The noble landscapes which open to the view, of wooded mountains and majestic peak, of romantic river valley, and the blue line of the tropic sea, are such as might well bring out those attributes of the poet and the artist which exist in the Spanish American mentality. In brief, there are here, in each State, the elements of a quiet and pleasing existence, far, it is true, from the world's more ambitious centres, but nevertheless capable of producing peace and plenty. Alas! however, for the unsettled temperament which cannot yet assimilate the bounties of Providence in such method as shall ensure their equitable enjoyment. [Illustration: CUTTING SUGAR-CANE IN CENTRAL AMERICA. Vol. I. To face p. 96.] To the foreign traveller, Central America might afford an extremely pleasing field of travel. There is a charm in the remains of the prehistoric American cultures, the carved walls of the old temples, the buried idols, the ancient industries. Restful and quaint are these little towns with the stamp of the Spanish Colonial architecture. Here man and Nature soon forget the bloodshed and the enmity of the torn and stained pages of history. The simple folk of the countryside are full of courtesy, the needs of life are cheap and plentiful, for the earth is bountiful. All these are elements which impress themselves upon the mind of the traveller here. This, then, is Central America, that region so slightly known to the world outside that, as elsewhere remarked, its very geographical position is often a matter of doubt. But, in the future--it may be distant--it cannot be doubted that, with its advantages, the region must play a more important part in the developing world. Three Latin American island-Republics enclose the Caribbean Sea and Spanish Main to the north: those of Cuba, Hayti, and Santo Domingo, upon which, however, we cannot here dilate at length. Nature has, in general, endowed these regions of the Antilles with great beauty, but man, in their past history, has made them the scene of the utmost cruelty, first by the Spaniards, in the ill-treatment and extermination of the gentle and harmless natives, and second, in the slave trade. Cuba stretches its long, thin bulk from the Yucatan Strait, off the Mexican coast, and the line is continued by the Island of Hayti, containing the Republic of that name, the famous Hispaniola of the days of the Conquistadores, now a French-speaking negro State, and Santo Domingo, whose capital, the oldest settlement in the New World, founded in 1496, may be regarded as the most perfect example of a sixteenth-century Spanish town. Its cathedral contains the reputed burial place of Columbus.