J. RUFINO BARRIOS 190 DUGOUT CANOE ON THE MONTAGUA RIVER 230 A POLICEMAN OF BELIZE 236 ENGLISH HOMES AT BELIZE 239 A STREET IN BELIZE 242 THE HONDURAS NAVY, THE _TATUMBLA_ 249 PUERTO CORTEZ 250 A TYPICAL BEGGAR 269 SOLDIERS OF HONDURAS 272 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GUATEMALA CHAPTER I TOLTEC LAND THERE is a vast amount of ignorance and wrong conception prevalent concerning the republics of Central America. Mexico has been exploited a great deal in recent years and the whereabouts of Panama on the map is now pretty generally known, but the five republics lying between these two countries have been too much overlooked by recent writers. We are sometimes inclined to appropriate the term republic and the name American to ourselves as though we held a copyright on these words. And yet here at our very doors are five nations, each of which lays great stress on the term republic as applied to itself, and whose citizens proudly call themselves Americanos. The ideas of many concerning the Central American republics are drawn from the playlife of popular novels and the comic-opera stage. Although there may have been some foundation for their portrayal of political life along the shores of the Caribbean Sea, and there are some things approaching the burlesque to our eyes, yet there is a more serious side to life in these countries. There are thousands of Guatemalans, Honduraneans, Costa Ricans, Salvadoreans, and Nicaraguans, who are seriously trying to solve the problem of self-government, and they are improving each year. A whole country can not be plowed up and resown in a season as the corn-fields of last year were transformed by the farmers into the waving fields of golden grain this year. It is a long and hard task that is before these struggling Spanish-Americans, but they are now on the right road and will win. They deserve our sympathetic consideration rather than ridicule; and it behooves Americans to inform themselves concerning a people about whom they have thrown a protecting mantle in the shape of the Monroe Doctrine, and who lie at our very doors. Furthermore, the opportunities for commercial conquest invite the earnest thought and study of the great American public.