The Rio Frio comes down from the interior of Costa Rica, and joins the San Juan, near where the latter issues from the lake. The banks of its upper waters are inhabited by a race of Indians who have never been

subjugated by the Spaniards, and about whom very little is known. They are called Guatuses, and have been said to have red or light-coloured hair and European features, to account for which various ingenious theories have been advanced; but, unfortunately for these speculations, some children, and even adults, have been captured and brought down the river by the Ulleros, and all these have the usual features and coarse black hair of the Indians. One little child that Dr. Seemann and I saw at San Carlos, in 1870, had a few brownish hairs amongst the great mass of black ones; but this character may be found amongst many of the indigenes, and may result from a very slight admixture of foreign blood. I have seen altogether five children from the Eio Frio, and a boy about sixteen years of age, and they had all the common Indian features and hair; though it struck me that they appeared rather more intelligent than the generality of Indians. Besides these, an adult woman-was captured by the rubber-men and brought down to Castillo, and I was told by several who had seen her that she did not differ in any way from the usual Indian type. The Guatuse (pronounced Watusa) is an animal about the size of a hare, very common in Central America, and good eating. It has reddish-brown fur, and the usual explanation of the Nicaraguans is that the Indians of the Rio Frio were called " Guatuses " because they had red hair. It is very common to find the Indian tribes of America called after wild animals, and my own opinion is that the origin of the fable about the red hair was a theory to explain why the}^ were called Guatuses; for the natives of Nicaragua, and of parts much nearer

home, are fond of giving fanciful explanations of the names of places and things: thns, I have been assured by an intelligent and educated Nicaraguan, that Guatemala was so called by the Spaniards because they found the guate (a kind of grass) in that country bad, hence student of" guate malo," " bad guat6,"—whereas every Mexican history knows that the name was the Spanish attempt to pronounce the old Aztec one of Qnauhte-mallan, which meant the Land of the Eagle. I shall have other occasions, in the course of my narrative, to show how careful a traveller in Central America must be not to accept the explanations of the natives of the names of places and things.

The first people who ascended the Eio Frio were attacked by the Indians, who killed several with their arrows. Exaggerated opinions of their ferocity and courage were in consequence for a long time prevalent, and the river remained unknown and unexplored, and probably would have done so to the present day, if it had not been for the rubber-men. When the trade in india-rubber became fully developed, the trees in the more accessible parts of the forest were soon exhausted, and the collectors were obliged to penetrate farther and farther back into the untrodden wilds of the Atlantic slope. Some more adventurous than others ascended the Rio Frio, and being well provided with firearms, which they mercilessly used, they were able to defy the poor Indians, armed only with spears and bows and arrows, and to drive them back into the woods. The first UUeros who ascended the river were so successful in finding rubber, that various other parties were organised, and now an ascent of the Rio Frio from San

Carlos is of common occurrence. The poor Indians are now in such dread of firearms, that on the first appearance of a boat coming up the river they desert their houses and run into the woods for shelter. The Ulleros rush on shore and seize everything that the poor fugi-tives have left behind them; and in some cases the latter have not been able to carry off their children, and these have been brought down in triumph to San Carlos. The excuse for stealing the children is that they may be baptized and made Christians; and I am sorry to say that this shameful treatment of the poor Indians is countenanced and connived at by the authorities. I was told of one commandante at San Carlos who had manned some canoes and proceeded up the river as far as the plantain grounds of the Indians, loaded his boats with the plantains, and brought them down to San Carlos, where the people appear to be too indolent to grow them themselves. All who have ascended the river speak of the great quantities of plantains that the Guatuses grow, and this fruit, and the abundant fish of the river, form their principal food. Their houses are large sheds open at the sides, and thatched with the " suiti " palm. As is often the case amongst the Indians, several families live in one house. The floor is kept well cleaned. I was amused with a lady in San Carlos who, in describing their well-kept houses to Dr. Seemann and myself, pointed to her own unswept and littered earth floor and said, " They keep their houses very, veiy clean as clean as this." The lad and the woman who were captured and brought down the Rio Frio both ran Carlos, the other from Cas-away—the one from San tillo; but neither could succeed in reaching home, on

account of the swamps and rivers in their way, and after wandering about the woods for some time they were recaptured. I saw the lad soon after he was taken the second time. He had been a month in the woods, living on roots and fruits, and had nearly died from starvation. He had an intelligent, sharp, and independent look about him, and kept continually talking in his own language, apparently surprised that the people around him did not understand what he was saying. He was taken to Castillo, and- met there the woman who had been captured a year before, and had learnt to speak a little Spanish. Through her as an interpreter, he tried to get permission to return to the Rio Frio, saying that if they would let him go he would come back and bring his father and mother with him. This simple artifice of the poor boy was, of course, ineffectual. He was afterwards taken to Granada, for the purpose, they said, of being educated, that he might become the means of opening up communication with his tribe.

The rubber-men bring down many little articles that they pillage from the Indians. They consist of cordage, made from the fibre of Bromeliaceous plants, bone hooks, and stone implements. Amongst the latter, I was fortunate enough to obtain a rude stone hatchet, set in a stone-cut wooden handle: it was firmly fixed in a hole made in the thick end of the handle.* It is a singular fact, and one showing the persistence of particular ways of doing things through long ages amongst people belonging to the same race, that, in the ancient Mexican, Uxmal, and Palenque picture-writings, bronze

Well figured in Evan's "Ancient Stone Implements,'' p. 140, but erroneously stated in the text to be from Texas.

axes are represented fixed in this identical manner in holes at the thick ends of the handles.

We slept on board one of the steamers of the American Transit Company. It was too dark when we arrived at San Carlos to see anything that night of the great lake, but we heard the waves breaking on the beach as on a sea-shore, and from further away came that moaning sound that has from the earliest ages of history connected the idea of the sea with sorrow and sadness.* The steamer we stayed in was one of four river-boats belonging to the Transit Company, which was at this time in difficulties, and ultimately the boats w^ere sold; part of them being bought by Mr. Hollenbeck, and used by the navigation company which he established. These steamers are built expressly for shallow rivers, and are veiy different structures from anything we see in England. The bottom is made quite flat, and divided into compartments; the first deck being only about eighteen inches above the water, from which it is divided by no bulwarks or other protection. Upon this deck are placed the cargo and the driving machinery. A vertical boiler is fixed at the bow, and two horizontal engines, driving a large paddle-wheel, at the stern. The second deck is for passengers, and is raised on light wooden pillars braced with iron rods about seven feet above the first. Above this is another deck, on which are the cabins of the officers and the steering apparatus. The appearance of such a structure is more like that of a house than a boat. The one we were in, the Panaloya, drew only three feet of water, when laden with 400 passengers and twenty tons of cargo. * "There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet" (Jer. xlix. 23).

( 43 )

CHAPTEK IV.

The lake of Nicaragua—Omet^pec—Becalmed on the lake—White egrets—Reach San Ubaldo—Ride across the plains—Vegetation of the plains—Armadillo—Savannahs—Jicara trees—Jicara bowls —Origin of gourd-shaped pottery—Coyotes—Mule-breeding

Reach Acoyapo—Festa—Cross High Range—Esquipula—The Rio

Mico—Supposed statues on its banks—Pital—Cultivation of maize -—Its use from the earliest times in America—Separation of the maize-eating from the mandioca-eating indigenes of America

Tortillas—Sugar-making—Enter the forest of the Atlantic Slope —Vegetation of the forest—Muddy roads—Arrive at Santo

Domingo.

As daylight broke next morning, I was up, anxious to see the great lake about which I had heard so much. To the north-west a great sheet of quiet water extended as far as the eye could reach, with islands here and there, central figure in every view of the lake and—the great conical peak of Ometepec towered up, 5050—the feet above the sea, and 4922 feet above the surface of the lake. To the left, in the dim distance, were the cloud-capped mountains of Costa Rica; to the right, nearer at hand, low hills and ranges covered with dark forests. The lake is too large to be called beautiful, and its vast extent and the mere glimpses of its limits and cloud-capped peaks appeal to the imagination rather than to the eye. At this end of the lake the water is shallow, probably filled up by the mud brought down by the Rio Frio.

We had still a voyage of sixty miles before us up the lake, aud this was to be accomplished not by paddling, but by sailing; so we now rigged two light masts, and soon after seven o'clock sailed slowly away from San Carlos before a light breeze, which in an hour's time freshened and carried us along at the rate of about six miles an hour. The sun rose higher and higher; the day waxed hotter aud hotter. About noon the wind failed us. again, and the sun right overhead, in a clear pitiless sky, scorched us with its rays, while our boat lay like a log upon the water, the pitch melting in the seams with the heat. The surface of the lake was motionless, save for a gentle heaving. We were almost bi'oiled with the stilling heat, but at last saw a ripple on the water come up from the north-east; soon the breeze reached us, and our torment was over; our sails, no more idly flapping, filled out before the wind; the canoe dashed through the rising waves; our drooping spirits revived, and there was an opening out of provisions,' and life again in the boat. The breeze continued all the afternoon, and at dark we were off the islands of Nancital, having been all day within a few miles of the north-eastern side of the lake, the banks of which are everywhere clothed with dark gloomy-looking forests. One of the islands was a favourite sleeping-place for the white egrets. From all sides they were flying across the lake towards it; and as night set in, the trees and bushes by the water-side were full of them, gleaming like great white flowers amongst the dark green foliage. Flocks of muscovy and whistling ducks also flew over to their evening feeding-places. Great masses of a floating plant, shaped like a cabbage, were abundant on the lake.

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