In 1540 Cortez, the Conqueror of Mexico, directed Alonzo Caceres, one of his lieutenants, to proceed with an army of one thousand men to the Province of Honduras, which had been subdued by Alvarado a few years before, and select a suitable site for a city midway between the two oceans. Caceres was a pioneer of most excellent discretion, and so good a judge of distance was he that if a straight line were drawn from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the centre would be just three miles north of the plaza of Comayagua. A modern engineer, with all the scientific appliances at his disposal, could not have obeyed instructions more accurately; and as for location, there are few finer sites in the world than the elevated plain upon which the little capital of Honduras stands. A semicircle of mountains enclose it, with a wall of peaks six and seven thousand feet high upon one side, while upon the other a great plain stretches away nearly forty miles, gradually sloping to the eastward. The altitude of the city is about twenty-three hundred feet above the sea, and the climate is a perpetual June, the thermometer seldom varying more than twenty degrees during the entire year, and averaging about 75° Fahrenheit. The soil is deep, rich, and fertile, and the productions of the plain are tropical; but beyond the city, in the foothills of the mountains and upon their slopes, corn, wheat, and other staples of the temperate zones can be raised in enormous quantities with a minimum of labor. The pineapple and the palm tree are growing within two hours’ ride of waving wheat-fields, while orange and apple orchards stand within sight of each other. [Illustration: A CONSPICUOUS LANDMARK.] Comayagua is said to have at one time contained nearly thirty thousand inhabitants, but at present it has no more than one-fifth of that number; for, like all of the Central American cities, its population has been reduced since the independence of the country, and, like the most of them, it is in a state of decay. Everything is dilapidated, and nothing is ever repaired. No sign of prosperity appears anywhere. Commercial stagnation has been its normal condition for sixty years, and the indolence and indifference of the people has not been disturbed for that period, except by political insurrections. No one seems to have anything to do. The aristocrats swing lazily in their hammocks, or discuss politics over the counters of the _tiendas_, or at the club, while the poor beg in the streets, and manage to sustain life upon the fruits which Nature has so profligately showered upon them. Nowhere upon the earth’s surface exist greater inducements to labor, nowhere can so much be produced with so little effort; and the vast resources of the country present the most tempting opportunity for capital and enterprise, for nearly every acre of the land is susceptible to some sort of profitable development. [Illustration: THE TRAIL TO THE CAPITAL.]