The characteristics, natural and human, which we have remarked in the northern part of Central America, as represented by the Republic of Guatemala, are found in varying degree in the sister States extending to the south. The general topography of the isthmian region which Central America embodies is that of a long backbone of mountainous highlands extending from Tehuantepec for eight hundred miles to the South American mainland. The physiography of the region, however, is associated with that of the Antilles rather than the northern and southern land masses, and its belts of volcanoes correspond to those of the West Indies. In earlier geological times the region probably consisted of isolated stretches of land and mountains, and before man appeared upon the earth there may have been not one but several isthmian "canals" or apertures, with the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific intermixing therein. Alternately rising and sinking--as evidenced by the "drowned" Valley of the Chagres, on the site of the Panama Canal, the land took on its present form, in which, however, it may be that final stability is not yet reached. It is fervently to be hoped, however, that the particular belt traversed by the Panama Canal will remain immune from any earth movements, for that great work of human ingenuity, carried out at such enormous cost, might otherwise be rendered useless in a single instant. Panama, however, forms the extreme south of Central America, and we must cast a glance at the sequence of States below Guatemala. Honduras is a land of considerable area, but among the most backward portions of the region. The efforts of its Government to encourage economic and commercial development have not been very well sustained and successful, and there are only two towns in the Republic of any size, one of which is the ancient capital Tegucigalpa, picturesquely situated upon its river in an amphitheatre of the hills, for Honduras is essentially a land of mountains and depths, as its name signifies. The great grassy plain of Comayagua, however, which extends across the country, upon which great herds of cattle feed, redeems the land from too broken a condition. The city of Comayagua was in earlier times the capital, but it was ruined by the wars of the Central American Federation, when, after an endeavour to establish some form of political unification quarrels set in.