As an article of export, logwood ranks next to mahogany, of which the best is found in the region of the Usumacinta. It is not a large tree, fifteen to twenty feet high, and much easier to handle than the mahogany. The dark heartwood alone is used.
The Santa Maria (Calophyllum calaba) is much used in house-building. Rosewood (Dalbergia) grows to a large size and is most beautifully veined, as is also the exquisite Palo de mulatto (Spondias lutea); but both sink in water, and are difficult to transport. I have used rosewood logs twenty inches thick to support a cistern, as they are almost imperishable, and not attacked by insects. Sapodilla (Achras sapota) is nearly as heavy. When freshly hewn, its color is curiously red, beefy in tone; but it soon loses this on exposure, and shrinks considerably. It splits easily, but is so tough that splinters are used as nails in soft woods. Salmwood (Jacaranda, sp.) is light colored, and much used for door and window frames. Ziricote is beautifully veined.
Two species of pine are common, the Pinus cubensis, or ocote, whence is obtained the fat-pine which serves as candle for a great majority of the people of Central America, and the long-leaved pine (P. macrophylla) of the mountains. I have placed in the Appendix a list of other woods valuable in many ways, but never exported, and known only by their local names.
The two products that in former years ranked high among the Guatemalan exports, indigo and cochineal, have now been so completely superseded by other dyes, the product of the laboratory, that they no longer need be considered of importance, although enough indigo is still made to supply native dyers, the Indios especially prizing the true indigo blue. Both dye-stuffs were chiefly cultivated on the Pacific slopes, and I have seen half-neglected nopaleras in the vicinity of Antigua and Amatitlan, the nopal or opuntia generally yielding place to sugar-cane and retiring to the roadside and neglected corners, while the cochineal insect, unfed and uncared-for, is gradually disappearing. In 1883 there were exported 135.02 cwt. of indigo, valued at $16,881.25; while in 1884 only 62.67 cwt., of a value of $7,833.75. A more decided decrease is seen in the exportation of cochineal in those years, the amounts being 184.01 cwt., of a value of $9,200.50, in 1883, against 8.12 cwt., valued at $406, in 1884.
It has been my fortune to visit many of the tropical regions of the world, and I have visited them not from idle curiosity, but with a genuine interest in their inhabitants and productions. I have looked upon the human, animal, and vegetable population of these places as closely as my limited knowledge and the time allowed me would permit. It is an agreeable study to place the physical capabilities of a region, the richness of the soil, the climatic influences, the geographical and commercial situation, side by side with the people, their industry, strength, and intelligence, and from these premises draw the conclusion of the might-be.
Once in travelling alone on horseback over the desert lands which lie between the mountains of the Island of Maui, of the Hawaiian group, I was impressed with the desolate, arid land of that great plain. Stunted indigo, verbena, and malvaceous weeds thinly covered the parched soil, which was cracked in every direction. Ten thousand feet above me rose the vast dome of Haleakala, bare on this landward side, but which had sent down for centuries volcanic ash to make this plain, and which now was covering these earlier deposits with the decomposition of its rich lavas. I examined this soil and found it full of the elements best suited for the growth of cane. As is the case with many of our own Western plains comprised in what was known as the Great American Desert, which have often impressed me as the most inhospitable land, not even excepting the Sahara, I have ever seen, this Hawaiian plain needed only water to turn the desert into a fertile field. I laid before the then Government of Hawaii my plan for reclaiming this land, which in great part belonged to the School Fund. The Minister of Foreign Relations, the Hon. Robert C. Wyllie, a most remarkable man, saw the physical possibilities, but also the financial impossibilities, so far as the Government was concerned. Years went by, when on a second visit to Maui I had the pleasure of seeing that my plan had in part been carried out by private parties, and prospering sugar plantations, valued at many millions, occupied the once waste land.
In travelling through Guatemala I was convinced of the physical advantages the country possessed, though I was not blind to the indisputable fact that of all countries I have seen, Guatemala, in common with the other States of Central America, makes least use of her natural advantages, and does least to overcome those obstacles Nature has thrown in her way. My readers will pardon me, I trust, if, in briefly discussing the present outcome of the soil, I let my imagination, trained and curbed by an extended experience, suggest at the same time what the wonderfully fertile lands of Guatemala might yield, properly cultivated. While I will endeavor to guard myself from all exaggeration, I cannot conceal from myself the fact that those not familiar with tropical luxuriance of growth and fruitfulness will not fully acquit me of this fault so generally charged to travellers.
Indian Plough; a Type of Guatemaltecan Agriculture.
Sugar-cane.—Arranging the products to be described, not in a scientific order, but in that sequence which their commercial importance seems to suit, sugar-cane easily leads; and this in spite of the difficulties of the labor supply, which I deem of more importance than the artificial competition of the very inferior sugar-beet. It is a bold assertion that no country or climate is better suited to the culture of sugar-cane. I have watched the growth of four of the choicest varieties[52] of cane side by side with that usually cultivated on the Atlantic coast (Bourbon), compared this with the growth of cane in Louisiana, the West Indies, Guiana, the Hawaiian Islands, India, the East Indies, Egypt, and the Mauritius, and I have ascertained the cost of cultivation, expense of living, yield and freight of product to market, in all these various centres of sugar-production, in a much more elaborate way than would be in place to record in this book.