After leaving Gualan, the next place of importance, the road plunges into the denser tropics, where forests of the graceful bamboo, and the palms which are the personification of grace and beauty, alternate with plains fit for grazing. Ferns, tall canes, and the lianes predominate in vegetation, while birds with strange voices, insects with equally strange shapes and noisy lizards become the visible life of the jungle. The road follows near the Montagua River with its ever-varying shores, where much trouble has been experienced during the rainy season. The large bridge across this stream has been torn away twice during the rainy season, and, in a number of places, the track has been washed away or has slipped into the stream a number of times. Every few miles there are section houses for the accommodation of the track employees built in the sombre forest. The management found it almost impossible to get the Indians to work in these tropical swamps. Hundreds of southern negroes had been brought over, being lured by the promise of $1.50 per day, in gold, and their board. Most of them would leave by the first boat if they had money enough to get back or could work their passage across. A party of twenty-two had just come over on the boat that took me away and a more dejected lot of “cullud gemmen” I never saw, for they had already heard of the life that was in store for them, and they were trying to devise ways and means for their return to “God’s Country,” as one of them called it. Puerto Barrios, the terminus of this railroad, will be the great distributing centre not alone for Guatemala, but also for San Salvador, which is the smallest but most densely populated of the Central American republics. It is only a four days’ journey from New Orleans and Mobile with the present service, and the nine hundred miles of water could be covered in two and one-half to three days easily. At present it takes fifteen to eighteen days from New York to Guatemala City, via Panama, and nearly as long by the monthly steamer from that city to Puerto Barrios. The steamers from San Francisco to San Jose consume almost an equal amount of time. With proper service Guatemala City could be reached in four days from New Orleans, which would certainly give the United States a great advantage over any European country in the commerce of the future. The distance by rail from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or from Puerto Barrios to San Jose, is two hundred and seventy miles. The opening of the railway will also reduce to an appreciable extent the freight charges which hitherto have been heavy because it was necessary to transport everything on mule back for seventy miles.