, although responsible for the debt, had little to do 
with its origin, and cannot rightly be blamed for not pay¬ 
ing interest on what they never had any advantage from. 
The internal debt is about $2,000,000. 
Nicaragua. — Of nearly the same area as Honduras, 
Nicaragua is chiefly distinguished by its lower level and 
the great lake which offers so inviting a route for an 
inter-oceanic canal. The same fertility and genial climate 
extend from the Hondurenan uplands into Chontales and 
Segovia, where Northerners can enjoy life; but it is hot 
and unwholesome near the sea, especially throughout the 
Mosquito Reservation, where the frequent river-floods 
and the miasmatic marshes breed an endemic fever very 
fatal to Europeans. The mean annual temperature (ex¬ 
cepting the highlands) is about 80° F., falling to 70° at 
night, and rising to 90° in the hottest weather. The 
seasons, as elsewhere in Central America, are two, — the 
wet from May to November, the dry including the winter 
months. At Rivas, on the isthmus between the Lago de 
Nicaragua and the Pacific, the annual rainfall is about 
a hundred and two inches; elsewhere the summer rain¬ 
fall is about ninety, and the winter less than ten. 
Geologically, Nicaragua is no less rich than Honduras 
in variety of structure and mineral possibilities. The 
volcanic formations on the extreme West are rich in 
pumice and sulphur, while across the lake are andesyte, 
trachyte, greenstone, and metalliferous porphyries, suc¬ 
ceeded by crystallized schists, dolerites, and metamorphic 
beds, extending, so far as is known, beneath the alluvial 
