CHAPTER VI

HONDURAS

General Description--History--Effects of Continual Civil War--Lack of Means of Communication--Backwardness of the People--The North Coast.

The territory of Honduras may be roughly described as a triangle, the base of which is formed by the shore of the Caribbean Sea, and the other sides by the Guatemala-Salvador boundary on the southwest and by that of Nicaragua on the southeast. At the apex, on the south, there are a few miles of coast on the Gulf of Fonseca which give the Republic its only outlet on the Pacific. The country is very mountainous, but, unlike its neighbors, is in no part of volcanic origin, for the chain of craters which elsewhere traverses the Isthmus several miles inland from the coast passes by Honduras through the conical islands of the Gulf of Fonseca, leaving the mainland entirely outside of the belt of decomposed tufas which forms the most fertile agricultural districts of other parts of Central America. There are thus none of the rich eruptive plains and gently sloping mountainsides which have encouraged the establishment of the great coffee and sugar plantations of Guatemala and Salvador and have made it possible for the regions near the Pacific Coast in all of the other countries to support dense populations. The southern portion of Honduras is occupied by a series of rugged mountain chains, where only small amounts of land in the valleys are suitable for cultivation and the rainfall is scanty and irregular. The first Spanish settlements were established in this district, notwithstanding the difficulties of raising food and transporting supplies from the outside world, because of the gold and silver mines, which in colonial times made Honduras one of the most important provinces of the Isthmus; and when the mines were abandoned, during the years of anarchy which followed the declaration of independence, the inhabitants still clung to their decayed villages and supported themselves as well as they could by agriculture. North of the continental divide, the mountains are lower and less precipitous, and there are great stretches of open savannahs and pine-covered hills, where the rainfall is plentiful and the grass is green at all seasons of the year. The soil is not very fertile, except in the river bottoms, but the region is admirably adapted for the raising of cattle. The cities of the south and of the interior are still the center of the political life of the country, but since the development of the banana trade they have been rapidly outstripped in economic importance by the newer towns created by foreign enterprise on the North Coast. The region near the Caribbean Sea is a low plain, extending for many miles into the interior, traversed by scattered mountain ranges and by several large, slow-flowing rivers. Here there are many settlements of North Americans, West Indian negroes, and natives, who are occupied chiefly with the cultivation of bananas.

The people are a mixed race. Spanish is the only language, and Catholicism the only religion, but even in the cities there are few persons who are entirely white, and in the country districts, although there are almost no pure-blooded Indians except on the uncivilized Mosquito Coast, the majority of the inhabitants have far more American and African than European blood. The aborigines of Honduras were never so numerous or so civilized as those of Guatemala, Salvador, and Nicaragua, and they were exterminated after the conquest to a somewhat greater extent than in those countries because of the hard labor in the mines; but their characteristics are nevertheless those which are most marked in the half-breed population of today. Negro blood also is very evident in the people in the regions north of the continental divide, and in many places, especially near the coast, seems to predominate over the other racial constituents. It was far easier for runaway West Indian slaves and other immigrants of the same color to reach the interior from the Caribbean Coast of Honduras than elsewhere in the Isthmus, because the country back of the coast line was more open and more attractive, to them, on account of its warm climate. What effect this element has had on the development of the Republic it is difficult to say, but it is possible that it may account in some measure for the backwardness of most of the regions in which it is found.

The central position of Honduras has forced her, whether she wished to or not, to take part in nearly every international conflict which has occurred in the Isthmus; and the continual intervention of her stronger neighbors in her internal affairs, combined with factional hatred and greed for the spoils of office on the part of her own citizens, have kept the Republic in a state of chronic disorder down to the present time. Because of the economic backwardness and the isolation of her people, she has been affected comparatively little by the factors which have in recent years tended to discourage internal disorder and civil strife in Salvador. Her government has never become so strong that it was able to repel aggression from without or to hold in check its enemies at home, and no part of her territory, with the possible exception of the North Coast, has reached a stage of agricultural or industrial development sufficiently high to give rise to a class of plantation owners or capitalists more interested in the maintenance of peace than in the dominance of one or the other political faction. She does not enjoy the favorable climate and the fertile soil which have encouraged the development of the great agricultural enterprises of the neighboring states, and she has been prevented from using the very valuable natural resources which she does possess by constant disturbances promoted both by external and by domestic enemies.

Dissensions within the country broke out soon after the authority of Spain was thrown off in 1821. The Spanish governor at Comayagua, who had already repudiated the authority of the Captain General in Guatemala, was opposed by the people of Tegucigalpa and several other towns, and his attempts to establish his supremacy were the beginning of a desultory conflict which lasted with few intermissions for a number of years. After the establishment of the Federal Union, Comayagua sided with the Conservatives and Tegucigalpa with the Liberals, and an army from the latter city, led by Morazán, played a large part in defending Salvador and in overthrowing the federal authorities in 1829. The triumph of the revolution in Guatemala led to the establishment of a Liberal state government in Honduras, but this fell after the disruption of the Union, when President Carrera of Guatemala aided the Conservatives to return to power (1840). From that time until 1911, the Republic was kept in a state of turmoil by a series of revolutions and civil wars, instigated and often

## actively participated in by Guatemala, Salvador, or Nicaragua, and

sometimes by all three. Francisco Ferrer, supported by Carrera, held the supreme power from 1840 to 1852, first as president and then as commander-in-chief of the army. His successor was Trinidad Cabañas, a Liberal, who had been in office only three years when Carrera sent an army into the country to supplant him by Santos Guardiola. This ruler was assassinated in 1862. His successor, allying himself to Salvador, became involved in a war against Guatemala and Nicaragua, and the victory of the two latter states resulted in the “election” of José María Medina as president of Honduras. He was overthrown in 1872 by the intervention of the Liberals who had just returned to power in Guatemala and Salvador. Ponciano Leíva assumed the chief magistracy in the following year, but was forced to relinquish it in 1876 by the intrigues of President Barrios of Guatemala. Marco Aurelio Soto, a man of ability and great influence, succeeded him, but he was also forced to resign in 1883 because of the hostile attitude of Barrios, and was succeeded by Luís Bográn, who held office until 1891. Ponciano Leíva, who followed Bográn, was again forced to resign in 1893 by a threatened revolution. His successor, Domingo Vásquez, was overthrown a year later as the result of a disastrous war with Nicaragua, and Policarpo Bonilla, an ally of President Zelaya and an ardent Liberal, became president. After one constitutional term, he turned over his office to General Terencio Sierra. Sierra was overthrown in 1903 by Manuel Bonilla, who had started a revolution when the president made an attempt to impose on the country a successor of his own choosing.

In 1907, as the result of a quarrel between Bonilla and President Zelaya of Nicaragua, the latter sent an army into Honduras to aid a revolutionary movement headed by Miguel Dávila. Salvador, fearing the increase of Zelaya’s influence, came to the aid of Bonilla, but was unable to prevent the complete victory of the revolution. Zelaya now threatened to attack Salvador, and the president of that country, in league with Guatemala, prepared to support a counter revolution in Honduras. A general Central American war would undoubtedly have followed, had not the United States and Mexico jointly interposed their mediation and suggested that all of the republics of the Isthmus send representatives to Washington to discuss the questions at issue between them. This was the origin of the celebrated Washington Conference. One of the most important conventions adopted by the delegates of the five countries provided for the complete neutralization of Honduras and the abstention of her government from all participation in the conflicts between the other governments of the Isthmus.[21]

This treaty had little effect for the time being on the situation of Honduras, for nearby countries encouraged and materially assisted a number of uprisings against the government of Dávila during the four years following 1907. Zelaya helped his ally to suppress these, but when the Nicaraguan dictator himself fell the fate of the administration which he had protected in Honduras was sealed. Manuel Bonilla invaded the Republic from the North Coast in the latter part of 1910, and decisively defeated Dávila’s troops after a few weeks of fighting. When it was evident that the revolutionists were gaining the upper hand, a peace conference was arranged through the mediation of the United States, and both factions agreed to place the control of affairs provisionally in the hands of Dr. Francisco Bertrand. In the election which followed, Bonilla was made president by an almost unanimous vote. He held office until his death in 1913, when Dr. Bertrand, the vice-president, succeeded him. The latter is still at the head of affairs, having been reëlected in 1915.

Today, more than ever before, there seems to be good reason to hope that Honduras may enjoy a long period of peace. A large part of the people are wearied of the continual disturbance in which they have lived, and are beginning to distrust the factional leaders who have hitherto been able to incite them to revolt at every unpopular or aggressive action of the authorities. The government of Dr. Bertrand has pursued a conciliatory policy towards all political elements, and by treating its enemies with far less severity than has been customary in the past has given them little excuse for rebellion. The so-called

## parties of today have become little more than groups of professional

office-seekers, without programs or permanent organizations. While many of the causes of discord at home have thus been removed, the external influences which have hitherto made stable government impossible have lost much of their importance in the last four years. The other governments have been prevented from encouraging or allowing the preparation in their territory of revolutionary expeditions against Honduras, or from intervening themselves in the internal affairs of their neighbor, by the attitude of the United States. The decisive intervention of that Republic in the last revolution in Nicaragua and the intimation, by a timely show of force, when outbreaks were threatened elsewhere, that similar action might be taken if it proved necessary, have had a salutary effect on potential revolutionists in all of the states of the Isthmus, for there are few Central American political leaders who desire to see the events of 1912 repeated in their own countries.

The government of Honduras has always been and is today a military despotism where all branches of the administration are under the absolute control of the president. Graft and favoritism are as much in evidence as in the neighboring countries, and the public offices, occupied exclusively by the friends of those in power, are swept clean and refilled after each successful revolution. Nevertheless, the country has had a series of able and patriotic presidents, who have done what they could, with the scanty resources at their command and in the face of very great difficulties, to encourage agriculture and commerce. Very real progress has been made in the field of education, and recently in the building of roads, and that more has not been accomplished has been due to the poverty of the national treasury, the waste of revenues by civil wars, and the deep-ingrained practice of graft in the public offices, rather than to any lack of progressive spirit. The idea of enriching themselves at the expense of the public is so much a part of the creed of the professional politicians who form the bulk of each party and the backbone of the revolutions to which each successive government owes its existence that it is impossible even for a president of the highest civic ideals to devote the entire resources of the government to internal improvements.

The effects of the disorder and misrule from which the Republic has suffered for nearly a century are most clearly evident in the southern departments and the interior, which are the home of the majority of the people. The mines, in which many of the inhabitants of the province had been employed in colonial times, were abandoned soon after the declaration of independence, and those who were dependent upon them were left to make a living as best they could. A large number joined the factional armies, which were hardly disbanded during the lifetime of the Central American Federation. Others turned their attention to agriculture or cattle raising, but did little more than secure a bare subsistence, working under a great disadvantage because of the impossibility of transporting their products to a market, and constantly facing ruin from the visits of revolutionary armies. Those who tilled the soil confined themselves to producing small amounts of corn, beans, and sugar from year to year for their own consumption. Conditions were more unfavorable for the establishment of large plantations than they had been in the other countries, because revolutions were more continuous and more destructive, and because there was in Honduras comparatively little land suitable for the cultivation of coffee, indigo, or sugar for export. The raising of cattle, which might otherwise have been carried on under very favorable conditions, especially in the open, grassy valleys of the Olancho, was made all but impossible by the civil wars, for no one suffers more from the passing of a Central American army than the herdsman. There are indeed many ranches in the interior and on the South Coast at present, but they are run carelessly and with primitive methods. The owners, who have lost a large part of their stock time after time by military requisitions or by confiscation, make no effort to introduce animals of a better breed from abroad or to give their cattle more than the most elementary care, leaving the herds to wander in an almost wild state over great stretches of land, and only interesting themselves in them when they have occasion to drive a few hundred head to market. A slight change in this respect is even now noticeable, however, for some of the landowners are beginning to pay more attention to the welfare of their stock and to fence in and otherwise improve their properties. If the Republic enjoys a few more years of peace, and if a better market can be provided abroad for live animals or beef, Honduras might easily become the most important cattle-raising country of the Isthmus.

Many of the mines were reopened by promoters from the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but the majority were abandoned a few years later because of the decline of the price of silver, which was the chief product. At the present time there are a number of companies and individuals extracting the precious metals on a small scale, but the only plant of real importance is that of the New York and Honduras Rosario Mining Company at San Juancito, near Tegucigalpa. The silver shipped by this one firm comprises almost the only important export of the southern departments, and nearly twenty-five per cent of the total exports of the Republic. There are very great undeveloped mineral resources, and many new mines would doubtless be opened if the difficulty of transporting machinery into the interior could be overcome, and if the political conditions of the Republic should be made sufficiently stable to encourage the investment of foreign capital.

One of the factors which has done most to retard the economic development of the country is the lack of means of communication. Tegucigalpa is now the only Central American capital which is not connected with at least one seaport by railway. Even ox-carts can be used only in a very few places in the interior, for the construction of roads between the principal centers of population has been more difficult than elsewhere in the Isthmus because of the greater distances to be traversed and the broken character of the country. The chief towns of the Republic are scattered from the Guatemalan to the Nicaraguan frontier and from the North Coast to the South, and the mountain ranges between them, although not so high as in the neighboring countries, are often so sharp and rugged that they are difficult to cross even on mule back. As has already been said, moreover, the expenditure of the energies of the people and the financial resources of the government on civil war has made it impossible to devote much attention to internal improvements. Transportation between the different sections, therefore, is principally by rough mule trails, but there is nevertheless one splendid highway, from Tegucigalpa to San Lorenzo on the Gulf of Fonseca, which has no equal in Central America. The regular services of motor cars and trucks on this route have greatly reduced the difficulty of transporting freight and passengers between the capital and its port of entry at Amapala, although the rates charged are exceedingly high, even as compared with those charged on Central American railways.[22] Similar roads are now being constructed, very slowly, from Tegucigalpa to Comayagua and to the Olancho, but they are so expensive to build and to maintain that it seems likely to be many years before those sections of the country will enjoy communication by automobile with the capital.

Tegucigalpa, with the nearby municipality of Comayagüela, is a prosperous little town, with a thriving commerce and many families of wealth and culture, but outside of the capital, if we except half a dozen foreign settlements on the North Coast, there are few places which show any signs of contact with modern civilization. The majority of the people reside in the provincial cities, which are decayed villages of from three to five thousand inhabitants, or in still more desolate smaller settlements. There are also thousands of families scattered through the mountains, living in thatched _ranchos_, and subsisting almost entirely on the produce from their cornfields and plantain patches. Even the more important towns are almost entirely isolated economically and socially. A small amount of internal commerce is carried on by means of mule trains, and the mails are carried to almost all of the towns and villages with tolerable frequency and regularity, but the great mass of the people have little interest in anything outside of the community in which they live, and little conception of a world beyond the boundaries of their own country.

It is not surprising that people living under such conditions should have advanced little in civilization beyond their savage ancestors. Even those who might have risen above their environment, had they had the opportunity, have been kept down by almost insuperable obstacles. There is no incentive to improve agricultural properties, or to lay up a store of products for possible future needs, when all that a man has is likely to be taken from him at any time, and there is no object in raising more produce than is required for the support of the farmer’s family when there is no market in which it can be sold or exchanged for other goods. It is dangerous and expensive to transport products from one part of the country to another where they may be needed, and there are few articles which the peasant can purchase when he does secure ready money. Little is manufactured in the country, and imports from abroad, by the time they have borne the heavy freights from North America and Europe via Panama to Amapala, the exorbitant charges of boatmen, brokers, and customs officials at that port, and the expense of transporting them into the interior, are beyond the reach of any but the rich. In the interior, one may ride in some places for days without passing a place where articles manufactured abroad can be bought, and those commercial establishments which do exist, outside of Tegucigalpa, carry only the most inferior textiles, machetes, and other necessities, together with a few very cheap articles of personal adornment, at prices from three to five times those which would be demanded for the same things in the United States.

Such conditions have inevitably condemned the people to a hand-to-mouth existence, which has eradicated all tendency to thrift. Improvidence, which seems to be an inborn characteristic of the Spanish-Negro-Indian population, has been encouraged by the ease with which the corn and beans necessary to support even a large family can be produced, for there is an abundance of unoccupied land in most parts of the country which can be cultivated with little labor by the primitive methods in vogue, and which will usually produce at least two crops each year. It would seem, therefore, that the people should lead an easy, if not an interesting existence, but the very conditions which have made it possible for them to secure a living with little difficulty have contributed to make them in some ways the poorest and most miserable of the _ladino_ populations of the Isthmus. Unaccustomed to hard work or to taking thought for the future, they rarely plant more corn during the rainy season than is barely necessary to last them through the dry months, so that a drought or other mishap to their crops causes widespread want and suffering, aggravated by the difficulty of bringing food from other parts of the country where it may be abundant. There is no other inhabited part of Central America where the traveler finds it so hard to secure provender for himself and his mule as he does in most parts of Honduras during April and May.

As might be supposed, the people are densely ignorant and unprogressive. Schools have been established in many of the towns and villages, but the percentage of illiteracy in the community as a whole seems to be very high. Religion is at a low ebb, although one section of the Republic, around Comayagua, seems to be the most fanatically Catholic portion of Central America. Outside of the larger towns, there are almost no priests, and the people, although superstitious, pay little attention to the precepts of the Church. It must not be supposed, however, that the Honduraneans are necessarily inferior, intellectually or physically, to the inhabitants of the other republics. They are naturally quick and intelligent, and they are said to be as efficient laborers as any of the other Central Americans. Foreign mining corporations in all parts of the Isthmus prefer them to the inhabitants of any of the other countries as workmen, not only because of their greater skill, but because of their comparative trustworthiness. There is every prospect that they will advance rapidly in civilization when their country is brought into closer contact with the outside world.

The economic backwardness of the country, which is in itself an effect of the civil wars, is at the same time one of their causes. The great majority of the people have little to lose by internal disorders, for there are few who own more than a cheaply constructed adobe house and a small corn patch. They welcome a revolution, with its opportunity for plunder and for living at someone else’s expense, as an agreeable change from the monotony of their lives and an opportunity temporarily to improve their condition. Among the upper classes in the cities, many of whom devote themselves to politics rather than to more useful occupations because neither large scale agricultural or commercial enterprises nor the learned professions afford a secure income, there is always a large number of discontented office-seekers, ready to engage in any kind of intrigue which offers an opportunity to make a living at the public’s expense. The organization of a revolutionary conspiracy is thus an easy matter, and the raising of an army among the common people is hardly more difficult. Money and arms are secured from foreign corporations which desire special favors, and material and moral support can almost always be obtained from one of the other Central American governments. With so many circumstances in their favor, it is not remarkable that the party leaders have been able time after time to plunge the country into civil war, sacrificing its welfare to their own ambitions and rivalries, and frustrating the efforts made by their more patriotic and far-sighted fellow-citizens to improve their country’s economic and social conditions.

Although at least eighty per cent of her people live in the central and southern departments, the most important portion of Honduras, from the point of view of the outside world, is the long coast line on the Caribbean Sea. This region is not only more productive than other parts of the Republic, because of its fertile soil and heavy rainfall, but it also has the immense advantage of being close to the Gulf ports of the United States, with which it is in regular communication by means of several lines of fast steamers. In recent years, its agricultural possibilities have been developed on a large scale by immigrants and capital from that country. Its ports, where English is the language most generally used and American influence is predominant, have become prosperous commercial towns, and one of them, La Ceiba, is the most important city in the Republic, after Tegucigalpa, and has more foreign commerce than all of the interior districts together.

The native element on the Coast is somewhat larger than in the similar sections of Guatemala and Costa Rica, because the government has opposed certain legal obstacles to the free immigration of West Indian negroes. This policy has enabled other sections to profit to some degree from the prosperity of the banana farms, because many laborers from the interior spend longer or shorter periods working there, earning wages far greater than they could secure at home. There is little commercial intercourse between the two sections of the country, however, as the roads which unite them are not suitable to any traffic other than pack and saddle mules. Travelers frequently make the journey from the United States to Tegucigalpa by the overland route, and the mails are brought over regularly from the weekly steamers which touch at Puerto Cortez, but almost none of the exportations or importations of the interior are shipped through the Caribbean ports. The North Coast had until lately little political connection with the other departments of the Republic, but within the last few years the government has established civilian officials and military forces there, and has endeavored to strengthen the feeling of allegiance among its inhabitants. The people of the banana district, and especially the foreign residents, have played an important part in recent revolutions, most of which have had one of the Caribbean ports as a base.

The bananas which are the principal product of the coast are raised and exported by numerous small growers and by a few great fruit companies, each of which possesses its own line of steamers and controls the agriculture and commerce of the district in which it operates. These concerns, nominally independent and competing, are generally supposed to be closely connected with, if not under the control of, the United Fruit Company, which itself has plantations and buys fruit at one or two places. The “United” has for some years been on unfriendly terms with the Honduranean government, and it is said that it prefers for this reason to operate through supposedly unrelated subsidiaries, which are in a better position than it could be to obtain concessions and privileges at Tegucigalpa. Most of these fruit companies have obtained concessions from the government under the terms of which they agree to build a railroad from the North Coast to some point in the interior, and receive in return the right to appropriate for their own use amounts of land varying from 250 to 500 hectares (that is, from 617.5 to 1,235 acres) for every kilometer constructed along the main line and its branches. They are allowed to improve the ports to which their steamers sail and to build wharves for the use of which they charge a fee to other exporters. The object of the government in making these contracts has been to provide means of communication between the Atlantic ports and the interior towns, with the idea of extending the railroads eventually to the capital, but the fruit companies, interested merely in securing land suitable for the planting of bananas, have usually built only those sections of their lines which are in low, flat country, and when this has been accomplished have turned their attention to the construction of branches through districts of the same kind. Most of them are under obligations to extend the railways to the interior towns within a certain term of years, but the government seems so far to have been unable to find means to give effect to this part of the contracts. The desire to secure railway communication between the capital and the North Coast has been so strong that valuable and far-reaching privileges have often been granted, with little consideration and with no effective safeguards, to companies which have promised more than they had any intention of carrying out; and other concessions, often actually prejudicial to the interests of the Republic, have been secured occasionally by foreigners who have aided revolutionary leaders in securing control of the government. Because of the lessons learned through many hard experiences with unscrupulous promoters, however, the native authorities are much more cautious of late about investigating the character and financial standing of persons applying to them for favors, and the majority of the contracts recently entered into have been more equitable in their terms and more explicit in their provisions than those of former years.

The North Coast not only exports bananas, but also small quantities of lumber, cattle, rubber, and other products. Special concessions have been granted from time to time for cutting mahogany and cedar, providing usually that the government shall receive five dollars, United States currency, for every tree; and contracts have been made occasionally with foreigners for the development of other natural resources. Since the beginning of the European war many of the planters, who have been unable to export their bananas because of the withdrawal of the steamers which had hitherto carried them to the United States, have turned their attention to the breeding of cattle and hogs, which thrive on the otherwise useless fruit, and which are readily sold either in Honduras itself or in the neighboring countries. This new industry has saved many of the foreigners along the Coast from the ruin which in 1914 seemed inevitable, and there is every reason to suppose that it will become more and more important in the future.

The commercial relations of Honduras with the outside world are small as compared with some of the neighboring countries. The chief exports, and almost the only ones which reach large amounts, are the bananas from the foreign-owned plantations on the North Coast and the silver from the one large mine already mentioned. The coffee crop, cultivated by primitive methods on small patches of ground, little more than suffices to supply the local demand. Other products,--hides, lumber, cocoanuts, etc.,--are shipped abroad in comparatively small amounts. The imports differ little in character from those of the other Central American countries. Their amount is small because the people have no crop which provides them with money for the purchase of foreign goods. The imports somewhat exceed the exports at the present time because of the railway material and mining machinery which is being brought in by foreign investors, and because a certain amount of goods is undoubtedly being paid for every year under present conditions by the shipment abroad of silver coin. By far the largest part of the Republic’s trade is with the United States, and more than half of it is carried on through the North Coast ports, which have regular steamer connection with New Orleans and Mobile. The interior and the South Coast, which have no outlet at the present time except through Amapala, have few exports, and can buy little from foreign countries because of their poverty and because the expense of transporting goods from Amapala to the capital and from there to the interior towns is so great that most imported articles are far beyond the reach of the mass of the people.

In spite of the poverty which characterizes Honduras today, her future is not necessarily less promising than that of other parts of Central America. Her people are not backward because they are degenerate, but because they have been prevented from developing the natural resources of their country by the lack of means of transportation and by continual civil war. As has already been stated, they are by no means lacking in intelligence or ability. The country itself, perhaps, does not enjoy the natural advantages which have brought about the prosperity of some of its coffee-growing neighbors, but it nevertheless possesses great fertile tracts which are as yet hardly explored, and great undeveloped mineral resources, which will be opened to the world by the building of railways and the investment of foreign capital, if the present era of peace continues. There is no section of the Isthmus more favorably situated for banana growing, for cattle raising, or for mining than are the northern departments of Honduras. The Caribbean Coast, and the great plains and open valleys tributary to its ports, which are already more important commercially than the older settlements of the interior and the southern departments, seem likely in the near future to become the home of the larger portion of the Republic’s inhabitants. If this occurs, and if the railways already under construction are extended through this region into the interior, there will be no other country of Central America so easily accessible from the United States and Europe, and none which should enjoy closer commercial and cultural relations with the outside world.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] For a more complete discussion of the Washington Conference, see

## Chapter X .

[22] The rates charged are equivalent to $10 in gold for each passenger, and $1.20 to $1.60 per hundred pounds for freight. The distance is eighty-one miles.

##