“All along the banks tales are told of their injustice and sufferings. How recklessly they robbed on their journey up the country, and how they returned to Greytown—those who did return, whose bones are not whitening the lake shores—wounded, maimed, and miserable.
“Along the route traders were beginning to establish themselves; men prepared to provide the travellers with food and drink, and the boats with fuel for their steam. An end for the present has been put to all this. The weak governments of the country have been able to afford no protection to these men, and, placed as they were beyond the protection of England or the United States, they have been completely open to attack. The filibusters for a while have destroyed the transit through Nicaragua; and it is hardly matter of surprise that the president of that land, the neighboring republic, should catch at any scheme which proposes to give them back this advantage, especially when promise is made of the additional advantage of effectual protection.
“To us Englishmen it is a matter of indifference in whose hands the transit may be, so long as it is free and open to the world; so long as a difference of nationality creates no difference in the fares charged, or in the facilities afforded. For our own purposes I have no doubt the Panama line is the best, and will be the route we shall use. But we should be delighted to see a second line opened. If Mr. Squier can accomplish his line through Honduras we shall give him great honor, and acknowledge that he has done the world a service. Meantime we shall be very happy to see the lake transit reëstablished.”
There is no hope for the Central American States except by intervention on the part of some government capable of protecting them.
LETTER XVI.
Conclusive Summary.
CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF THE SPANISH MAIN—DOMINICANA REVIEWED—THE MAGNIFICENT BAY OF SAMANA—CONCLUSIVE SUMMARY.
HUS have I endeavored to seize on whatever might seem to be of importance, and at the same time interesting to such of your readers as desired to have some more general information respecting tropical America.
I am aware that I have not analyzed the soil, nor (so long as it produced well) have I cared whether it was “composed of the débris of these limestones and lava mountains,” or “tempered by the decaying vegetation of the centuries past.” Nor have I entered into any essay to show how the lofty sierras of Honduras differed from those of Nicaragua, or those of the islands from the Spanish Main. It would be easy to give you a chapter stating that “the summits of some of them are of hard sandstone or granite; some are covered with layers of mould of different colors and density, sometimes mixed with stones of different degrees of hardness, and more or less calcinable; and some of them of various vitrifiable substances.” But I take it that the way to make a thing useful is also to have it agreeable. Who reads, for example, Mr. Wells’ well-written but ponderous “Travels and Explorations in Honduras”?
Central America, by common assent, not only realizes in its geographical position the ancient idea of the centre of the world, but is in its physical aspect and configuration of surface an epitome of all the countries and of all climes. “High mountain ranges, isolated peaks, elevated table lands, and broad and fertile plains, are here grouped together, relieved by beautiful lakes and majestic rivers; the whole teeming with animal and vegetable life, and possessing every variety of climate from torrid heat to the cool and bracing temperature of eternal spring.”