The yuca is not only useful for food, but valuable from an industrial point of view, as the starch it yields could readily be made an extensive article of commerce.

The bread fruit grows to perfection in Nicaragua, although few of the natives seem to appreciate its full value. It can be easily raised from a slip and forms a tree with massive trunk and large dark green leaves, as handsome as it is useful. It begins to bear about three years after planting. It yields two crops in the year, one lasting through March and April and the other from August to October, although if a variety of trees were planted judiciously the fruit could be obtained every month in the year. Each fruit will weigh from six to ten pounds, and it is delicious either fried or boiled.

The cocoanut tree, which in the tropics is one of the most useful productions of nature, is abundant. It commences bearing at from five to seven years old and continues to yield for many years. On the Caribbean coast, it is an important article of commerce, although no efforts have been made to utilize the fiber of the husk, which in the East Indies has added so largely to the profits derived from cocoanut groves.

Frijoles, the brown beans that form such a prominent article of diet throughout Spanish America, are produced abundantly in all parts of the Republic, while all other edibles and fruits of the tropics yield ample crops, such as oranges, lemons, limes, citrons, shaddocks, pine apples, mameys, chirimoyas, guavas, mangoes, and aguacates (alligator pears). The vegetables of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly in the more elevated districts, where cabbages, turnips, radishes, lettuce, egg plants, and tomatoes can be obtained with a minimum of labor and care.

CATTLE-RAISING INDUSTRY.

Cattle-raising is one of the greatest sources of the public wealth of Nicaragua. Its production is large enough to supply with

abundance all the necessities of home consumption, and to allow a very profitable commerce in the exportation of cattle.

Large haciendas, owned by the richest and most influential people of the country, are entirely devoted to this industry.

According to Señor Gamez, dairy farms in considerable numbers have been established in the neighborood of the principal eities and towns of the Republic, and are doing well.

Chapter VI.

THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL.

While the question of interoceanic communication across the American Isthmus has been continually presented to the attention of the civilized world, with more or less persistency, since the days of Columbus, and while the route by way of the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua has always been among those which offered the strongest claims for consideration, yet the special prominence of that route as a means to the end proposed may be said to date from the beginning of this century only, when that eminent explorer and scientist, the Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, published the account of observations made by him during a period of ten years spent in explorations and scientific research in the Spanish-American States of South and Central America. In his "Personal Narrative of Travels," Volume VI, he remarks:

The five points that present the practicability of a communication from sea to sea are situated between the fifth and eighteenth degrees of north latitude. They all consequently belong to the States washed by the Atlantic-to the territory of the Mexican and Colombian Confederacies, or, to use the ancient geographical denominations, to the intendencies of Oaxaca and Vera Cruz and the provinces of Nicaragua, Panama, and Choco.

They are the Isthmus of Tehauntepec (latitude 16°-18°), between the sources of the Rio Chimalapa and the Rio del Passo, which empties itself into the Rio Huascualco or Goazcoalcos.

The Isthmus of Nicaragua (latitude 10°-12°), between the port of San Juan de Nicaragua and the coast of the Gulf of Papajuyo, near the volcanoes of Granada and Mombacho.