Of the valuable woods, mahogany easily takes first place. These great and majestic trees are found in considerable number in the forests of northeastern Guatemala. Those situated near the larger streams have been cut down. Farther inland the difficulty of transportation makes the marketing of the logs an expensive undertaking, although the standing trees can be purchased from the government for a very small sum. The logwood tree, as well as other dyewoods, is found bordering on all the great lagoons and some portions of the Gulf coast. It is a tree of medium size and peculiar appearance, attaining a height of twenty or thirty feet. The trunk is gnarled and full of cavities, and separates a short distance above the ground. The heart, the only valuable portion, is a deep red. The logwood is found in the same localities as the mahogany, and they are districts that are generally flooded in the rainy season. The timbers are cut in the dry season and then floated down to the ports in the rainy season.
The palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees and a landscape hardly seems tropical without these graceful trees. It is doubtful if there is a single class of the tropical trees so essential to the native as the palms. Houses, timber, firewood, fodder, food and drink, needles and threads, wax and drugs are all obtained from palms of various species. The Royal palm is the most graceful and majestic of all, and there is no more imposing scene of arboreal beauty than the long avenues of these beautiful trees so common in the American tropics. Their smooth, tapering trunks, almost as hard as granite, tower upward for eighty or even a hundred feet above the earth, bearing at the top a mass of green, drooping plumes. These great white trunks, standing boldly out upon verdure-clad slopes, so conspicuous among the tangled sea of vines and jungle at their feet, and their plumes swaying gently in the breezes, are a beautiful and imposing sight.
The commonest and most useful of the palms is the cocoanut, which is a conspicuous sight in every village and rural scene in tropical lands. As this palm most commonly grows in spots exposed to the full sweep of the winds, the trunk is gradually bent away from the winds. It is seldom, indeed, that one will find the cocoanut in an absolutely perpendicular position. The stem is so strong and tough, being composed of closely-interwoven fibres, that the entire top may be torn off by the hurricanes and the trunk remain uninjured. The cocoanut commences to bear when from three to ten years old and will continue to produce fruit, year after year, for from seventy-five to one hundred years. The nut is used for both food and drink, and the shell is made into dippers, jars, spoons and other household utensils. The dried cocoa is a valuable article of commerce, but the real value of the oil prepared from the fresh meat is only beginning to be realized. It is useful not only in the manufacture of soaps, but a butter is prepared from it that is superior not only to cottonseed oil, but, so it is claimed, better than even animal butter for purposes of food. There is no reason why the tropics of Guatemala should not produce large quantities of the oil and cocoa meat for American and European trade.