The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-08-30

fantasy of Nicaragua is her own. There Is trance on her She welded with the ocean of Balboa. As truly as Venice that married the Adriatic is the variant of cites, Nicaragua Is strange of lands, even among those including Yucatan.
 The Victoria will come to San Jorge sometime; and so up the lake to Granada.
 The ArIstocratlc Granada.
 Rivas; the aristocratic Grandpa, but empty of conservatives; Managua on its own lake, slack with political craft and graft" But first on the railroad to the capital. Masaya, the aboriginal place. low built and wide gardened, plating baskets and curious hammocks. Managua may ex- tend the railroad now, butNan upper lake boat runs to Momotombo; thence behind locomotive to Leon, most populous and proud. hateful of zelaya's plebeian Ma magma administration. and so on by rail through Chinandegua to Corinto and the PPacifc Mail steamer for San Francisco. The larger centers are all on the western side except Bluefields (Blewfields), with it's Atlantic harbor. The Americans at Matagalpa, the most interior town, are raising coffee In soil as superb as that surrounding Chinandegua.
 country that has always been dis turbed when not distracted; one that no foreign power could make its own in the face of the same cupidity of others; re- zion, with all that, of perplexing natural difficulties to develope. this dominion has remained hardly known, yet full of an ex- ceptional spoil. The superior fecundity and fineness of Nicaragua production may be owing to the lakes at the heart The cacao, the glossy chocolate bean, Is the richest that there is. The tobacco is too strong, which is manufactured only by the native women, twisted into little ci- gars The forest stands full of mahogany, but 1t can only be removed near the coast. It is expensive to grow the rubber, which Is a delicate tree, both when young and after tapping, but the slabs in which it is handled are very valuable. Lately the law has made stealing the sap from the trees heavy offense; yet again 1t is cost ly to get the staple to market. The coffee is the strongest of all coffee' and 1t is fine little inferior, of any" says the Standard Dictionary to the Java berry. It Is not inferior but bland and delicate and different.
 Possibly now in the next few years there will be fewer lazy farmers sitting about the doors of their little thatched fincas; possibly they will be shoveling embank ment. The Pan-American railroad has been incorporated. Above, Guatemala has her section of the intercontinental line al- most or already completed, and in the north of South America Colombia is sim ilarly prepared The intermediate states cannot fall to be attracted to activity even idle. squabbling Nicaragua. The great railroad, from Hudson's Bay to Buenos Ayres will slowly unfold her at last She would be twice happy to have the canal beside. Perhaps very largely 1t ought to be brought there to complete the opening of territory so stored with mer- chandise-especially as there is nothing to open up between Panama and Aspin- wall except further "isthmus fever" But first of all, and above all, the shipway should traverse Nicaragua because that is the better military position for its own de- fense and the defense of the United States to which it will belong.
 We are on the verge of September and President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay know that the working dry season begins in Nicaragua in January.