shores, arise magnificent volcanoes. Wildfowl
flit over the water; deep woods clothe
the bank. The lake is ninety-five miles long,
and thirty miles broad, in its broadest part.
We reach the River St. John, which leads out
of the lake into the Atlantic Harbour of San
Juan del Norte. The river, with its windings,
is about seventy-nine miles long, flowing
through dense forest. This we imagine
converted into canal, and we have traversed one
of the proposed routes. Returning by the
St. John into the Lake of Nicaragua, we have
only to cross the lake, to reach a spot where
we are separated by no more than sixteen
miles of land from the Pacific harbour of San
Juan del Sur. This is by far the shortest
route, but there are forcible objections to
it. Across the path of those sixteen miles,
there runs a range of hills, to be traversed
only by a deep cutting or a tunnel, or both.
And deep cuttings or tunnels are neither of
them quite safe in the society of volcanoes,
however matter-of-fact they may seem to
Englishmen. Furthermore, it is said that the
Port of St. John del Sur, is not an eligible
one, swept during five months of the year by
an adverse north wind. The harbour of
Realejo forms an admirable terminus,
perfectly embayed, and sheltered by an island at
its mouth, while the proposed canal route,
although longer, presents much less
engineering difficulty. Not that it is difficult to
engineers to operate just as they please, upon
dead matter; but that to make a tunnel or a
cutting is one thing, and to insure it against
earthquakes, is another. In May, 1844, a
series of violent earthquake shocks passed
over the precise site of this projected cutting,
and did great damage to the town of
Nicaragua.

The unhealthiness of the Atlantic coast—
the danger to European overseers during
that part of the operation which will concern
the river Saint John; the worthlessness of
native labour, the question of the necessity
of negro free labour, and all such matters,
we need not discuss. It may be noted,
however, that in making the new railway from
Chagres to Panama, the works have been
imprudently commenced on the unhealthy
side. Commencement at the other end
might have given some time to the labourers
in which they could become better
acclimatised.

Now we are about to quit the state of
Nicaragua. It is a country of rich, fertile
plains and slopes, freely besprinkled with
volcanic peaks. It can produce fine indigo,
cotton, sugar, and cocoa. Mahogany, cedar
and Brazil wood, abound in its forests;
thieves, ragged soldiers, and political convulsions
abound in its towns.

We enter Costa Rica, the most southern
state, which for some years past has been
quietly industrious, and given up the
revolutionary business. Here we traverse wild
rocks and forest-covered glens until we reach
the high table-land in the centre of the state,
which is the cultivated part of Costa Rica.
Here are three towns—San Jose the capital,
Alhajuela, and Heridia. Sugar is grown here,
but coffee-plantations are the chief source of
prosperity.

San Jose, like Guatemala, is a new capital.
We visit the old city, Cartago; it is a mass of
ruins, made by an earthquake in 1841. The
old volcano looks down on the mischief
smoking quietly.

The coffee of Costa Rica sent to Europe, is
not shipped on the Atlantic side. The
mountains, valleys, marshes, and prevailing rains
of the Atlantic coast, make that side so
impracticable, that although they have a port
on the Atlantic, the Costa Ricans shudder
at the difficulty and expense of making roads
to it for transport of their produce. Therefore
they make roads suitable for country
carts—better than mule tracks, to their port
on the Pacific, Punta Arenas, in the Gulf of
Nicoza. This port is formed by a sandpit
about two leagues long, running out from the
main land, enclosing a harbour sheltered by
two islands, and accessible to small vessels,
which can receive and land cargo only by
boats. The village is built upon the sandpit,
and from hence the coffee is exported. Here,
too, there is a Pearl Fishery. The Costa
Ricans think it better to sell their coffee in
Europe at the disadvantage of three pounds a
ton, by paying freight for the circumnavigation
of South America, than to make roads
to their port of Matinas, on the Atlantic,
which, in point of mileage merely, is no
farther distant from the coffee-grounds than
Punta Arenas.

Now we are at our journey's end, and
waiting on the sandpit for our Phantom Ship.
We have seen the surface of the land. Beneath
the surface are abundant deposits of gold,
silver, and iron. We have seen something of
the wealth lavished by Nature upon that
district of the world, whose part in the world's
history is destined to be hereafter as large as
it now is little. The present inhabitants of
Central America—Spanish, mixed or coloured
—know no more of the use which they might
make of their unlimited resources, than a baby
knows what it can buy with half-a-crown.
An industrious and settled population, in
the first place—no more revolutions—in the
second place, good roads, are the great wants
of Central America. Nothing but Anglo-
Saxon energy will ever stir this sluggish pool
into life. There is no vigour in the revolutions
even; they are not an active ebullition
of the feelings, but a chronic malady.

Who is to fell the trees, to destroy the
sickliness of an excessive vegetation? Who is to
form the roads, to work the mines, to make
the cultivated soil yield its best treasures in
their full abundance? When the commerce
of Europe shall flow into the Pacific, through
the Nicaraguan Canal, those questions will be
answered readily.