The population tends to increase with some rapidity, and we shall remark the much smaller proportion of Indians found here; the bulk of the people, the Ladinos, being a mixture of white and Indian, distributed throughout a number of pleasing secondary towns, and, in the country districts, are engaged in the production of coffee, sugar, tobacco and other characteristic resources; whilst the hills afford them those minerals with which the region in general is dowered, with some mining establishments, which, as usual, are controlled by foreigners.
The economic life of Salvador is too greatly dependent upon European markets and financial centres; upon the export of coffee thereto; upon the elevation or depression of such markets—a condition, of course, common to many Spanish American States, but which a better-ordered regimen will seek to rectify.
We might wander long through the beautiful scenery of Salvador, enjoying the grand and imposing aspect of its volcanoes, the beauty of its valleys and streams, for this part of Central America is famed, or rather should be famed, for the beauty of the landscape. Quaint towns and curious products, the quiet and in some respects pleasant life of its folk, the budding industries, and a certain promise for the future leave a pleasant impression upon the mind of the traveller in this little State facing the broad Pacific.
Of the Republic of Nicaragua, which we may approach either from the Atlantic or the Pacific, and which is the largest of this group of States, many dismal descriptions have been given. It is described as economically and in civic conditions the most backward. Yet some of its towns are fine places. Leon was described as a splendid city by travellers in 1665, and about that period the very active buccaneer Dampier gathered rich booty from it. Granada, founded by Cordova in 1523, was also one of the richest cities in Central America, and it, too, gave up its toll of booty to the corsairs. The Cathedral of Leon is one of the most noteworthy, massive and ornate of the great stone temples with which the Spaniards endowed the New World, typical of the colonial architecture which redeems these centres of life from the prosaic vulgarity of some other lands.
THE CITY OF GUATEMALA.
Vol. I. To face p. 80.
We may visit these towns from the line of railway which runs from Corinto, the chief seaport on the Pacific coast.