[Illustration: Sulphur Spring.] From Tenedores the surveyed line of railroad extends up the valley of the Motagua to Gualan, thence up the ascent to the high plateau on which stands Chiquimula, and thence to Guatemala City, where it will connect with the road now in operation from that city to San José, on the Pacific, five thousand feet below. Before leaving the Atlantic coast we must again mention the numerous steamship lines from Livingston to New Orleans, New York, Belize, Puerto Cortez, Jamaica, and England. Communication may thus be had with the best markets for all tropical products. The lowlands are amply able to supply New Orleans, New York, and Boston with bananas, plantains, pine-apples, and coconuts, the latter growing most abundantly at Cabo de Tres Puntas on Manabique. The climate is healthful and not too hot, averaging for the year about 80°; and as there is no marked change of season, a perpetual June seems to exist. Capital alone is wanted to develop this Atlantic coast into the great fruit-producing orchard of the United States. Sugar-cane grows rapidly; and so strong is the soil that rattoon crops have been cut for twenty years without replanting, and no diminution of the saccharine yield has been noticed. Sugar can certainly be raised much cheaper here than in Cuba or in the Hawaiian Islands.[8] One day carries the crop to Belize, four days to New Orleans, and eight to Boston or New York. Yet, notwithstanding all these advantages, the Northern farmer wears out his life in the consumptive fields of New England, where his crops grow only four months of the year, instead of settling here, where he can plant any day of the year (except saints’ days, unless he employ coolies), and reap a rich harvest in due season. He sometimes goes to Florida, which is neither tropical nor temperate, which is nothing but a raised coral reef with a veneering of soil, and where frosts cut off his crops every few years. We often hear of the extreme unhealthfulness of the tropics; but is it generally known that more persons die of consumption in Massachusetts than of the most dreaded tropical diseases in Central America? The last time an official census was taken, Livingston had a population of a thousand, in round numbers, and the deaths of the year numbered seven,—one a centenarian, and two youths who fell from coconut-trees and broke their necks; while in Boston the rate for July, 1885, was 28.1 per thousand. The objection to being among a strange people and under a foreign government and strange laws may best be met by following me through the country, where my object was to answer these very objections for myself; and if my readers will patiently follow me, I will tell what I saw, and they may form their own opinions. [Illustration: Paddle and Machete.] CHAPTER III. ACROSS THE CONTINENT, WESTWARD TO COBAN.