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MEXICO:

THE

COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND

PEOPLE.

LONDON:

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY;

Instituted 1799.

DEPOSITORIES, 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD,
AND 164, PICCADILLY; AND SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS.

PREFACE.

There is very much in Central America to claim our attention, and excite our interest. First, perhaps, in importance may be placed its commanding geographical position. The rapid extension of commercial enterprise, the opening up of China and Japan to European intercourse, and the discovery of the goldfields of California, Australia, and British Columbia, combine to make the Isthmus of Panama, with the adjacent territories, a great highway for commerce, the value of which it would be difficult to exaggerate. The communications between Europe and the eastern shores of America on the one hand, and the denselypeopled empires, and rapidly-growing settlements of the Pacific on the other, must be carried on either across some part of Central America, or by the tedious and perilous circumnavigation of Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope.* Hitherto the anarchy which

*For reasons upon which we need not enter here, the Suez route is left out of account as being, probably, visionary and impracticable.