CATTLE-RAISING. Cattle-raising on the savannas-extensive plains of grass, affording pasturage in the rainy season, and with few shrubs growing on them-of the central and northern provinces is one of the great sources of wealth, the production of horned cattle being large enough to supply all the necessities of home consumption, and to allow a considerable exportation, principally to San Salvador, where cattle are scarce. Large haciendas, owned by the richest and most influential people of the country, are entirely devoted to this industry. Dairy farms have been established in the neighbourhood of the principal cities and towns and are doing well. FAUNA. The fauna is like that of the other Central American states. The jaguar, puma, and ocelot still infest the more wooded districts, alligators are found in the lakes and swarm in the San Juan and other rivers, while the vulture, buzzard, toucans, humming-birds, and howling monkeys are common. The species of reptiles cover a wide range. COMMERCE. The imports amount to about £500,000, being the value of manufactured goods brought from the European and American markets. The principal articles exported are coffee, rubber, woods, hides, gums, indigo, sugar, cocoa, and bananas, to the value of £470,000. The rates by the steamer route on the river San Juan are high, though less than via the Pacific, but this is more than counterbalanced by the uncertainty and delay on this line. The lines from Europe and the United States are good, and the rates generally low.1 The canal will bring about a great change, and when that work is completed, Granada, and other towns close by, will be virtually seaports, and ocean steamers will be able to load and discharge their cargoes at their wharves. The lake will be the centre and point of distribution of trade for the whole country. 1 TO BLUEFIELDS. From New Orleans, Southern Pacific Company's steamers, from December to March every twenty days, remainder of the year ever ten days. TO CAPE GRACIAS Á DIOS. From New York, Honduras and Central American Steamship Company, every three weeks. TO CORINTO. From San Francisco and from Panama, Pacific Mail Steamship Company, thrice per month. To GREYTOWN. From Southampton, Royal Mail Steam Packet Company to Colon, thence by Royal Mail or other local cargo steamers. From New York, Honduras and Central American Steamship Company, every three weeks; Pacific Mail Steamship Company to Colon, thence by Royal Mail. (Steamers leave Greytown for Granada, on Lake Nicaragua, every four days.) (Managua, the capital, is reached by steamer to Greytown or to Corinto, thence by rail and lake steamers.) CHAPTER XII. THE DEMAND OF THE AGE: SHIP A CANALS. SERIES of great works, in the form of ship canals, providing rapid and inexpensive transportation, marks the latter part of the nineteenth century, and every maritime power is concerned with schemes of ocean transit. The mechanical and financial means for undertaking and executing great enterprises have greatly improved, while the volume of commerce has vastly increased, and works impossible thirty or forty years ago are quite feasible to-day. Money is cheaper by a half than it was twenty years ago, while engineering appliances have so improved, that the cost, not only in labour but in time, has been lessened in a like proportion. Commerce has advanced with colossal strides. The business done by the world's shipping and railways is immense, and increases at a rate greatly exceeding the growth either of population or of industries. More than half the shipping of the whole world is owned by Great Britain, while one-half the railways have either been built directly, or with money supplied, by this country. The English are the carriers of the world by land and sea. Fifty years ago we had only one-third of the oceancarrying trade, while to-day we have more than onehalf. The carrying power of nations is more than three times what it was in 1860, and in the last twenty-two years, by sea, it has doubled, while by railways it has trebled.1 There are three classes of ship canals. I. Those which traverse high districts, surmounting the elevation by locks supplied from natural lakes or artificial reservoirs, such as the Languedoc in France, and the Caledonian in Scotland, or, in a lesser degree, the Manchester Ship Canal. 2. Canals in low-lying districts, on a uniform waterlevel from end to end, defended against the inroad of the sea at high water by double-acting locks, which also retain the canal water at low tide, of which the canals of Holland and other low countries are examples. 1 1 Summing together the traffic by land and sea we find that it has grown tenfold since 1850. The carrying trade is at present one of the chief occupations of men, as we see by the numbers employed on railways and in sea-going shipping, viz.: The gross receipts of the carrying trade in which the above men are employed amount to about 650 millions sterling per annum, which is equal to £180 per man, or nearly £2,000,000 per day.-MULHALL, Contemporary Review, August, 1895. 3. Canals, such as Suez, practically open cuts at sealevel, without locks, and communicating freely at either end with the sea, from which they derive their watersupply. The completion of the Suez Canal gave an enormous impetus to this class of engineering works, and its magnificent yearly dividends have popularized them. But of late years several similar enterprises, in various ways, have somewhat discredited ventures of this kind. First came the painful episode of Panama, which has exercised since 1889, though yearly in a lessening degree, a depressing influence; the slow development of the Corinth Canal doubtless had its effect, and the experience of Manchester would seem to inculcate another lesson of caution. Public interest in ship canals has been aroused again, however, by the successful opening of the Baltic Canal, which doubtless will stimulate the Nicaragua project, as well as other proposed kindred undertakings. There are certainly not wanting a considerable body of sceptics and objectors to the Nicaraguan Canal, as there have always been to any such new enterprise, or indeed, to any great change destined to develop into one of the chief instruments of the world's progress. The danger and impracticability of such changes was loudly proclaimed when it was proposed in 1816 to cross the Atlantic in a small steam-vessel called the "Savannah." In 1836, when Morse asked Congress for the means to construct a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington, the whole world ridiculed the idea, and pronounced it visionary and impossible. Before Eads was allowed to |