Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/108

90 is deadly to all but natives. The moist soil, enriched by the decay of vegetable substances, breathes pestilence and malaria from every pore, except during the winter months of incessant winds, which blow from October to March. Southern Vera Cruz and Tabasco, the tierra caliente par excellence, exhibit the most luxuriant display of nature's prodigality. Of alluvial and comparatively recent formation this region is traversed by the Goazacoalco, Alvarado, Usumacinta, and other noble rivers, which rise in the mountains of Guatemala, Chiapas, and Tehuantepec. River-banks are crowded with magnificent forest-trees, and the broad savanas farther back marked off into natural plantations of the valuable dye-woods which abound there, by a network of branch streams and canals, which serve both for irrigation and as a medium of transport for the native products that play no unimportant rôle in the world's commerce. Each year inundations are expected between June and October, and these transform the whole system of lagoons into a broad lake. Farther up the course of the rivers on the foothills of the cordillera, are extensive forests of cedar, mahogany, zapote, Brazil, and other precious woods, together with a variety of medicinal plants and aromatic resins.

The whole of Yucatan may, by reason of its temperature and elevation above the sea, be included in the tierra caliente, but its climate is one of the most healthful in all tropical America. The whole north and west of the peninsula are of fossil shell formation, showing that at no very distant date this region was covered by the waters of the sea. There are no rivers that do not dry up in winter, but by a wonderful system of small ponds and natural wells the country is supplied with water, the soil being moreover always moist, and supporting a rich and vigorous vegetation.

Notwithstanding evident marks of similarity in nearly all the manifestations of the progressional spirit in aboriginal America, in art, thought, and religion,