was also appointed, by virtue of a vote bearing date March 5, to investigate the alleged frauds on the public exchequer, of which ex-President Marco Aurelio Soto is accused.

Railroads. Mr. Hungerford, Engineer-inChief of the Central Railroad of Honduras, has surveyed the line to connect Trujillo with Juiticalpa, a distance of two hundred miles. The concession to build this line was given to a New York syndicate. Work has been proceeding on the line of the Northern Honduras Railway, which is to connect Trujillo with Puerto Cortés, or any point on the frontier of Guatemala, for which the concession was obtained in 1884, and which is expected to be in operation in September, 1887. Liberal inducements are also held out by the Government to bona fide settlers from abroad in this section of the country, which even now is very important as a fruit-growing region, whence an active export is going on to New Orleans and New York of bananas and cocoanuts, especially from the island of Bonaca, where there are extensive cocoanut-walks, and from which point bananas are also shipped in great quantities to American ports.

Transportation.—In October the Government made a contract with Don Eduardo Busquet for the establishment of a coasting-line of steamers on the northern Atlantic coast.

The Government also took vigorously in hand in 1885 river improvements and the digging of canals to connect rivers in the republic. Thus a contract was made with George W. Shears to deepen the Ulua and Blanco rivers, so that they may be navigable to a point called La Imprenta. A similar contract was made with Waldemar Allstrom and Don Miguel Luís Aguilera, for the deepening of the Aguan river all the way to a locality called La Lima, ten miles from the city of Yoro.

The

Tobacco. The Government has made efforts to facilitate the cultivation of tobacco. Tobacco-seed is allowed, by decree of October, 1885, to enter the country duty free. tobacco-tax, which planters have to pay, is $3 for every hundred pounds produced, and the tax on cigars, which manufacturers have to pay, is $1 a thousand.

Mines Gold and silver mining enterprises in Honduras, in which American companies are engaged, are becoming more profitable. There are five New York companies.

The October report of the Yuscarán Mining Company stated that the company had already expended a large amount of money, and that a shaft had been sunk about 140 feet. It is proposed to sink this shaft 400 feet before driving, to connect with the main Guayabillas vein. The report of the Paraíso Reduction Company, of Dec. 1, mentions the purchase and erection of a large roasting-furnace. The company also purchased the "Ultimo" and "Coco" ingenios, both necessary to control the water. of the Quebrada Grande River and for milling facilities; furthermore, the ingenio of Daniel

Fortín, the largest and best-equipped native reduction-works in that district. Engineers were engaged in a complete survey of the whole water system of the district. By securing the immense water-power, thousands of tons of ore could be made available daily for treatment at a profit.

The development of the Santa Elena mines uncovered such a mass of gold-bearing quartz that it was considered best to introduce stamping machinery at the Paraíso reduction-works, and treat it as a free milling of ore by plate amalgamation. Machinery for a forty-stamp mill complete was shipped in August from Cincinnati, to be in place on March 1, 1886, increasing the capacity of the Paraíso reductionplant about 100 tons a day. There were made at the Santa Elena_mine three very rich discoveries in the month of September-veins with the usual good average of silver and gold, and rich threads in the center of the veins.

The general report made by Don Adolfo Zuriga, Attorney-General of Honduras, in September, dated from Tegucigalpa, says, "Within the next six months there will be very considerable quantities of gold and silver shipped to New York from here, and within two years Yuscarán will be such a mining center as will equal any mining district in America." Commerce.-The following table shows the imports from Central America:

and his mother was a royalist in her sympathies, and had shared in the dangers of the Vendean insurrection; so that he spoke of himself as born with both royalist and imperial aspirations. He alluded frequently to the antiquity of his race, but his paternal grandfather was a master builder at Nancy, and made no pretensions to nobility. He was a feeble child, and when about six weeks old he was carried to Elba, where his father's regiment was stationed, and there and in Corsica he remained three years. The two succeeding years his mother passed at Paris with her children. She then went with them to Italy, where her husband, at that time Col. Hugo, was governor of the province of Avellino in the kingdom of Naples. The future poet, according to his biographers, played about the foot of Vesuvius, and shuddered at the stories of the celebrated bandit known as Fra Diavolo, whose band his father broke up. In 1809 Madame Hugo returned to Paris with her family and lived in an old house with a highwalled garden, where Victor played and studied with his brothers, who afterward achieved distinction in literature, and with the girl who became his wife. He was taught by an old married priest, and by Gen. La Horie, who had been compromised with Moreau, was for several years under the surveillance of the imperial police, and took refuge in the Hugo household, where he was accustomed to sit with the boy upon his knee and read with him Polybius and Tacitus. The hiding-place of La Horie was discovered and he was arrested and impris oned, escaping only to take part in an insurrection, in which he perished; and this incident is supposed to have aided the mother's influence in giving the poet's mind its first royalistic tendency. În the spring of 1811 Madame Hugo went to Spain, whither her husband, then general and maréchal of the palace, had accompanied King Joseph Bonaparte in 1809. The journey was not made without peril, among deserted villages and desperate bands of guerrillas. The family took up its residence at Madrid in the Macerano Palace, and the boys were placed in the College of Nobles, where they remained a year, and it was intended that Victor should become one of the pages of the King; but the prospects of the new monarchy continued to be so stormy that Madame Hugo returned to Paris with her younger sons, Eugene and Victor, taking up her former residence, and committing the education of the boys to their former teacher. There was little religion mingled with their instruction, for their mother was less religious than loyal. Gen. Hugo returned from Spain after the overthrow of the Bonaparte kingdom a poor man, as he had purchased an estate there which was confiscated. He afterward conducted the famous

defense of Thionville in the invasion of 1814. Madame Hugo, who used to wear green shoes in order to keep the imperial color under her feet, received marks of favor from the returning Bourbons; and during the Hundred Days her husband separated from her and took charge of the education of his sons. He sent them to a boarding-school, where they remained until 1818, attending a course of philosophy, physics, and mathematics at the College of Louis le Grand. Victor showed great aptitude for mathematics, but he preferred poetry to all else, and devoted his leisure time to it. He began to write verse at ten years of age, and at thirteen

VICTOR HUGO.

rhymed about Roland and his chivalry. During the four following years he composed multitudinous verses in the classic style, his more important efforts being the tragedy of "Irtamène," celebrating under an Egyptian disguise the restoration of the Bourbons; the drama of "Inès de Castro," and three acts of an unfinished tragedy, “ Athélie, ou les Scandinaviens." A poem, "Sur les avantages de l'étude," submitted in competition for a prize offered by the Academy in 1817, was mentioned with honor, and would, it is said, have been crowned if the author had not spoken of himself in the closing lines as fifteen years of age, which aroused the suspicions of the judges, who feared a mystification.

Gen. Hugo had intended his son Victor for the profession of arms, but in 1818 he yielded this point and allowed the young poet to give up the project of entering the Ecole Polytech

nique and devote himself to literature. His odes on "La statue de Henri IV," "Les vierges de Verdun," "Moïse sur le Nil," were crowned at the Floral Games of Toulouse. The first he wrote in one night while watching by the bedside of his sick mother, who had fallen asleep regretting that he had not entered for the prize. His poetry from 1818 to 1822 was royalist and religious in tone, and he became the literary idol of royalist society and gained from Chateaubriand the title of "enfant sublime." Chateaubriand also, when appointed ambassador to Berlin, offered him a place as attaché, but he declined it, as he did not wish to leave his mother. In 1821 Madame Hugo died, and in 1822 Victor married Mademoiselle Adèle Foucher, whom he had loved from childhood. Under an old agreement of the fathers, the children had been pledged to each other before they were born; but the match had been opposed by both families on account of the youth and poverty of the parties to it. In 1823 Hugo received from Louis XVIII a pension of 1,000 francs, granted, it is said, for the singular reason that the poet had written a letter, which came into the hands of the police, offering shelter to a youthful comrade named Delon, condemned for taking part in the conspiracy of Saumur. This generous boldness on the part of the young royalist poet touched the King's fancy. Hugo founded a journal, "Le Conservateur littéraire," in connection with his brothers and several friends in 1819, and in it many of his earlier poems appeared. The first volume of "Odes," which in the edition of 1826 was entitled "Odes et ballades," was published in 1822, a mean-looking little book, which won literary success and the praise of the King; "Han d'Islande," in which a loveidyl supposed to represent his own story is given in gloomy setting, appeared in 1823; the second volume of "Odes" in February, 1824; "Bug-Jargal," written, it is said, on a wager, in fifteen days, in 1818, and first printed in "Le Conservateur," came out in book-form in January, 1826; and the third volume of "Odes" in October of the same year. After the publication of "Han d'Islande " the author was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and received a second pension of 2,000 francs. In December, 1827, Hugo published "Cromwell," an unplayable drama, in the preface to which he declared war upon the classic school. In December, 1828, appeared "Les orientales," containing some of the most peculiar and beautiful of his poems. Though romanticism under many able leaders was aggressive in every department of art, Hugo was destined to become its representative champion, and he resolved to make his fight upon the stage. His first attempt was Amy Robsart," dramatized from Scott's novel of "Kenilworth," in collaboration with a friend. It was produced at the Odéon, and was hissed. In June, 1829, he wrote "Marion Delorme," and in September of the same year "Hernani." The representa

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tion of the former was forbidden by the censor; the latter was accepted in October and played Feb. 26, 1830, and met with a brilliant success, a motley crowd of the enthusiastic disciples of the romantic school gathering to support it. Hugo appealed to Charles X from the action of the censor in the case of "Marion Delorme," but the King sustained the critic and tried to soothe the poet with a pension of 4,000 francs, which was rejected. The play was represented at the Porte Saint-Martin as soon as the government of Charles X had passed away. Nov. 22, 1832, “Le roi s'amuse brought out at the Théâtre Français, played once, and then interdicted, ostensibly on the ground of its immorality, but possibly because it tended to bring kings into contempt. The poet appealed to the courts against the order forbidding the representation of his play, but his appeal was dismissed, and he then resigned the pensions continued to him from the former government. "Lucrèce Borgia " and "Marie Tudor," dramas in prose, were represented at the Porte Saint-Martin in 1833; "Angelo," also a drama in prose, at the Théâtre Français in 1835; "Ruy Blas," at the Porte Saint-Martin in 1838; and "Les Burgraves,' his last drama, was brought out in 1843. "Esmeralda," an opera, had failed shortly after the success of "Angelo." In the mean while he was not idle in other departments of literary labor. "Le dernier jour d'un Condamné " was published in 1829. It is an analysis of the last hours of a man condemned to death, and has a political as well as a literary purpose, aiming, as it does, at the abolition of capital punishment. In March, 1831, was published the great middle-age romance, "Notre Dame de Paris," and in the same year a volume of poems, "Feuilles d'automne." In 1834 appeared "Claude Gueux," a second attack on the death-penalty, and the "Etude sur Mirabeau." "Chants du crépuscule" was published in 1835; "Voix intérieures," in 1837; rayons et les ombres," in 1840; "Lettres sur le Rhin," picturesque sketches of travel, in 1842. So far as literature was concerned, the classic and royalist youth had developed into a romantic and revolutionary man:

"Les

"Fidèle enfin au sang qu'ont versé dans ma veine, Mon père vieux soldat, ma mère Vendéenne ! " The change in politics was more gradual; but the poet's father, who died in 1828, lived to see the genius of his son contributing to building up the Napoleonic myth, and to enjoy the "Ode à la colonne," in which he dedicated the Vendôme column as a trophy to the veterans of the empire. In 1829 he had begun to feel some of the inconveniences of legitimist rule, and he was in no mood to protest against the Revolution of July, 1830. He sang of the "Trois jours" in the most beautiful verses that they have inspired. In 1837 Louis Philippe made him an officer of the Legion of Honor, and June 3, 1841, he was elected a member of the French Academy, after