64 
GUATEMALA. 
and England. Communication may thus be had with 
the best markets for all tropical products. The lowlands 
are amply able to supply New Orleans, New York, and 
Boston with bananas, plantains, pine-apples, and coco¬ 
nuts, the latter growing most abundantly at Cabo de 
Tres Puntas on Manabique. The climate is healthful 
and not too hot, averaging for the year about 80°; and 
as there is no marked change of season, a perpetual June 
seems to exist. Capital alone is wanted to develop this 
Atlantic coast into the great fruit-producing orchard of 
the United States. Sugar-cane grows rapidly; and so 
strong is the soil that rattoon crops have been cut for 
twenty years without replanting, and no diminution of 
the saccharine yield has been noticed. Sugar can cer¬ 
tainly be raised much cheaper here than in Cuba or in 
the Hawaiian Islands. 1 One day carries the crop to Belize, 
four days to New Orleans, and eight to Boston or New 
York. Yet, notwithstanding all these advantages, the Nor¬ 
thern farmer wears out his life in the consumptive fields of 
New England, where his crops grow only four months of 
the year, instead of settling here, where he can plant any 
day of the year (except saints’ days, unless he employ coo¬ 
lies), and reap a rich harvest in due season. He sometimes 
goes to Florida, which is neither tropical nor temperate, 
which is nothing but a raised coral reef with a veneering 
of soil, and where frosts cut off his crops every few years. 
We often hear of the extreme unhealthfulness of the trop¬ 
ics ; but is it generally known that more persons die of 
consumption in Massachusetts than of the most dreaded 
1 Should the new product, saccharine, meet with favor, the planting of cane 
will follow the fate of indigo; and coal-tar will supply the sweet things of 
life as well as the flavors and colors. Coal is “ sweetness and light ” ! 
