_Nutmegs._—While I do not know of a dozen trees of the nutmeg, outside of the Chocon plantation, the soil and climate are admirably suited to this tree. The nutmeg requires at least eighty inches of rainfall per annum, begins to bear when eight or ten years old, and improves for a century. The first few years the yield is from one to five thousand nuts, of from sixty-eight to one hundred and twenty to the pound. In the Botanic Gardens, Trinidad, the net yield per tree has been more than twenty pounds (say eighteen hundred nuts), with an average price of fifty-four cents per pound. This would amount to three hundred and fifty dollars per acre. The value of the mace is additional. In the Chocon region the trees have not yet matured; but there seems no doubt that the conditions of growth and fruitfulness are better than on the Island of Trinidad, and with these trees planted thirty feet apart, or forty-five to an acre, allowing one third to be male or barren trees, we should have at least 1,600 × 30 = 48,000 nutmegs to the acre. Averaging the nuts at ninety to the pound, the crop would weigh five hundred and thirty-three pounds, and at fifty cents per pound would amount to two hundred and sixty-six dollars. Considering the less expense for care this permanent crop would require, the profit would be sufficient even at forty cents per pound. The red, fresh mace does not bring so high a price as when old and golden-colored. _Maiz._—Indian corn (_Zea mays_) grows well all over the republic, and forms the most important food of the Indian tribes. Yet the kinds cultivated are not of fine quality, although growing freely. The stalks are often a dozen feet high, and three ears are not uncommon. Three crops can be raised annually. The corn is always stored and transported in the husk. When the Spaniards first came among the Central Americans, they found the milpas of maiz carefully cultivated; and as to-day the little cornfields are found all over the country cultivated precisely as the ancients were doing centuries ago, so the product is to-day prepared and eaten in the same old-time manner. Mr. Belt,[58] in his work on Nicaragua,—unfortunately too little known,—describes the preparation of maiz better than I have seen done elsewhere. He says: “In Central America the bread made from the maiz is prepared at the present day exactly as it was in ancient Mexico. The grain is first of all boiled, along with wood-ashes or a little lime. The alkali loosens the outer skin of the grain, and this is rubbed off with the hands in running water; a little of it at a time is placed upon a slightly concave stone,—called a _metatle_, from the Aztec _metatl_,—on which it is rubbed with another stone, shaped like a rolling-pin. A little water is thrown on it as it is bruised, and it is thus formed into paste. A ball of the paste is taken and flattened out between the hands into a cake about ten inches diameter