16 GUATEMALA. 
will cultivate them. The towns are all small, although 
some of them were flourishing sixty years before the 
settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. Of the more im¬ 
portant are Tegucigalpa, the capital, in the midst of a 
plain some three thousand feet above the sea, and sur¬ 
rounded by a mining region. It possesses a Universidad 
Central, founded in 1849 by Don Juan Lindo, then Pres¬ 
ident. Comayagua was founded in 1540 by Alonzo de 
Caceres, also in the midst of a plain, where still are 
visible the monuments of antiquity, — the less perishable 
works of a people more energetic than their successors; 
for with the exception of some few churches, little of 
the work of the present inhabitants would survive three 
centuries of occupation by a foreign invader. Amapala, 
on the Island of Tigre, in the Gulf of Fonseca, was for¬ 
merly a favorite rendezvous of the buccaneers, Drake 
making it his base of operations in the South Sea. Now 
it is no less desirable as a port, having deep water close 
to shore. Puerto Cortez, or Puerto Caballos, — as Cortez 
called it, from the death of some of his horses here, — 
on the north coast, in latitude 15° 49' N., and longitude 
87° 57' W., was selected by Cortez as the entrepot of 
New Spain, under the name of Navedad. For more 
than two hundred years it was the principal port on the 
coast; but dread of the buccaneers caused the removal to 
Omoa. The bay is nine miles in circumference, with a 
depth of from four to twelve fathoms over its principal 
area; and on the northern side, where the water is 
deepest, large ocean steamers may come to the wharves. 
Omoa, in latitude 15° 47' N. and longitude 88° 5' W., 
has a smaller harbor, defended by the Castillo de San 
Fernando. Trujillo, an ancient port on the western shore 
