At last the towering walls become broken and finally recede, banana plantations again appear, and the river broadens out into the Gulf of Golfete, which is a pretty little body of water about two miles broad and eight or ten miles in length, and is dotted with a number of pretty little green islands. Another connecting stream leads into that inland sea called Lake Izabal. On one bank of this stream stands the old Spanish fort of San Felipe, which was never very formidable and is now only a joke as fortifications go. In the olden time Port Izabal on the lake was the principal port and the approach was protected by this fortification. It is nearly forty-eight miles from Livingston. The high walls stand out boldly, but they are partly covered with climbing vines and mosses. It affords, however, a fine view of Lake Izabal with its broad expanse of blue waters and its shores a seemingly impenetrable jungle, except where a cleared space marks the location of a banana plantation. Its wooded shores are low, but the land rises gently to the background of mountains many miles away. Occasionally showers of short duration follow along the mountain slopes, and when the clouds have passed away the most brilliant of rainbows appears. As there are showers within view almost every day it might almost be called a land of rainbows. The waters of the lake are alive with many varieties of fish, the quiet coves and bays are the haunts of the alligator, while in the jungle may be found the small deer and bear of the country. The old town of Izabal, once the port and a prosperous place, but now dwindled to a straggling, thatch-roofed village, reposes in perpetual _siesta_ on the southern shore of the lake. Santa Cruz is another village on the north shore, where there is a sawmill and a small collection of native huts and a few better buildings which house the white inhabitant. A number of small streams pour their waters into Lake Izabal. The principal stream, however, is the Polochic, which is navigable as far as Panzos, a distance of about thirty or forty miles, for light-draught steamers. There is a regular weekly service maintained by a steamer which brings down the mails, passengers and freight from Coban, the capital of Alta Verapaz, to make connection with the weekly steamer sailings for New Orleans. The river is not very wide, the course rather tortuous and the current swift, especially in the rainy seasons, so that boating is quite an exciting experience for the novice. This route was formerly and still is the main trade route for the natives of the Coban and Peten district who bring their produce down the Polochic and Chocon rivers in their dugouts, called pitpans, to the lake and then to the markets of Livingston. It is quite a common sight to pass their boats loaded with cocoanuts, bananas, plantains or other fruits or fish, with the brown native and his wife industriously paddling the same.