Nature has done all that could be expected or could be hoped for on her part. The only thing necessary for success is the proper selection of ground and intelligent cultivation of the crops to which it is adapted. The diversity of altitudes and climates allows a great range of products. In no country in the world of equal size, in all probability, is there such a great variety of surface or such a diversity of natural products. There are more than four hundred species of wood of which one hundred and fifty are commercially valuable, and some three hundred and forty medicinal plants have already been discovered; and the end of discoveries in this line has not yet been reached.
Of the valuable woods, mahogany easily takes first place. These great and majestic trees are found in considerable number in the forests of northeastern Guatemala. Those situated near the larger streams have been cut down. Farther inland the difficulty of transportation makes the marketing of the logs an expensive undertaking, although the standing trees can be purchased from the government for a very small sum. The logwood tree, as well as other dyewoods, is found bordering on all the great lagoons and some portions of the Gulf coast. It is a tree of medium size and peculiar appearance, attaining a height of twenty or thirty feet. The trunk is gnarled and full of cavities, and separates a short distance above the ground. The heart, the only valuable portion, is a deep red. The logwood is found in the same localities as the mahogany, and they are districts that are generally flooded in the rainy season. The timbers are cut in the dry season and then floated down to the ports in the rainy season.
The palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees and a landscape hardly seems tropical without these graceful trees. It is doubtful if there is a single class of the tropical trees so essential to the native as the palms. Houses, timber, firewood, fodder, food and drink, needles and threads, wax and drugs are all obtained from palms of various species. The Royal palm is the most graceful and majestic of all, and there is no more imposing scene of arboreal beauty than the long avenues of these beautiful trees so common in the American tropics. Their smooth, tapering trunks, almost as hard as granite, tower upward for eighty or even a hundred feet above the earth, bearing at the top a mass of green, drooping plumes. These great white trunks, standing boldly out upon verdure-clad slopes, so conspicuous among the tangled sea of vines and jungle at their feet, and their plumes swaying gently in the breezes, are a beautiful and imposing sight.
The commonest and most useful of the palms is the cocoanut, which is a conspicuous sight in every village and rural scene in tropical lands. As this palm most commonly grows in spots exposed to the full sweep of the winds, the trunk is gradually bent away from the winds. It is seldom, indeed, that one will find the cocoanut in an absolutely perpendicular position. The stem is so strong and tough, being composed of closely-interwoven fibres, that the entire top may be torn off by the hurricanes and the trunk remain uninjured. The cocoanut commences to bear when from three to ten years old and will continue to produce fruit, year after year, for from seventy-five to one hundred years. The nut is used for both food and drink, and the shell is made into dippers, jars, spoons and other household utensils. The dried cocoa is a valuable article of commerce, but the real value of the oil prepared from the fresh meat is only beginning to be realized. It is useful not only in the manufacture of soaps, but a butter is prepared from it that is superior not only to cottonseed oil, but, so it is claimed, better than even animal butter for purposes of food. There is no reason why the tropics of Guatemala should not produce large quantities of the oil and cocoa meat for American and European trade.
A SUGAR PLANTATION.
India rubber grows wild in the forests and could be cultivated profitably, as it is now being done in Mexico and other countries. The government will give one manzana (113.62 acres) of land as a bonus for every two thousand rubber plants set out for cultivation. Sugar cane can be raised profitably, as the stalks grow high, with many joints, and have a greater percentage of saccharine than in most countries where it is cultivated. Furthermore, it does not require replanting for years in this soil. The stalks will grow nine feet high in as many months. At present about the only use to which the cane is devoted here is in the manufacture of “white-eye,” the native brandy. Some of it is made into sugar by means of old-fashioned sugar mills, which are simply vertical iron-roll mills turned by oxen. There is only one kettle used and no clarifier, and the syrup is run into wooden moulds, where it is cooled into dark hemispherical blocks—a form much liked by the Indians.
The Guatemalan cacao is claimed to be the very best in the world. It is not cultivated to any great extent at present, although the propagation is on the increase, as Ecuador practically controls the trade. The best conditions are an altitude of from eight hundred to two thousand feet and a soil rich in moisture, or capable of irrigation. Virgin lands from which forests have been cut are the best. It requires six years for the trees to mature, although they will occasionally bear in less time. The cultivation does not require nearly so much labour as coffee, although care must be taken not to hurt the “bean” when it is removed from the pod. One day is given for “fermentation;” after which they are dried in the sun for several days. The cacao is then ready for the market to furnish our delicious chocolate preparations. The pods are from ten to twelve inches long and contain many beans; they resemble a musk melon in appearance, and grow from the branches and trunks of the trees.
Nutmegs have proved a success on the Island of Trinidad and would do just as well here. The trees require at least eighty inches of rain annually. They will produce nutmegs in eight to ten years and will then bear and improve for a century. Each tree will yield from one thousand to five thousand nuts in a season, in size varying from sixty-eight to one hundred and twenty in a pound. Tobacco grows well and of good quality at an elevation of from one thousand to two thousand feet. Common and sweet potatoes, yams, beans, breadfruit, squashes, melons, tomatoes, peppers, the aguacate, or alligator pear (weighing about a pound), the granadilla (fruit of the passion flower), and many other fruits and vegetables can easily be cultivated at a fair profit.
Japan, India, or Ceylon can furnish nothing more fascinating or stranger in their vegetable kingdom than this favoured land. The fruits are simply wonderful in variety and perfection. The glowing sun and ardent breath of the tropics ask little aid from the hand of man in perfecting their products. One eats eggs, custard and butter off the trees.