The Naturalist in Nicaragua
The blind, the lame, and the sick are the only beggars I ever saw in Nicaragua. The necessaries of life are easily procured. Very little clothing is required. Any one may plant maize or bananas; and there is plenty of work for all who are willing or obliged to labour: so
Ch. IX.] REMARKABLE SINGING-BIRD. l6i
tbe healthy and strong amongst the poorer classes lead an easy and pleasant life, but the sick and incapacitated amongst them are really badly off. There is a great indifference amongst the natives to the wants of their comrades struck down by sickness or accident, and hospitals and asylums are unknown.
I was told that the cripple, lame as he was, often took long journeys, and had even gone as far as Granada. He had been a soldier in one of the revolutions, when John Chamorro was President, and ascribed the commencement of the disease to getting a chill by bathing when he was heated. After he had hobbled off, I bathed in the cool river, and then rambled about on the other side, where I found some large mango trees, full of delicious ripe fruit. It was getting on towards noon: the sun was high and hot, and the birds had mostly retired into the deepest shades for their mid-day sleep. I could have lingered all day, but it was time for me to return, as I had aiTanged with Velasquez to accompany him in search of some Indian graves he had heard of about three miles away. As I left the river, I heard the whistle of the beautiful " toledo," so called because its note resembles these syllables, clearly and slowly whistled, with the emphasis on the last two. Following the sound, it led me to a deep, thickly-timbered gully, at the bottom of which was the bed of a brook, consisting now only of detached pools, over one of which, on the limb of a tree, sat a large dark - coloured hawk, with white - banded tail watching for fresh-water and land crabs, on which it' feeds. I had a long chase after the toledo. As soon as
l62 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. IX.
I got within sight of it, sometimes before, it would dart away through the brushwood, generally across the brook, and in a lew minutes I would hear its deep-toned whistle again as if in mockery of my pursuit. I had to climb and reclimb the steep banks of the gully: but at last, creeping cautiously, and just getting my head above the bank, I got a shot. There were two of them sitting close together. I brought both down, and they proved to be in fine plumage. The toledo {Ghiroscipliia lineatd) is about the size of a linnet, of a general velvety black colour. The crown of the head is covered with a flat scarlet crest, and the back with what looks like a shawl of sky-blue. From the tail spring two long ribbon-like feathers. Its curious note is often heard on the savannahs, in the thick timber that skirts the small brooks; but it is not often seen, as it is a shy bird, and frequents the deepest shades.
There were several of the yellow-breasted trogon {T. mclanoceplialus) sitting amongst the branches, and now and then darting off after insects. This species often breaks into the nests of the termites, and feeds on the soft-bodied workers. Another trogon about here, with red breast {T. eln/ans), has a peculiarly harsh, croaking voice, very different from the other species, and more resembling the cry of a mot-mot.
As I rode back over the savannahs to Juigalpa, the nearly vertical rays of the sun were reflected from the dry, hot, sandy soil. Not a sound was now heard from the numerous birds. The shrill cicada still piped its never-ending treble. No wind was stirring, and the air over the parched soil quivered with heat.
I was glad to get back to my " hotel," and have
breakfast, with chocolate served up in jicaras. After an hour's rest, I started with Velasquez in search of the Indian antiquities. We rode up the right side of the river, high up above the stream, as the banks are rocky and precipitous; then down a shelving road to a lower level, and across undulating savannahs thinly timbered. After about three miles, we came out on a small flat plain, probably alluvial, about twenty acres in extent, mostly covered with grass, with a few scattered jicara trees. On the further end of this plain was a mud-walled, thatched hut, called " El Salto," from a fall of the river close by. A man was lounging about, and a woman bruising maize for tortillas. The man told us that the '' worked stones," as he called them, were on the side of the plain we had crossed. Before going to look at them, we went down to the river to see the waterfall. Just opposite the house the Juigalpa river, which comes flowing down over a flat bed of trachyte, leaps down a deep narrow chasm that it has cut in the hard rock. This chasm is about fifty feet deep, and only twenty wide. The river was low, and poured all its water in at the end of the deep notch; but when flooded, it must rush in over the sides also, and make a magnificent turmoil of waters. Even when I saw it, the water, as it rushed along at the bottom of the narrow chasm, boiling and surging amongst great masses of fallen rock with a steady roar, looked as if it would carry all before it. Deep pot-holes, some of them ten feet deep, were worn into the trachyte rock, and sections of several were shown in the sides of the chasm, which could only have been formed when the falls were many yards lower down. The trachyte is
i64 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. IX.
very hard and tougfh. The sections of the pot-holes are as fresh as if they had been made but yesterday.
In reply to my assertion that the falls had produced, and were now working back the chasm, our guide, the lounging man from the house, said the rocks had always been as they were: he had lived there ten years, and there had been no change in them. Perhaps, if the buried Indians could rise from their graves where they were laid to rest more than three hundred years ago, they, too, would testify that there had been no change, that the rocks and the leaping river were as they had been and would be for ever. The untrained mind cannot grasp the idea of the effect of slowly-acting influences extending over vast periods of time.
We asked the guide if there were any cairns near, and he said there was one on the top of a neighbouring hill. Up this we climbed. It was the rounded spur of a range behind, jutting out into the small plain before mentioned, and might be partly artificial. On the summit, which commanded a fine view of the country around, with the white cliffs and dark woods of the Amerrique range in front, was an Indian cairn, elliptical in shape, about thirty feet long and twenty broad. Several small trees had sprung up amongst the stones. Near the centre two holes had been dug down about four feet deep. Our guide told us that he and his brother had made them, to hide themselves in from the soldiers during the last revolutionaiy outbreak. Not a very likely story, that they should have chosen the top of a bare hill for a hiding-place, when all around in the valleys there were thickets of brushwood. He said they had found nothing in the holes. We, however, soon found fragments of two
broken cinerary urns, one of fine clay, painted with red and black, the other much coarser and stronger, without ornament. The custom of the Chontales Indians appears to have been to burn their dead, and place the ashes in a thin painted urn, inclosed within a stronger one. This was buried, along with the stone for grinding maize, and a cairn of stones built over the grave, in the centre of which was sometimes set up the statue of the deceased.
It was evident that the tomb had been ransacked in search of treasure; but our guide was very reticent about it. He admitted, however, on further question-ing, that he had found a broken "metlate," or maize-grinder, in the grave. Velasquez got down into the deepest hole, and unearthed some more fragments of pottery, but nothing more.
We then descended the steep face of the hill again, and crossed the plain to where the " worked stones were lying. We found them to be broken fragments of statues, one larger, better worked, and in much fairer preservation than the others. They had all been much battered and broken. The greater size and solidity of this one had made it more difficult to deface. It was in two parts, the head being severed from the body. The total length of the two fragments was about five feet. The face had been much shattered. The nose was gone, and the mouth defaced, but enough was left to show that the latter had been protruding. The eyes were in good preservation, prominent, and with the eyeballs projecting. Around the head was an ornamented circlet, like a crown. The arms were laid over the breast, and were continued upwards over the shoulder, and partly down the back, as if it had been
i66 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. IX.
intended to indicate the shoulder-blades. The legs were doubled up, and continued round to the back, in the same way as the arms. The back of the figure was elaborately carved, the most noticeable features being a wide ornamented belt around the waist, and two well-carved crosses, one on each shoulder. The other stones lying about were broken portions of other smaller figures and of pedestals. All were made out of very hard, tough trachyte; and the labour required to make the principal one out of such difficult material without tools of iron must have been immense.
The fragments were all lying out on the bare plain. I thought they must have been brought from some burial-place of the ancient Indians. Our guide, on being asked, said he had seen other cairns of stones besides these on the hill-top, but could not recollect where. He was very uneasy when questioned; and at last said he had business to attend to, and left us abruptly. In his absence we examined all around for traces of graves. Between the plain and the river was a thicket of low trees and undergrowth. Peering into this, we saw some heaps of stones; and, pushing in amongst the bushes found it was full of old Indian graves, marked by heaps of stones, in the centres of some of which still stood the pedestals on which the statues had been placed. JNIost of the heaps were about twenty feet in diameter, and composed of stones of the average size of a man's head: but one, from the centre of which grew an immense cotton-wood tree, was made of about a dozen very large stones, some about five feet long, three broad, and one thick. Here we got a clue
to the behavioui' of our guide. When he told us that he knew not where there were any more cairns, he was standing within thirty feet of one hidden by the thicket, which bore evident marks of having been recently disturbed. It was the cairn of big stones. One of these had been overturned, and some fresh-cut poles, that had been used as levers, were lying alongside, with the green bark broken and bruised. A hole had been dug underneath it, and filled up with stones again. Our lounging friend had been doing a little exploring on his own account. Many of the natives believe that treasure is buried under these heaps of stones; and the interest that foreigners take in them they ascribe to their wish to obtain these treasures. Our guide, wishing to get these himself, had taken us to the single grave on the top of the hill, which he had already ransacked, and professed ignorance of the others. I only hope that he did not compound with his conscience for the lies he had told us by coming back after we left, and trying to break off the nose of another idol, as the natives call the images. They think they show their zeal for Christianity by defacing them. This is why scarcely any of the noses of the images are left. They form the most salient points for attack. And that the images have not been utterly destroyed by the ill-usage they have had for three hundred years is due to the hard, tough rock of which they are made. It is probable that the statues at El Salto were brought out from the cairns into the plain, and publicly thrown down, defaced, and broken, when the Spaniards first took possession of the Juigalpa district, and forced Christianity upon the Indians; for the conquerors everywhere overthrew and mutilated the " idols "