The central government interferes but little with the local officials; and the small towns in the interior are almost self-governed. Neither do they pay any direct taxes, the only contributions to the national exchequer being fees for killing cattle, selling land or houses, and making agreements, and a government monopoly in the sale of tobacco and spirits. So the country folks lead an easy life, excepting in times of revolution, when they are pressed into the army. The Indian townships are better managed than those of the Spaniards and Mestizos; the plazas are kept freer from weeds, and the roads in good order. Probably nowhere but in tropical America can it be said that the introduction of European civilisation has caused a retrogression; and that those communities are the happiest and the best-governed who retain most of their old customs and habits. Yet there it is so. The civilisation that Cortez overthrew was more suitable for the Indians than that which has supplanted it. Who can read the accounts of the populous towns of Mexico and Central America in the time of Montezuma, with their magnificent buildings and squares; their gardens both zoological and botanical; their markets, attended by merchants from the surrounding countries; their beautiful cloth and feather work, the latter now a lost art; their picture writing; their cunning artificers in gold and silver; their astronomical knowledge; their schools; their love of order, of cleanliness, of decency; their morality and wonderful patriotism, without feeling that the conquest of Mexico was a deplorable calamity; that if that ancient civilisation had been saved it might have been Christianised and purified without being destroyed, and to-day have stood one of the wonders and delights of the world. Its civilisation was self-grown, it was indigenous, it was unique: a few poor remnants of its piety, love of order, and self-government still remain in remote Indian townships; but its learning, magnificence, and glory have gone for ever. On leaving Totagalpa, we took the road for Yalaguina. About a mile from the first-named town, the contorted schists cropped up again, and were followed, as before, by beds of soft decomposing trap, and these again by thick beds of quartz-conglomerate. This succession was repeated two or three times during the day's journey. The trap beds formed, by decomposition, a dark fertile soil. Wherever maize was planted on it, it was thriving greatly. We reached Yalaguina about two o'clock, and pushed on for Palacaguina, four leagues further on, passing for a considerable part of the road along the banks of a small stream, by the side of which were some large and fine fields of maize and beans.