title="[22]"/> England—are perhaps among the most backward portions of the Empire. It is not their fault, or not alone. It is largely due to the stupidity or lack of interest of the Home Government. It is also due, in general terms, to the stupidity and ignorance of British folk in general, who take little interest in their possessions overseas, and who from one point of view do not deserve to have them. The tropical colonies of Britain, and among them are these of South and Central America—not to mention the magnificent heritage of the West Indies, which of course are geographically part of America—are most valuable charges, most essential elements of the national food supply. They are at least geographical larders, and it is time they were much more fully developed and cared for.

It is well to recollect, moreover, politically, that Britain has scarcely given an efficient object-lesson of development, social and economic, to the backward States of Spanish America in her control of these two Crown Colonies.

But we digress. If the geography of the South American States is nebulous to the ordinary person at home, how much more so is that of Central America? In the first place, it may be asked, where or what is Central America? Many well-informed people do not know. North America and South America are easily realizable as geographical entities, but where can a third America exist? Central America is not the centre of the South American Continent, as some well-meaning people think, but is that part of America lying between the two continents, and includes no less than six independent Republics, together with British Honduras. The Panama Canal cuts through it; the Tehuantepec and other railways cross it. Thus when we are asked where is Costa Rica or Nicaragua or Salvador, Honduras or Panama, where perhaps the latest revolution has just broken out, or the Government have just repudiated a loan, or managed to pay an instalment of the interest due upon a loan, we may reply in Central America.

And Paraguay—ah, Paraguay! Where is it? And Hayti, too?

Many people in England have relatives in Spanish American countries, and it is interesting to be able to inform them where the particular localities are situated, and how to get there, also the distances approximately places are apart. "I have a cousin who is Chargé d'Affaires in Revolutia," says a lady at a reception. "I do trust he has not been injured by that terrible South American earthquake we saw in the paper this morning." We are able to assure the lady that the earthquake was in San Volcania, at least two thousand miles from the enterprising Republic where her relative carried on his doubtless invaluable diplomatic duties. "Have you ever been in —— (we will call it Santa Andina)?" says a stout, bald-headed gentleman, who looks like a company promoter (and we afterwards found that he was such), referring to a well-known Spanish American capital, adding that he thought of going there, and had heard that no great difficulties attended the journey. He thought oil concessions were to be obtained there. When he learned that you take a river steamer, then a train, then a canoe, then a steamer again, and lastly a mule, his wanderlust seemed somewhat to abate. The story of the lady who had a relative in New York, and hoped he would call one morning on the brother of another person present who lived in Buenos Ayres has often been told, but I am inclined to regard it as far-fetched. The point is that the lady, knowing that both places were in America, imagined they must be in easy daily radius of each other.

The traveller who knows Spanish America and speaks the Spanish language—which language is a veritable delight when you know it—will often wish that English people would set out to acquire at least a slight knowledge of the pronunciation of Spanish words and place-names. He does not like to hear, for example, Buenos Ayres spoken of as "Boners' Airs," or Callao as "Cally-oh"! And the pronunciation of señor as "seenyor" is most offensive. Again, why will the English Press persist in depriving "señor" and the Spanish letter "ñ" generally of its ~, or in using Don where Señor should be used (as is done even in The Times), or in the rendering of the Spanish (or its Italian or French equivalent) Viva! as "long live." It does not mean "long live," but "live" or "may he live," and is generally followed by que viva! "Let him live." It would be better translated as "Hurrah for So-and-So." However, the Press does not generally treat Spanish America very seriously. There is an opéra bouffe element.

The Spanish language is perhaps the most beautiful and pleasing in the world, when we take into account its virility and brevity. It says what it means at once, and every letter, except the aspirate, in every word is pronounced. It is a simple language, easily learned. It is spoken over an enormous part of the earth's surface, and there is little variation between the Spanish of Castile and that of Spanish America.

When we converse—in their own language—with the educated Spanish American folk, we find them full of wise saws and modern instances. They are shrewd and philosophical, and the Spanish language abounds with proverbs and aphorisms applicable to the things of everyday life. They are born statesmen and lawyers and orators. They go back to the remote classics for their similes. All this is very delightful in its way, and the Englishman, after a course of years of it will come home and think his own countrymen rather stupid and unimaginative; that is if his own common sense does not balance their own more solid qualities against the more surface attainments. What he wishes is that the one race might partake more of the qualities of the other, and vice versa. Oratory and theory cannot replace practical politics and justice, but we miss the amenities.

Mucha tinta y poca justicia!

so says the Spanish American (or the Spaniard), referring to the national power of document-compiling and red tape; that is to say: "Much ink and little justice."

Nor yet can the most delightful spirit of hospitality make amends for the insufferable defects of the fonda and the inn, and

is the soundest advice in Latin America to the traveller in the interior, or, as one would say, "From your own to a stranger's home, go forth with a well-filled belly."

The Spanish American people, as we have remarked, are of a poetical and sentimental temperament, given to oratory, and they produce many poets, many of which, however, would, if criticism is harsh, be termed versifiers. They are fond of what might be termed descriptive embroidery; what, indeed, one of their own race has termed desarollos lyricos ("lyric developments"). Love verses are an absorbing theme, and their small magazines overflow therewith, and even the daily Press does not disdain such. It might be said that versifying in Spanish in matters amorous may be facile, because amores (love), flores (flowers), olores (perfume), and dolores (grief) all rhyme! One cynical Spanish American poet, however, has propounded the following, descriptive of the social and natural ambient: