I am aware that I have not analyzed the soil, nor (so long as it produced well) have I cared whether it was “composed of the _débris_ of these limestones and lava mountains,” or “tempered by the decaying vegetation of the centuries past.” Nor have I entered into any essay to show how the lofty sierras of Honduras differed from those of Nicaragua, or those of the islands from the Spanish Main. It would be easy to give you a chapter stating that “the summits of some of them are of hard sandstone or granite; some are covered with layers of mould of different colors and density, sometimes mixed with stones of different degrees of hardness, and more or less calcinable; and some of them of various vitrifiable substances.” But I take it that the way to make a thing useful is also to have it agreeable. Who reads, for example, Mr. Wells’ well-written but ponderous “Travels and Explorations in Honduras”? Central America, by common assent, not only realizes in its geographical position the ancient idea of the centre of the world, but is in its physical aspect and configuration of surface an epitome of all the countries and of all climes. “High mountain ranges, isolated peaks, elevated table lands, and broad and fertile plains, are here grouped together, relieved by beautiful lakes and majestic rivers; the whole teeming with animal and vegetable life, and possessing every variety of climate from torrid heat to the cool and bracing temperature of eternal spring.” On the Atlantic slope rain falls in greater or less abundance for the entire year; vegetation is rank, and the climate damp and proportionately insalubrious, while the Pacific slope and the elevated regions of the interior are comparatively dry and healthy. With this variety of “physical circumstances,” also, the people differ, and have always differed, in a direct and corresponding ratio; the inhabitants of the cool and healthy regions having at the time of the discovery systematized forms of government and worship, while the hotter and less salubrious coasts were occupied by a distinct family of men unfixed in their abodes, having no social enjoyments, and living on the natural fruits of the earth. In Central America, therefore, Dr. Smith’s celebrated essay on “Civilization--its Independence of Physical Circumstance,” receives a striking illustration, the damp Musquito coasts having propagated only a rude tribe of men; while San Salvador, for example, sustains a population highly civilized, and equal in number to New England.