Small lakes are common enough in the northern part of Central America. The Laguna del Peten is about five hundred feet above the sea, nine leagues long and five broad. The Lago de Atitlan, in the Department of Sololà, is sixteen and a half miles long from San Lucas Toliman to San Juan, and eight miles wide from San Buenaventura to Canajpú, and soundings show a depth of a thousand feet. With the Laguna de Amatitlan, this will be described in the Itinerary. Of Honduras, the chief lakes are the Laguna de Caratasca, or Cartago, close on the Atlantic coast, thirty-six miles long by twelve wide; the Lago de Yojoa, between the Departments of Comayagua and Santa Bárbara, twenty-five miles long and from five to eight wide; the Lago de Cartina, eighteen miles by eight, and the Laguna de la Criba, fifteen by seven miles. Of all the lakes of Central America, none is so interesting commercially as the Lake of Nicaragua. It is large (ninety miles by forty), and the largest south of Lake Michigan. Of a depth sufficient for all vessels (forty-five fathoms in places), and connected with the Atlantic by the Rio San Juan, with the Lago de Managua (thirty-five miles by sixteen), by the Tipitapa, it has the serious disadvantage of being a volcanic basin, whose bottom may at any time be elevated above the surface,—as in the case of the volcano of Ometepec. Whether the channel between these two lakes is permanent, is a matter of some doubt, as travellers have lately found no water flowing from Managua. The Lago de Guija, between Guatemala and Salvador, is seventeen miles long from east to west, and its mean width is six. Fishes and alligators abound, and its waters—which are not of the best quality—discharge through the Lempa to the Pacific. Another lake in Salvador has attracted attention in late years by a curious volcanic disturbance in its midst; Ilopango will be described with the volcanoes. With this bare list of some of the prominent features of the country, we may join a brief account of those other natural and political characteristics of what was once Spain’s stronghold on this continent that have most immediate relation to the present inhabitants. Leaving Guatemala for a separate chapter, the other four republics may be described as follows:—