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strong and durable, and its manufacture was known to the Indians long before the advent of the Spaniards. Bernal Diaz de Castillo, one of the followers of Cortez, often speaks, in his history, of the houses built of stone and lime, and covered with cement. On their march to Mexico, when they arrived at Cempoal, he says, "our advanced guard having gone to the great square, the buildings of which had been recently plastered and whitewashed, in which art these people are very expert, one of our horsemen was so struck with the splendour of their appearance in the sun that he came back in full speed to Cortez to tell him that the walls of the houses were of silver.” We also learn from the same historian that the city of Cholula "had at that time above 100 lofty white towers, which were the temples of their idols."

Between Yalaguina and Totagalpa there was much of the conglomerate rock that I have already mentioned. Over this the soil was dry and stony, and filled with small quartz pebbles. The vegetation was scanty, principally thorny shrubs and trees. Amongst the former the Pinuela, a plant closely allied to the pine-apple, and used to make fences, was the most abundant. In the alluvial flats were many fine patches of maize looking extremely well, for in Segovia the crops had not been injured by drought. The low hills were very sandy and dry, and the beds of the brooks waterless, but a little beyond Totagalpa we found a small running stream, and stopped an hour to refresh our mules and to eat some provisions we had bought at Yalaguina.

All through Segovia the country is divided into townships, embracing an area of from twenty to twenty-five

Ch. XIV.]

THE CAPITAL OF SEGOVIA.

255

square leagues. Over each of these there is an alcalde, living in the small central town, and elected by the inhabitants of the townships. The boundaries are marked by heaps of stones surmounted by wooden crosses, set up on the roads leading from one town to another.

After riding a few more leagues over rocky hills with scanty vegetation, we came in sight, from the top of one of the ranges, of the town of Ocotal, the capital of Segovia, with its white walls and red-tiled roofs. Dercending a long rocky slope we forded one of the affluents of the Rio Wanks, and half a mile further arrived at the town, situated on a low dry plain. A heavy thunderstorm broke over us as we entered the town, and the rain came down in torrents whilst we were searching for a house to put up at. In answer to our enquiries we were directed to the best house in the town. It was situated at the corner of the plaza, had lofty well-built walls, large doors and gateway, clean tiled floors, and in the courtyard behind a pretty flower garden, with a tank to hold rain water. We were received by two elderly ladies, the sisters of the owner Don Pedro, who made us welcome in a stately sort of way, and got some dinner prepared, consisting of beans, tortillas, avocados, and coffee.

We learnt that the present town was about seventy years old and not very flourishing, as the land around was dry and sterile. The old capital of Segovia was situated five leagues further down the river, where the land around was fertile. But the buccaneers came up the river in their boats and sacked the town, and the site was deserted for one more difficult of access, the river being much shallower and obstructed by rapids higher

up. At the site of the old town the church still stands, but only a few poor negroes live there now. Two branches of the river unite a little below the present town, and following it down for about four days' journey a place named Cocos is reached, which is the furthest settlement of the Spaniards towards the Atlantic. To this point large bungoes come up the river, and Don Pedro had been very wishful to get it opened out above for navigation, but had not succeeded.

There were very few men to be hired at Ocotal, and we determined to go on to Depilto, a small mining town near the Honduranean boundary, where we were assured there were plenty to be obtained. We had only engaged the mules to come as far as Ocotal, and had great difficulty in getting others to go on. I think the people at first were afraid that we might cross the boundary into Honduras, and never return. We afterwards learnt that robberies of mules often take place; some rogues making a business of stealing mules out of Honduras, bringing them into Nicaragua, selling them, and stealing others to return with. There were, however, several people in Ocotal who had worked at the mines and knew us, and when this information spread we had the offer of several animals. If we had known the cause of the reluctance of the people to let us have mules at first, we should easily have got over the difficulty by leaving the value of the animals in the hands of some responsible person, but the owners had made all sorts of excuses for not lending them, and we had not suspected the true cause. We had been travelling continually for nine days, and looked more like brigands than honest travellers, and the good easygoing people of Ocotal had their suspicions about us.

Ch. XVI.]

ABUNDANCE OF HAWKS.

257

As I have said, when satisfied of our good faith, the mule owners soon offered us the use of their beasts, and next morning Velasquez and I started at seven o'clock on two fine fresh mules and rode merrily up the valley of the Depilto. The river rises in the high ranges that form the boundary between Honduras and Nicaragua, and running down past Depilto joins the Ocotal river a little below the capital. Our road lay up the valley close to the river, which we crossed and recrossed several times. The vegetation was scanty, but the morning was a lovely one after the thunderstorm of the night before, and we greatly enjoyed our ride. We did not see many birds, a pretty hawk that I shot being the most noticeable. Hawks of various kinds are very abundant in the tropics, and if the small birds had to personify death, they would certainly represent him as a hawk, for this is the form in which he must generally appear to them. Towards evening the hawk glides noiselessly along and alights on a bough near, where he hears the small birds twittering amongst the bushes. Perhaps they see him and are quiet for a little, but he sits motionless as the sphinx, and they soon get over their fear and resume their play or feeding. Then suddenly a dark mass swoops down and rises again. It is the hawk, with a small bird grasped in his strong talons gasping out its last breath. comrades are terror-struck for a moment and dash madly into the thickets, but soon forget their fear. They chirp to each other, the scattered birds reunite; there is a fluttering and twittering, a rearranging of mates, then again songs, feeding, love, jealousy, and bickerings.

Its

The banks of the river were sandy and sterile, and the soil contained much small quartz. The bed rock was a

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talcose schist near to Ocotal, but higher up the river it changed to gneissoid and quartz rocks, the latter in hard and massive beds. As we ascended the valley, the ranges bounding it got higher and steeper, the soil more sandy and barren, with scattered pine trees growing amongst the rocks. Great, bare, rounded masses of hard quartzite protruded through the scanty soil, and in the river were enormous boulders of granite-like gneiss.

Depilto is only nine miles from Ocotal, but we took three hours to reach it, as I made many stoppages to examine the rocks and to catch fleet-limbed speckled tiger-beetles on the sandy roads. The little town was not half populated, the silver mines had been closed for some time, most of the houses were empty and the people still clinging about the place seemed to have nothing to do, for the land is too barren for cultivation. We made known our requirements for labourers, and were assured that plenty would be glad to go to Santo Domingo. They would not, however, bind themselves there, but preferred to go down untrammelled with any conditions about pay or work, and I may anticipate here by saying that the result of our visit was very satisfactory, numbers of workmen having been obtained for the mines.

After getting some breakfast at a house that seemed to be the hotel of Depilto, we set out to visit a silver mine named "El Coquimba." We had to ascend a high range opposite the town, and found riding over the steep bare exposures of quartz rock so difficult and dangerous that about half way up we tied our mules to some young pine trees and proceeded on foot. The mine was abandoned, and the shafts and levels were closed by falls of rock. Some of the ore, sulphide of silver, was lying

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