and, seeing him busily employed, early one morning, I joined him, to observe what he was doing. He was planting cochineal: to those who are unacquainted with the process,

it may be useful to state that this operation is dissimilar from any other mode of cultivation.

The nopal is a plant consisting of little stem, but expanding itself into wide thick leaves, more or less prickly according to its different kind: one or two of these leaves being set as one plant, at the distance of two or three feet square from each other, are inoculated with the cochineal, which, I scarcely need say, is an insect: it is the same as if you would take the blight off an apple or other common tree and rub a small portion of it on another tree free from the contagion, when the consequence would be that the tree so inoculated would become covered with the blight: a small quantity of the insects in question is sufficient for each plant, which, in proportion as it increases its leaves, is sure to be covered

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with the costly parasyte. When the plant is perfectly saturated, the cochineal is scraped off with great care.

The plants are not very valuable for the first year, but, from questions I put to the steward about the

I produce, it appeared that they might be estimated as yielding after the second year,

, from a dollar to a dollar and a half profit on each plant. Indigo is described as a substance of a deep blue colour, containing about fifty per cent of pure colouring matter : the analysis of indigo, says Brande, in his Manual of Chemistry, page 49, where he proposes to ascertain the proportion of colouring matter, which varies much in different samples, may be performed by the successive action of water, alcohol, and muriatic acid. One hundred parts of Guatemala indigo thus treated afforded to water twelve parts, to alcohol thirty, to muriatic acid ten, to residue of pure indigo forty-eight.

This analysis would seem to prove that the indigo of Guatemala is superior to that of any other country

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Wednesday, 23 June. I called on Don Juan de Barrundia, the gefe politico of the state: it happened to be his saint's day, or, as we should call it in English, his birth-day, it being usual in these countries to take the name of the saint on whose festival any one is born. All the authorities and most respectable inhabitants of the place were paying their court to him: I staid with him about half an hour, during which time the conversation turned principally upon the political organization of the country, and the federative system which was adopted. I had been given to understand, and subsequent events have proved the truth of the assertion, that this person was not so well affected towards the federal system as could be wished for the tranquillity of the republic : as almost all the disturbances which have since occurred in Guatemala have arisen principally from the disposition to impugn the authority of the federal government, it might be as well to give my readers a short sketch of the principles on which that federation is establish

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ed: the same will, I apprehend, prove, beyond all doubt, that if once these petty feelings of disagreement can be allayed, the power of the government will stand upon a firm and lasting basis.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Government and Constitution of the Federation.

Origin and Progress of the Revolution.— Foreign and Domestic Relations.

The present political government of Guatemala, like those of the other new republics of the Western Hemisphere is, more or less, founded on the principles of the constitution of the northern United States. It is a representative federal republic. The legislative power of the nation resides in the federal congress, composed of representatives chosen by the people; and it is in their province to enact laws touching the direct interest of the whole republic; to form the general regulations for the national army, to fix the expenses of the general administration of the public service; to declare war or make peace; to prescribe and settle the laws of trade, and