SEP 2 01918 
PREFACE. 
BELIEF in the increasing importance of Central 
XjL America, both geographically and politically, has 
led the writer of the following pages to collect for his 
own use and print for the use of others, notes made 
during three journeys in Guatemala and Honduras. He 
does not pretend to offer a monograph on Guatemala, nor 
to add to the general knowledge of Central America; but 
remembering the lack of guidance from which he suffered 
in travelling through the country, would in some measure 
save others from the same inconvenience. He seeks also, 
with perhaps more ambition, to awaken among Americans 
greater interest in the much-neglected regions between 
the Republic of Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien. 
A land which was the cradle of civilization on this 
continent, and whose recently explored monuments are 
most justly claiming the study and admiration of arch¬ 
aeologists in Europe as well as in America, has been 
strangely neglected by the American traveller as well as 
by the American merchant. Since the Travels of Stephens 
fascinated the public nearly half a century ago, the people 
of the United States have paid very little attention to 
Guatemala or its commerce. Even now there are thou¬ 
sands of square miles of wholly unexplored territory 
between the low Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Lake of 
Nicaragua. 
