All descriptions of a growing town must be unsatisfactory, so rapidly does the population and topography change; and a few words may convey all the geographical knowledge needed. Rolling ground, which might easily be drained, but is not; streets generally at right angles, none paved, and most of them exceedingly muddy in wet weather; fences of the rudest form, mostly sticks bound together with vines; houses with walls of adobe or of wattle, in both cases covered with mud plaster and whitewashed, none of them over one story, but with high roofs thatched with palm; yards, but no gardens; stores here and there built of boards from New Orleans, and occupied by foreigners,—French, Germans, Italians, Americans (_del Norte_); a dilapidated chapel on or among the neglected foundations of an intended church; beyond this the barracks on a beautiful point; children of all ages playing in the dirt and merrily greeting the passer-by with their black, shiny, healthy faces; palm-trees, mangoes, sapotes, bread-fruit, oranges, anonas, bananas, and coffee-trees scattered without order, and wholly uncultivated,—make the external features of this place. No vehicles are in the streets, though a few horses roam untethered through the town. Every burden is carried on the heads of men or women. The house-doors are all open; but the interior is generally too dark to disclose much of the inner mysteries to the stranger. Westward from the town lies the new Campo Santo, and beyond this the almost impenetrable forest. [Illustration: A STREET IN LIVINGSTON.] The situation of Livingston is good,—at the mouth of one of the finest rivers of the Atlantic coast of Central America. The climate is very healthful and agreeable, and the frequent communication by two lines of steamers with New Orleans, one line with New York, and another with Liverpool, make it an important business-centre. All the fine coffee from Alta Verapaz and the fruit from the plantations on the Chocon and Polochic is shipped here; and the product might be indefinitely increased. The drawbacks are a bar with only a fathom of water at the mouth of a river navigable otherwise for many miles by the largest steamers, no wharves, little enterprise on the part of the native inhabitants, and a frequent sea-breeze in the afternoon, which sometimes makes landing through the rough water on the bar unpleasant. The population is about two thousand, chiefly Caribs; and long inaction and complete lack of enterprise have produced a people poor and careless of riches if obtained at the price of labor. As in all similar places, there is no lack of adventurers of the lowest character.