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SECTION OF SAN ANTONIO LODE

HUMMING-BIRDS (Florisuga mellivora, Linn.)

TONGUES OF HUMMING-BIRD AND WOODPECKER

PITCHER-FLOWER (Marcgravia nepenthoides)

FLOWER OF THE "PALOSABRE "

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THE

NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA.

CHAPTER I.

Arrival at Greytown The river San Juan-Silting up of the harbour-Crossing the bar-Lives lost on it-Sharks-Christopher Columbus-Appearance of the town-Trade-Healthiness of the town and its probable cause-Comparison between Greytown, Pernambuco, and Maceio-Wild fruits-Plants-Parrots, toucans, and tanagers-Butterflies and beetles-Mimetic forms -Alligators - Boy drowned at Blewfields by an alligatorTheir method of catching wild pigs.

AT noon on the 15th February 1868, the R.M.S.S. Solent, in which I was a passenger, anchored off Greytown, or San Juan del Norte, the Atlantic port of Nicaragua in Central America. We lay about a mile from the shore, and saw a low flat coast stretching before us. It was the delta of the river San Juan, into which flows the drainage of a great part of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and which is the outlet for the waters of the great lake of Nicaragua. Its water-shed extends to within a few miles of the Pacific, for here the isthmus of Central America, as in the great continents to the north and south of it, sends off by far the largest portion of its drainage to the Atlantic. In the rainy season the San Juan is a noble river, and even in the dry

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