Central America

“ Central America, and you are not long in a republic before you learn which merchant or which bank or which railroad company controls it, and you soon grow to look upon a mule loaded with boxes bearing the trade-mark of a certain business-house with more respect than upon a soldier who wears the linen ribbon of the government. ”

“ After the truth had trickled out about the forests and savannahs of the semi-tropical southeast, the vast deserts and striking headlands of the southwest, the spreading central plains with their immeasurable herds of buffalo, and the coastal mountains and misty valleys of California, no one would ever again think of the upper part of the continent as a mere bulb perched on the thin stem of Central America and Mexico. ”

“ For decades past Central America has been an unknown land to the United States. We have contentedly supposed that the only crop was that of revolutions and the only resources a few jungle fruits. But at last we are discovering Central America, and some of us are astonished to there find vast areas, fertile soils, varied and valuable products, intelligent peoples, a volume of commerce and climate fit for Eden. We knew little and cared less about Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama ”

“ 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. ”

“ We in the United States should be most happy if the states of Central America might move with greater rapidity along the pathway of such prosperity, of such progress; to the end that we may share, through commerce and friendly intercourse, in your new prosperity, and aid you by our prosperity.
We cannot fail, gentlemen, to be admonished by the many failures which have been made by the people of Central America to establish agreement among themselves which would be lasting, that the task you have before you is no easy one. ”

“ Away from the coasts, where there is fever, Central America is a wonderful country, rich and beautiful, and burdened with plenty, but its people make it a nuisance and an affront to other nations, and its parcel of independent little states, with the pomp of power and none of its dignity, are and will continue to be a constant danger to the peace which should exist between two great powers. ”

“ The republic of Salvador, the only one of Central America not having a coast line on the Atlantic, is 572 bounded on the north and east by Honduras, on the south-east by Fonseca Bay, on the south by the Pacific Ocean, and on the north-west by Guatemala. ”

“ The comparative isolation of Central America, and the character of its climate and productions, all favoured a more settled life; with, as genuine results, its architecture, sculpture, metallurgy, hieroglyphics, writing, and all else that gives so novel a character to the memorials of the Central American nations. But great as is their contrast with the wild tribes of the continent, the highest phases of native civilisation will not compare with the arts of Egypt, in centuries before Cadmus taught letters to the rude shepherds of Attica, or the wolf still suckled her cubs on the Palatine hill. ”

“ Central North-America is to an extraordinary degree worked out everywhere in careful detail, in moderate hill and valley, in undulating prairie and fertile plain,—not tossed into barren mountain-masses and table-lands, like that vast desert plateau which stretches through Central Asia,—not struck out in blank, like the Russian steppes and the South American llanos, as if Nature had wanted leisure to elaborate and finish. ”

“ Central America, occupied by no less than a dozen distinct linguistic stocks, forms a fourth cultural district. Its peoples show not only the influences of the Maya and Nahua to the north (a tribe of the Nahuatlan stock had penetrated as far south as Lake Nicaragua) , but also of the Chibchan civilization of the southern continent, dominant in the Isthmus of Panama, and extending beyond Costa Rica up into Nicaragua. In addition, there is more than a suggestion of influence from the Antilles and from the sea-faring Carib. Here, we can truly say, is the meeting-place of the continents. ”

“ Thus far in North America we have followed the Spaniards in their pacification and settlement of Castilla del Oro, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Between these territories is situated the province of Veragua, subsequently called Nueva Cartago. Though rich in metals and near to Darien, such was the indomitable fierceness of the natives, and the ruggedness and sterility of the country, that this, the spot on Tierra Firme where the first attempt at settlement was made, was the last province of Central America that became subject to European domination. ”

“ All the splendid territories from Peru to Mexico have, after three centuries of Spanish rule, sunk into a state of demoralization and degeneracy, owing to the listless, labour-hating, sluggish mestizo races that inhabit it, such as only the immigration of one of the hardy northern races can ever adequately remedy. In a previous visit to Central America, I have wandered through its rich scenery, clad in the hues of perpetual summer, and smiling in exuberance of fertility, and everywhere the same impression was made upon me. ”

“ They can turn their bewildered eyes toward the south and see beyond its clean white border the mainland stretching off in billows of burnished green to the far-away hazy horizon, where like a voluptuous beauty it imprints a kiss upon the blushing sky ”

“ The most numerous class of population in Central America, next to the pure Indians, are the ladinos, most of whom are half-breeds, which include the mestizos, mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, and zambos. ”

“ Central America (3,000) , territory of fertile tableland sloping gradually to both oceans, occupied chiefly by a number of small republics, lying between Tehuantepec and Panama in N. America; it includes the republics of Guatemala, Honduras, St. Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and a few adjoining fractions of territory. ”

“ The Latin race conquered Central America and South America, a perfect Eden of natural loveliness, one hundred years prior to the settlement of the Anglo-Saxon; yet to-day they constitute but a thin layer over a scarcely populated country. Their leaders were men of unbounded ambition, rapacious, of great endurance, but cruel and unscrupulous. They sought adventure, expecting it would bring them gold and silver. For that end they plundered, despoiled and enslaved the Indians. ”

“ The eastern boundary of Central America was usually regarded as identical with that of Costa Rica until 1903, when the republic of Panama was formed out of the northern territories of Colombia; and the more modern definition given above does not command the universal assent of geographers, because it fails to include the whole region up to the natural frontier on the north-west, i.e. the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. ”

“ Across the borders of the United States—almost within arm's reach of the eager, stirring, high-strung men of the new generation, there were tens of thousands of square miles of undeveloped territory—territory that was fabulously rich in ore, in timber, in oil, in fertility. On every side the lands stretched away—Mexico, the West Indies, Central America, Canada—with opportunity that was to be had for the taking. ”

“ HISTORICAL REVIEW. Thus we have traced the history of Spanish conquest and colonization in Central America from the time when Rodrigo de Bastidas first touched Tierra Firme to the close of the eighteenth century. We have seen the sword and the cross side by side, without a shadow of right or recompense, enter in and take possession of the broad area from Darien to New Spain; then sitting down to wrangle and to rest. During the process of gradual extinction the natives broke out in occasional rebellions ”

“ This Antillean area, I shall here call the Columbian Continent, as the great discoverer landed at its two east and west extremities—the land-fall on San Salvador in the Bermudas, and on the coast of Honduras in Central America, as well as at Cuba, and at the mouths of the Orinoco—and his bones rested for a long time in the soil of San Domingo. It—this Columbean Continent—is a significant intercalation. It unites North and South America, but it unites them subject to the phases of its own generation. ”

“ Considering the size of Central-American republics, one feared lest the train overrun the boundary lines and trespass upon the sovereignty of Salvator or Honduras. But it stayed within its own domain, turning eastward, and climbing out of the coffee-covered Pacific slopes to the pine-clad heights of central Guatemala, landing us in the evening at Guatemala City, 4870 feet above the sea.
III
To the American at home, all Central America is a heat-stricken jungle. He invariably greets the returned traveler with, “I’ll bet you’re glad to get back to God’s country!” ”

“ Only this, that there has long existed in Central America—in which we would embrace Southern Mexico and Yucatan—an American civilization superior to any other on this continent at the time of its discovery. There remains still one more theory to consider: Was it possible for this civilization to have been developed by the people placed here by the Creator? ”

“ Discoveries and investigations carried on during the 19th century have thrown much light on the splendid past of Central America. The still extant ruins of great buildings, unlike anything which is known in the old world, testify to the high culture attained in pre-Columbian days by several native peoples differing greatly from one another in speech and racial affinities. As a science the archaeology of Central America has scarcely yet emerged from its infancy. ”

“ From the southern border of the United States through Mexico, the republics of Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay, the larger part of Brazil, Argentina, down to Patagonia, with the exceptions above mentioned, there is not now and there never has been any farm labor but white farm labor since the settlement of that vast continent ”

“ Inhabitants.—In 1905 the population of Central America numbered about 4,750,000, and this total tends to increase, despite the unhealthy climate of many districts, the terribly high average of infant mortality, and the slow progress of immigration. ”

“ So much, however, has come to the knowledge of our time, as suffices to prove that the nations of Central America were very far advanced in political and social development as well as in science and art. ”

“ To give to each of the Spanish-American provinces, and later to each of the federal and independent states, covering as they do with dead monotony centuries of unchanging action and ideas, time and space equal to that which may be well employed in narrating north-western occupation and empire-building would be no less impracticable than profitless. ”

“ For a complete survey of this ancient civilization, so far as it has been investigated, it is necessary to include with Central America, properly so called, a considerable portion of the Mexican territories south and east of the isthmus of Tehuantepec. The peoples inhabiting Yucatan, Campeche, Guatemala, Chiapas and Oaxaca present at the first view striking ethnical differences. ”

“ Beyond this, nothing is known of their [94] history; but the accounts we have of such buildings as Copan, Palenque, and Uxmal, make it highly probable that Central America was the ancient seat of a civilization, in all essential points similar to those of India and Egypt; that is to say, similar to them in respect to the unequal distribution of wealth and power, and the thraldom in which the great body of the people consequently remained. ”

“ Apart from the German agricultural settlements in Guatemala and elsewhere, the foreign population is chiefly confined to the seaports and other centres of commerce, Great Britain, Germany and the United States being largely represented among the wealthier classes of residents; while the foreign labourers are mostly Italians or negroes, with a few Chinese on the Pacific coast.
History.—Central America was discovered by Columbus in August 1502; and part of the territory which is now Costa Rica was conquered by the Spaniards under Pedro Arias de Avila after 1513. ”

“ Every motive that could whet the cupidity, or excite the curiosity of explorers, has tempted the traveler's research—tales of Indian cities buried in the depths of the forests; of natural canals, along which the native dongos passed from sea to sea; the known mineral wealth of the country, and the desire of the most powerful monarchs of Europe for its exploration —but all have failed to make us acquainted with the interior of Central America. ”

“ Taking therefore into consideration the prevalence of trade-winds blowing towards America, and the peculiar conditions of architectural and astronomical intelligence possessed by the Mexican Indians, there are certain inferences which may be accepted. It is not improbable that men belonging to European, Moorish, or Asiatic races arrived in Central America during a period between the sixth and eleventh centuries. ”