The Santa Maria (_Calophyllum calaba_) is much used in house-building. Rosewood (_Dalbergia_) grows to a large size and is most beautifully veined, as is also the exquisite Palo de mulatto (_Spondias lutea_); but both sink in water, and are difficult to transport. I have used rosewood logs twenty inches thick to support a cistern, as they are almost imperishable, and not attacked by insects. Sapodilla (_Achras sapota_) is nearly as heavy. When freshly hewn, its color is curiously red, beefy in tone; but it soon loses this on exposure, and shrinks considerably. It splits easily, but is so tough that splinters are used as nails in soft woods. Salmwood (_Jacaranda, sp._) is light colored, and much used for door and window frames. Ziricote is beautifully veined. Two species of pine are common, the _Pinus cubensis_, or _ocote_, whence is obtained the fat-pine which serves as candle for a great majority of the people of Central America, and the long-leaved pine (_P. macrophylla_) of the mountains. I have placed in the Appendix a list of other woods valuable in many ways, but never exported, and known only by their local names. The two products that in former years ranked high among the Guatemalan exports, indigo and cochineal, have now been so completely superseded by other dyes, the product of the laboratory, that they no longer need be considered of importance, although enough indigo is still made to supply native dyers, the Indios especially prizing the true indigo blue. Both dye-stuffs were chiefly cultivated on the Pacific slopes, and I have seen half-neglected _nopaleras_ in the vicinity of Antigua and Amatitlan, the nopal or opuntia generally yielding place to sugar-cane and retiring to the roadside and neglected corners, while the cochineal insect, unfed and uncared-for, is gradually disappearing. In 1883 there were exported 135.02 cwt. of indigo, valued at $16,881.25; while in 1884 only 62.67 cwt., of a value of $7,833.75. A more decided decrease is seen in the exportation of cochineal in those years, the amounts being 184.01 cwt., of a value of $9,200.50, in 1883, against 8.12 cwt., valued at $406, in 1884. It has been my fortune to visit many of the tropical regions of the world, and I have visited them not from idle curiosity, but with a genuine interest in their inhabitants and productions. I have looked upon the human, animal, and vegetable population of these places as closely as my limited knowledge and the time allowed me would permit. It is an agreeable study to place the physical capabilities of a region, the richness of the soil, the climatic influences, the geographical and commercial situation, side by side with the people, their industry, strength, and intelligence, and from these premises draw the conclusion of the might-be.