Guatemala and Her People of To-day: Being an Account of the Land, Its History and Development; the People, Their Customs and Characteristics; to Which Are Added Chapters on British Honduras and the Republic of Honduras, with References to the Other Countries of Central America, Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa RicaWinter, Nevin O. (Nevin Otto)
History
Guatemala and Her People of To-day: Being an Account of the Land, Its History and Development; the People, Their Customs and Characteristics; to Which Are Added Chapters on British Honduras and the Republic of Honduras, with References to the Other Countries of Central America, Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica
Winter, Nevin O. (Nevin Otto)
Central America; Guatemala
Of the valuable woods, mahogany easily takes first place. These great
and majestic trees are found in considerable number in the forests of
northeastern Guatemala. Those situated near the larger streams have been
cut down. Farther inland the difficulty of transportation makes the
marketing of the logs an expensive undertaking, although the standing
trees can be purchased from the government for a very small sum. The
logwood tree, as well as other dyewoods, is found bordering on all the
great lagoons and some portions of the Gulf coast. It is a tree of
medium size and peculiar appearance, attaining a height of twenty or
thirty feet. The trunk is gnarled and full of cavities, and separates a
short distance above the ground. The heart, the only valuable portion,
is a deep red. The logwood is found in the same localities as the
mahogany, and they are districts that are generally flooded in the rainy
season. The timbers are cut in the dry season and then floated down to
the ports in the rainy season.
The palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees and a landscape
hardly seems tropical without these graceful trees. It is doubtful if
there is a single class of the tropical trees so essential to the native
as the palms. Houses, timber, firewood, fodder, food and drink, needles
and threads, wax and drugs are all obtained from palms of various
species. The Royal palm is the most graceful and majestic of all, and
there is no more imposing scene of arboreal beauty than the long avenues
of these beautiful trees so common in the American tropics. Their
smooth, tapering trunks, almost as hard as granite, tower upward for
eighty or even a hundred feet above the earth, bearing at the top a mass
of green, drooping plumes. These great white trunks, standing boldly out
upon verdure-clad slopes, so conspicuous among the tangled sea of vines
and jungle at their feet, and their plumes swaying gently in the
breezes, are a beautiful and imposing sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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