Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/437

CH. XXXI.] ground floor, and seldom with more than one story: they stand close upon the edge of the beech, and look as if they had been left there by the ebb, after having been floated away, by some extraordinary high tide, from the banks of the Thames between Rotherhithe and Blackwall.

My hospitable friend, Major Schaw, had great difficulty in getting any house at all: that which he now occupied was intended for a school: in shape and materials it was like the child's toy purporting to represent Noah's Ark; for it was built entirely of wood, with the roof sloping uniformly the whole length down each side from the centre: it was eighty feet long, fourteen wide, and thirteen high. The Major was living there under sufferance, as the boys wanted the school-room;—but he had, I believe, contracted to have his house sent out to him from New York: indeed the best houses in the town were most of them built there.

The inhabitants of Belize are dealers only in the raw material: the mahogany