. A complete geography. San Salvador, the capital of the country by thatname, was so frequently destroyed by earthquakes that the inhabitantsdecided to choose a new location for their city; but the one they selectedis hardly better than the one they abandoned. Most of Central America is mountainous ; and, being in thetropical zone, the climate is hot. The rainfall is heavy, especially on the eastern coast, where it isso rainy that there are densejungles along the shores of theCaribbean Sea. Of the five countries formingthe Central American group,the smallest is San Salvador, thenext, Costa Ric
. A complete geography. San Salvador, the capital of the country by thatname, was so frequently destroyed by earthquakes that the inhabitantsdecided to choose a new location for their city; but the one they selectedis hardly better than the one they abandoned. Most of Central America is mountainous ; and, being in thetropical zone, the climate is hot. The rainfall is heavy, especially on the eastern coast, where it isso rainy that there are densejungles along the shores of theCaribbean Sea. Of the five countries formingthe Central American group,the smallest is San Salvador, thenext, Costa Rica. Nicaragua,Honduras, and Guatemala areabout equal in size. In addi-tion to these, just south ofYucatan, is British Honduras(or Belize). The largest cityin the group is New Guate-mala, the capital of Guatemala,having a population of overseventy thousand. Like San Salvador, the inhabitants have beenforced to change its location, which was formerly at the base of twovery active volcanoes ; hence the name. New Fig. a train with bananas in Costa Rica. COUNTRIES SOUTH OF THE UNITED STATES 217 P ? \ iin> 1 1 P ! 1™ 1 in illlll HWlMII , iJ M ^ 1 P m eT i .^? \ ^ Jl m A large portion of these countries is occupied by dense tropicalforests from which are obtained mahogany, rosewood, logwood, fustic,and other valuable cabinet and dye woods. The rubber tree alsogrows there, and the production of rubber is one of the industries ofthe region. As in Mexico, coffee is raised on the hill slopes in the shade ofthe forest trees. One of the most important districts for thisindustry is Costa (Fig. 229),sugar, tobacco, indigo,and cocoa are otherproducts of CentralAmerica. Some gold andsilver are obtained, theformer near Bluefields,the latter in Honduras. The inhabitants aremainly Indians, Span-iards, or half-breeds ; and owing to the uneducated condition of thegreat majority, and even the uncivilized condition of many, there ispractically no manufacturing
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