of government is at the little town of Managua, built on the slope of a volcano on the south of the lake. Cattlerearing is one of the chief occupations of the inhabitants on the higher lands. Indigo, mahogany, cedar, logwood, Brazil wood, and hides, are the chief exports.

14. Costa Rica-the rich coast--is also mountainous. The central plateau between its capital-San José--and Cartago is the best cultivated region of the country Earthquakes are frequent. A very severe one in 1841 destroyed the town of Cartago. Coffee is the chief product for export.

15. Belize, or British Honduras, is mainly valuable for the mahogany and logwood trees cut from its forests, and floated down the rivers to the sea for export.

LESSON LXI.

THE WEST INDIES.-THE BAHAMAS AND LESSER ANTILLES.

1. If the reader casts his eye over the map of North America he will be struck with the crescent-like indentation in the southern part of the continent called the Gulf of Mexico. Stretching across the mouth of this gulf from near the southern point of Florida, and partly separating the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic, we note a vast number of islands and islets extending in the form of a rough curve as far as the mouth of the Orinoco in South America. These islands are familiarly known as the West Indies. They were so called from the belief of Columbus that he had lit upon a portion of India when he first sighted them.

2. The West India Islands are usually grouped in three divisions--the Bahamas on the north; the Lesser Antilles* to the south; and the Greater Antilles lying

Long before the time of Columbus a land called Antilla was supposed to lie to the west of the Azores; and when Columbus returned to Spain, it was affirmed that the land he had discovered must be the Antilla the world had so long dreamt of.

east and west between the other groups. The Lesser Antilles are again divided into the Windward and Leeward Islands. The area of the whole is a little over 90,000 square miles-that is, about the size of Great Britain and the population somewhat exceeds four millions.

3. Hayti is independent; all the other islands are held by European nations-Great Britain, Spain, France, Denmark, and Holland. The British West India Islands measure nearly 12,000 square miles, and have a population of about one million.

4. The West Indies lie almost entirely within the tropics, but the temperature of the islands is much modified by their close proximity to the sea, by the elevation of many of them, and by the sea breezes which blow over them. In Cuba ice forms occasionally in winter, but snow never falls. The highland regions in the interior are pleasant and healthy, but the coast districts are unhealthy, and yellow fever is epidemic. The rainy season lasts from May to November, and the dry season for the rest of the year.

5. The scourge of the West India Islands is the destructive hurricanes. These occur most frequently at the close of the summer, and the wind blows occasionally with such violence that the strongest trees are uprooted, and whole towns are destroyed in a few minutes.

6. The most important of the productions of these tropical islands belong to the vegetable kingdom. Here the sugar-cane and the coffee-tree flourish, the cocoa plant, the cotton-tree, and tobacco. Here also are grown the finest tropical fruits-pine-apples, bananas, and oranges, -besides yams and rice, spices and valuable dyes, and hard woods.

7. The inhabitants of the islands are Europeans, negroes imported from Africa, and mulattoes, or people of mixed European and negro blood.

8. The Bahamas belong to Britain. They consist of hundreds of low islands, banks, and rocks, but only a few are inhabited. Bahama is the largest island, but Nassau, the capital, stands on New Providence Island. Watling's

Island, or San Salvador, is interesting as being the first land in the New World discovered by Columbus. It is also the most fertile island in the group. The population of the whole is under 40,000. The chief products are

dye-woods, salt, fruits, and turtles.

9. Of the Lesser Antilles the larger proportion are British. The most important of these British possessions are Barbadoes, Antigua, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Christopher, in the Windward group, and Trinidad in the Leeward group. * Those in the former group are about the size of the smallest English counties, while Trinidad is about equal in area to the county of Essex. Most of the islands of the Windward group are of volcanic structure, but Antigua and Barbadoes are of coral formation. The chief productions and exports are sugar, rum, arrowroot, cocoa, coffee, cotton, and some timber.

10. Trinidad is traversed by three ranges of hills, but consists for the most part of fertile plains and valleys covered with luxuriant forest trees, many of them bearing the most gorgeous flowers.

11. This island is noted for one of the greatest natural curiosities in the world. This is the famous pitch or asphalte lake. "It is reached from the port of La Brea, which place is everywhere surrounded by pitch. The very ship anchors in pitch, you disembark on a pitch wharf, pitch lies heaped up in the harbour, in whatever way the eyes are turned they light on pitch, nothing but pitch. The lake itself covers an area of nearly a hundred Three or four islands, some twenty yards wide, are scattered about the middle of it. The surface of the asphalte is nearly everywhere strong enough to bear your weight, and the whole lake is intersected by channels of clear water. On one side of the lake are the so-called 'pitch volcanoes'-little hillocks, generally not more than half a yard high, with an opening in the centre about six inches across. In these craters the pitch is

acres.

still in a fluid state."

*Guadeloupe and Martinique are French colonics.

LESSON LXI I.

THE WEST INDIES. THE GREATER ANTILLES.

1. The Greater Antilles

and numerous smaller ones.

consist of four large islands Of the greater islands Cuba and Porto Rico belong to Spain, Jamaica to England, and Hayti contains two independent Republics.

2. "Cuba, the 'Pearl,' or, as the Spaniards are equally fond of calling it, the Queen of the Antilles,' and pronounced by Columbus to be the fairest land that eye had ever gazed upon, is, in truth, one of the most favoured countries of the world, both as regards its charming scenery and its abundant natural resources." It is the largest of the West India Islands, and covers an area equal to about half that of Great Britain.

3. The coast is generally low and flat, and surrounded by islands and reefs, which render navigation close to land difficult and dangerous. The interior is mountainous. Towards the east are highlands and lofty peaks, some of them reaching an elevation of between 6,000 and 7,000 feet.* The centre, consisting of undulating ridges of moderate elevation, is in many places marvellously beautiful. In the south-west are the level plains, and here are nearly all the great sugar factories and tobacco plantations which have given the island a commercial celebrity, and supply most of its wealth.

4. Strictly speaking there is but one season in Cuba, that of sunimer, the hottest months being August and September, when the heat is so great "that the glowing pavement of the streets scorches the pedestrian's 'shoe leather.'" In the uplands and hilly regions the heat is tempered by pleasant breezes. In the low-lying districts, that scourge of the coast lands of Central America and the West India Islands, the yellow fever, claims its yearly per centage of victims.

Pico de Tarquino, 7,670 feet, is the highest peak.