The Bay Islands are small, but of considerable importance. Roatan, the largest, is about thirty miles long by nine broad, and in its highest part nearly a thousand feet above the sea. Guanaja, or Bonaca, the first land of Central America discovered by Columbus on his fourth voyage, is fifteen miles from Roatan, and of an extent of five by nine miles. This group is fertile, and with a fine climate should prove very attractive to settlers from the North who appreciate the waste of life in an arctic climate of eight months each year, when all vegetation ceases to grow, and man himself can be kept alive only by artificial heat, where the farmer must toil wearily four months for the poor produce that is to sustain him all the “famine months,” and the laborer live poorly all the twelvemonth, whatever be his work.
The history of Honduras has not been a happy one, even since its revolt from the Spanish yoke in 1821, and revolutions have been the rule; but in 1865 a new Constitution was adopted, with some prospect of internal quiet. The four hundred thousand inhabitants include perhaps seven thousand whites, the Spanish population being mainly on the Pacific side, Caribs along the Atlantic coast, and several thousand of the mixed races, the great majority being Indios, known as Xicaques and Poyas. Perhaps the most adverse influence to the progress of this naturally rich republic, next to the revolutions, was the scandalous loan for building the “Honduras Inter-oceanic Railway” from Puerto Cortez to the Gulf of Fonseca, a hundred and forty-eight miles. This loan, amounting in 1876 to $27,000,000, was as complete a swindle as has ever disgraced American finances; but the people of Honduras, although responsible for the debt, had little to do with its origin, and cannot rightly be blamed for not paying interest on what they never had any advantage from. The internal debt is about $2,000,000.
Nicaragua.—Of nearly the same area as Honduras, Nicaragua is chiefly distinguished by its lower level and the great lake which offers so inviting a route for an inter-oceanic canal. The same fertility and genial climate extend from the Hondureñan uplands into Chontales and Segovia, where Northerners can enjoy life; but it is hot and unwholesome near the sea, especially throughout the Mosquito Reservation, where the frequent river-floods and the miasmatic marshes breed an endemic fever very fatal to Europeans. The mean annual temperature (excepting the highlands) is about 80° F., falling to 70° at night, and rising to 90° in the hottest weather. The seasons, as elsewhere in Central America, are two,—the wet from May to November, the dry including the winter months. At Rivas, on the isthmus between the Lago de Nicaragua and the Pacific, the annual rainfall is about a hundred and two inches; elsewhere the summer rainfall is about ninety, and the winter less than ten.
Geologically, Nicaragua is no less rich than Honduras in variety of structure and mineral possibilities. The volcanic formations on the extreme West are rich in pumice and sulphur, while across the lake are andesyte, trachyte, greenstone, and metalliferous porphyries, succeeded by crystallized schists, dolerites, and metamorphic beds, extending, so far as is known, beneath the alluvial deposits of the coast-region. The Chontales gold mines have been worked for some time near Libertad, and so have the silver mines of Matagalpa and Dipilto; but the total annual yield of precious metals seldom exceeds $200,000.
The chief articles of export are cacao, hides, coffee, and gums, as well as gold and silver bullion; and in 1880 the exports amounted to $2,057,500, and the imports to $1,475,000. The revenue for this year was $2,435,000, while the expenditures slightly exceeded it. All Nicaraguans between the age of eighteen and thirty-five are in the army.
For more than half a century Nicaragua has been darkly distinguished above all other countries of the world by war and bloodshed. Military pronunciamientos, civil war, and popular revolts have so exhausted all the resources of this rich country that it is quiet at last from utter exhaustion. Could these fermenting republics be induced to give up their absurd and expensive military establishments, and expend the money, now worse than wasted, in opening roads and teaching the people something besides military drill, the prosperity of this wonderfully fertile and agreeable region would be assured. Only their revolutionary habits now stand in the way of the introduction of foreign capital; and are not these habits fostered by the constant military display which guards the President and judges alike? It is certainly foreign to all Northern ideas to have a court of justice guarded by military sentinels. Would that this Eden might be reclaimed, the swords beaten into ploughshares, and the generals and other officers turn their wasted energies to agriculture and commerce!
Nicaragua is divided into the following departments, according to the census of 1882:—
| Departments. | Chief Cities. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Managua | 12,000 | Managua | 7,800 |
| Granada | 51,056 | Granada | 16,000 |
| Leon | 26,389 | Leon | 25,000 |
| Rivas | 16,875 | Rivas | 10,000 |
| Chinandega | 17,578 | Chinandega | 11,000 |
| Chontales | 27,738 | Libertad | 5,000 |
| Matagalpa | 51,699 | Matagalpa | 9,000 |
| Nueva Segovia | 36,902 | Ocotal | 3,000 |
| San Juan del Norte | 2,000 | Greytown | 1,512 |
| Mosquitia | 36,000 | Blewfields | 1,000 |
These figures cannot, however, be relied upon for the population. With a coast-line of two hundred and eighty miles on the Caribbean Sea, the only port is San Juan del Norte (Greytown), formed by the northern branch of the delta of the San Juan; and this is now nearly choked with sand. The Pacific coast is bold and rocky, extending nearly two hundred miles from Coseguina Point to Salinas Bay, and has several convenient harbors, as San Juan del Sur, Brito, and, best of all, Realejo. Among the chief cities is Leon, founded by Francisco Fernandez de Córdoba in 1523 in Imbita, near the northwest shore of Lago de Managua, whence it was moved in 1610 to the present site at the Indian town of Subtiaba. Managua, the capital of the republic, was nearly destroyed in 1876 by a land-slide, but is now rebuilt. Granada is the collegiate town of the republic, and is on the shores of the great lake. A railway has long been in process of construction to connect the capital with the ocean. In 1882 the telegraphic system of eight hundred miles was completed, and eighty-one thousand despatches were forwarded the preceding year through twenty-six offices. In 1882 the total attendance at the national schools was only five thousand, or less than eight per cent of the whole population. The annual grant for the purposes of education was $50,000.