62 
GUATEMALA. 
negligence a large amount of sickness resulted, and that 
complaints printed in the newspapers of the United 
States from the sick men were justified. I have seen the 
men who left the railroad and took service on plantations, 
and have talked with them, although I have never men¬ 
tioned the subject to the several contractors and overseers 
I met; my opinion is therefore formed from what these 
unfortunate men told me. 
In the morning we were provided with the only hand- 
car the road owns, and began our explorations. I will 
not mention the builders of that car, for it was a worth¬ 
less article, and had it belonged to me I should have run 
it off the track and down a steep place into the sea. The 
road, of thirty-six inch gauge, was graded (in March, 1885) 
some six miles, and rails were laid four miles ; but the 
thirty-ton locomotive, which had to do the work one of 
half the size could do, could run only over three miles, the 
track was so uneven. Men were cutting sleepers in the 
adjoining forest, and we saw many of mahogany. The 
grade is also being pushed from Tenedores, on the Mota- 
gua River, to meet this end. No great engineering is 
here visible, and the main difficulty seems to have been 
in getting suitable foundations for the bridges over the 
numerous small creeks. Along the track we saw two 
large snakes of the boa family which had been killed by 
the workmen. Some five miles from Puerto Barrios we 
came to the hot sulphur-spring. It is a pool, fifteen feet 
in diameter, close by the track, and pours out a consider¬ 
able volume of clear, hot water, pleasant to drink when 
cooled, but while in the pool too hot to put one’s finger 
in. Bubbles, probably of hydrosulphuric acid, escaped 
freely ; but vegetation extended to the very borders of the 
