The two lakes are practically disconnected, but there is a channel, the Rio Tipitapa, through which the upper lake discharges its overflow into the lower in times of flood. Lake Managua is about fifty miles long by thirty-five miles wide.

West of the lakes the depression, throughout its entire length "is traversed by a remarkable volcanic chain of isolated cones, which north of the lakes takes the name of the Maribios (the Marvels), terminating in the extreme northwest with Coseguina (4,000 feet high), and in the extreme southeast with the low wooded archipelagoes of Solentiname and Chichicaste, near the head of the desaguadero. Between these two extremes the chief cones proceeding southward are: the Maribios chain, comprising El Viejo (6,000 feet), Santa Clara, Telica, Orota, Las Pilas, Axosco, Momotombo (7,000 feet, highest point in the state), all crowded close together between the Gulf of Fonseca and Lake Managua; Masaya, or Popocatepec, and Mombacho (5,700 feet), near Granada; lastly, in Lake Nicaragua, the two islands of Zapatera and Ometepec, with its twin peaks Ometepec

and Medeira." The "Encyclopædia Britannica," from which the foregoing quotation is made, gives the height of Ometepec and Mederia as, respectively, 4,100 and 4,190 feet, but that is an error. Ometepec, which is the taller of the two by fully twenty-five per cent., is about 5,280 feet high.

There is a remarkable difference in the character of the country east and west of the lakes, as far as vegetation is concerned. The mountain sides and plateaus of the eastern slope are covered, except where broad savannas occur in the Chontales, Matagalpa and Segovia districts, with a dense tropical forest of stupendous and apparently primeval growth. The mountain sides and tablelands, on the western slope, on the other hand, are rather sparsely covered with vegetation, and where trees occur, except in the valleys of the larger streams, they are generally of stunted growth. Again, east of the lakes the country is perennially clothed in green, while west of the lakes, during the latter part of the dry season, January to May, the aspect of the landscape is sere and rusty. Throughout the Maribios district occur

mal pais or barren lava fields, but the great plain of Conejo in that district and the even more extensive plain of Leon, west of the range, are fertile and thickly populated. Further southward the districts the districts of Managua, Granada and Rivas are traversed by a low range of hills, called the Coast Range. Here the mean level of the land is less than 100 feet above the surface of the lakes, and except the mountains Mombacho and Masaya, already spoken of, there are no peaks more than 2,000 feet high. A few miles south of Rivas the land falls to the lowest elevation found on the Pacific Coast of the American continent. At the highest point it is only forty-one feet above the level of the lake (Nicaragua) and 142 above highwater mark on the Pacific.

The physical aspects of the country have been indicated in a general way in what has gone before, but they may be spoken of more particularly before proceeding further. Journeying westward from the Atlantic Coast, the traveler crosses first the flat forest-covered lands, characterized chiefly by black alluvial soil, then encounters rising ground still densely wooded,

where rocks and clay crop out of the loam. This rising ground soon becomes mountainous, declining in altitude toward the valley of the San Juan, in the south, and increasing in altitude toward the north, where in Chontales, Matagalpa and Segovia, occur broad tablelands and savannas at great elevations above the sea. From the summit of this mountain range the descent is sharp to the basin of the lakes. On the Pacific coast, the great volcanic range, beginning in the north at the Gulf of Fonseca, breaks away, west of the lakes, into a series of plains of no considerable elevation above the level of the lakes, but with a sensible decline southward to the locality of Rivas. From some distance above Leon to Rivas, a distance of 100 miles, the land is mostly cleared or sparsely wooded as compared with the Atlantic slope. South of Rivas, about eight miles, are extensive "jicarals" (pronounced hic'-o-rals), or barren plains sparsely wooded with the jicara tree and a peculiar shrub called the bull's thorn. It may be mentioned in this connection that plains of the same character occur in the districts east of the lakes. Further south than

the jicarals near Rivas, the land rises again to form the Santa Clara hills and becomes heavily wooded.

North of Granada, which is on the west shore of Lake Nicaragua, near its head, occur volcanic lakelets, such as that of Masaya, beside the Indian town of the same name. These are crater-like openings in the earth, and are filled with water, the level of which is in some instances more than 300 feet below the surface of the earth. Higher up north, throughout the region of the Maribios, occur numerous infernillos or low mounds, which send forth sulphurous smoke, and at night blue flames that give a weird illumination to the surrounding country. Indeed, the evidences of volcanic energy are so numerous and plain, throughout this part of the country, as to justify the remark of Squier that: "No other region of equal extent probably betrays so marked traces of igneous action as that portion of Nicaragua intervening between its lakes and the Pacific." It should be borne in mind, however, that those traces are much less remarkable south of Masaya than north of it. Throughout the