these coarse panelas is more profitable in the present circumstances of the country, than that of sugars there can be no doubt, and this accounts for the multitude of these trapichés which are spread over the face of the country. But it is melancholy to remember that money thus acquired is gained at the expense of the whole community;—numerous trapichés cause a similar increase in spirit-shops, and by the multiplicity of these, it is evident that useful agriculture is impeded, the population demoralized, and the aborigines destroyed.
In this vale the thermometer at 12 o'clock stood at 75° Fahrenheit, in the shade; a rise of 7° having taken place in a distance which could not exceed six miles in a straight line. At the farm we had just left, it had stood at about 68° at the same hour during the whole of our stay. Leaving this part of the valley, we soon arrived at the village of S. Miguel de Petapa, which is regularly built, with a neat church, and a spacious plaza: from hence, after passing a tolerably good hacienda, we reached the summit of a ravine, at the foot of which lay the Lake of Amatitan. The sight of this fine sheet of water, three leagues in length, and about a league broad at the widest part, is rendered still more interesting by the nature of its environs; on one side rise abrupt and bold rocks to a height of about
