near these rocky knolls, and are said to feed on ants and other
insects. We had a long chase after one, which we observed some
distance from the rock, over the cracked and dried-up plain: though
it could not run very fast, it doubled quickly, and the rough
cracked ground made odds in its favour; but it was ultimately
secured. Pigeons, brown coloured, of various sizes, from that of a
thrush to that of a common dove, were numerous and very tame. One
of the smallest species alights and seeks about in the streets of
small towns for seeds, like a sparrow, and more boldly than that
bird, for it is not molested by the children--more perhaps from
indolence than from any lack of the element of cruelty in their
dispositions. After crossing the plains we rode over undulating
hills, here called savannahs, with patches of forest on the rising
ground, and small plains on which grows the ternate-leaved jicara
(pronounced hickory), a tree about as large as an apple-tree, with
fruit of the size, shape, and appearance of a large green orange,
but growing on the trunk and branches, not amongst the leaves. The
outside of the fruit is a hard thin shell, packed full of seeds in
a kind of dry pulp, on which are fed fowls, and even horses and
cattle in the dry season; the latter are said sometimes to choke
themselves with the fruit, whilst trying to eat it. Of the bruised
seeds is also made a cooling drink, much used in Nicaragua. The
jicara trees grow apart at equal distances, as if planted by man.
The hard thin shell of the fruit, carved in various patterns on the
outside, is made into cups and drinking-vessels by the natives, who
also cultivate other species of jicara, with round fruit, as large
as a man's head, from which the larger drinking-bowls are made. In
the smaller jicaras chocolate is always made and served in Central
America, and, being rounded at the bottom, little stands are made
to set them in; these are sometimes shaped like egg-cups, sometimes
like toy washhand-stands. In making their earthenware vessels, the
Indians up to this day follow this natural form, and their
water-jars and bowls are made rounded at the bottom, requiring
stands to keep them upright.

The meals of Montezuma were served on thick cushions or pillows.
This was probably on account of the rounded bases of the bowls and
dishes used. The gourd forms of bowls possibly originated from the
clay being moulded over gourds which were burnt out in the baking
process. It is said that in the Southern States the kilns in which
the ancient pottery was baked have been found, and in some the
half-baked ware remained, retaining the rinds of the gourds over
which they had been moulded. Afterwards, when the potter learned to
make bowls without the aid of gourds, he still retained the shape
of his ancient pattern.

The name, too, like the form, has had a wonderful vitality. It is
the "xicalli" of the ancient Aztecs, changed to "jicara" by the
Spaniards, by which they mean a chocolate-cup; and even in Italy a
modification of the same word may be heard, a tea-cup being called
a chicchera.

On top of one of the hills we just got a glimpse of a small pack of
wolves, or coyotes, as they are called, from the Aztec coyotl. They
are smaller than the European wolf, and are cunning, like a fox,
but hunt in packs. They looked down at us from the ridge of the
hill for a few moments, then trotted off down the other side. Their
howlings may often be heard in the early morning.

Cattle, horses, and mules are bred on these plains. Male asses are
kept at some of the haciendas. They are not allowed to mix with any
of their own kind, and are well fed and in good condition; but they
are only of small size, and the breed of mules might be greatly
improved by the introduction of larger asses.

The vegetation on the plains was rapidly drying up. Many of the
trees shed their leaves in the dry season, just as they do with us
in autumn. The barrenness of the landscape is relieved in March by
several kinds of trees bursting into flower when they have shed
their leaves, and presenting great domes of brilliant colour--some
pink, others red, blue, yellow, or white, like single-coloured
bouquets. One looked like a gigantic rhododendron, with bunches of
large pink flowers. The yellow-flowered ones belong to wild
cotton-trees, from the pods of which the natives gather cotton to
stuff pillows, etc. About one o'clock we reached rather a large
river, and after crossing it came in sight of the town of Acoyapo,
one of the principal towns of the province of Chontales. we stayed
and had dinner with Senor Don Dolores Bermudez, a Nicaraguan
gentlemen who had been educated in the States, and spoke English
fluently. He very kindly took me over the town, and I always found
him ready to give me information respecting the antiquities and
natural products of the country. Acoyapo and the district around it
contains about two thousand inhabitants. The store-keepers,
lawyers, and hacienderos are of Spanish and mixed descent. Amongst
the lower classes there is much Indian and some negro blood; but
there are many pure Indians scattered through the district, living
near the rivers and brooks, and growing patches of maize and beans.
In the centre of the town is a large square or plaza, with a
stucco-fronted church occupying one side, and the principal stores
and houses ranging around the other three sides. A couple of
coco-palms grow in front of the church, but do not thrive like
those near the sea-coast. It was Saturday, the 22nd of February,
when we arrived; this was a great feast-day, or festa, at Acoyapo,
and the town was full of country people, who were amusing
themselves with horse-races, cock-fights, and drinking aguardiente.
Their mode of cock-fighting is very cruel, as the cocks are armed
with long sickle-shaped lancets, tied on to their natural spurs,
with which they give each other fearful gashes and wounds. All
classes of Nicaraguans are fond of this amusement; in nearly every
house a cock will be found, tied up in a corner by the leg, but
treated otherwise like one of the family. The priests are generally
great abettors of the practice, which forms the usual amusement of
the towns on Sunday afternoons. I have heard many stories of the
padres after service hurrying off to the cock-pit with a cock under
each arm. Bets are made on every fight, and much money is lost and
won over the sport.

Like most of the Nicaraguan towns, Acoyapo appears to have been an
Indian city before the Spanish conquest. The name is Indian, and in
the plaza Senor Bermudez pointed out to me some flat bared rock
surfaces, on which were engraved circles and various straight and
curved characters, covering the whole face of the rock. Some rude
portions of stone statues that have been found in the neighbourhood
are also preserved in the town. The Spaniards called the town San
Sebastian; but the more ancient name is likely to prevail,
notwithstanding that in all official documents the Spanish one is
used. Acoyapo is a grazing district, and there are some large
cattle haciendas, especially towards the lake. The town suffers
from fever owing to the neighbouring swamp. Much of the land around
is very fertile; but little of it is cultivated, as the people are
indolent, and content if they make a bare livelihood. We left
Acoyapo about three o'clock: our road lay up the river, which we
crossed three times. Excepting near the river, the country was very
thinly timbered; and it was pleasant, after riding across the open
plains, exposed to the hot rays of the sun, to reach the shady
banks of the stream, by which grew many high thick-foliaged trees,
with lianas hanging from them, and bromelias, orchids, ferns, and
many other epiphytes perched on their branches. At these spots,
too, were various beautiful birds, amongst which the Sisitote, a
fine black and orange songster, and a trogon (Trogon
malanocephalus, Gould), were the most conspicuous.

We reached and crossed a high range, from the summit of which we
had a splendid view over the plains and savannahs we had crossed,
to the great lake, with its islands and peaked hills, and beyond
the dark dim mountains of Costa Rica, amongst which dwell the
Indians of the Rio Frio and other little-known tribes. Before us
were spread out well-grassed savannahs, thinly timbered, excepting
where dark winding lines of trees or light green thickets of
bamboos marked the course of rivers or mountain brooks. Here and
there were dotted thatched huts, in which dwelt the owners of the
cattle, mules, and horses feeding on the meadows. Far in the
distance the view was bounded by a line of dark, nearly
black-looking forest, which, there commencing, extends unbroken to
the Atlantic. Near its edge, a seven-peaked range marked the
neighbourhood of Libertad--the beginning of the gold-mining
district. Descending the slope of the range, we found the savannahs
on its eastern side much more moist than those to the westward of
it; and as we proceeded, the humidity of the ground increased, and
the crossings of some of the valleys and swamps were difficult for
the mules. The dry season had set in, and these places were rapidly
drying up; but in many it had just reached that stage when the mud
was most tenacious; at one very bad crossing, called an "estero,"
my mule fell, with my leg underneath him, pinning me in the mud.
The poor beast was exhausted, and would not move. Night had set
in--it was quite dark, and I had lagged some distance behind my
companions: fortunately they heard my shouts, and, soon returning,
extricated me from my awkward predicament. Without further mishap
we reached Esquipula, a village inhabited mostly by half-breeds,
and slung our hammocks for the night in a small thatched house
belonging to the mining company, who kept many of their draught
bullocks at this place on account of the excellent pasture around.
The village of Esquipula is built near the river Mico, which,
rising in the forest-clad ranges to the eastward, runs for several
miles through the savannahs, then again enters the forest and flows
into the Atlantic at Blewfields, a broad and deep river. This river
must have had at one time a large Indian population dwelling in
settled towns near its banks. Their burial places, marked with
great heaps of stones, are frequent, and pieces of pottery, broken
stone statues, and pedestals are often met with. Near Esquipula
there are some artificial-looking mounds, with great stones set
around them; in fact, this and another village, a few miles to the
south, called San Tomas, are, I believe, both built on the sites of
old Indian towns. The Indians of the Rio Mico gave the Spaniards
some trouble on their first settlement of the country. About two
leagues from Acoyapo, the site of a small town was pointed out to
me, now covered with low trees and brushwood. Here the Spaniards
were attacked in the night-time by the Rio Mico Indians, and all of
them killed, excepting the young women, who were carried off into
captivity, and the place has ever since lain desolate.

Many extravagant stories have been told of the great statues that
are said to have been seen on the banks of the Mico, much lower
down the river than where we crossed it; but M. Etienne, of
Libertad, who descended it to Blewfields, and some Ulleros of San
Tomas, who had frequently been down it after india-rubber, assured
me that the reported statues were merely rude carvings of faces and
animals on the rocks. They appear to be similar to what are found
on many rivers running into the Caribbean Sea, and to those which
were examined by Schomburgk on the rocks of the Orinoco and
Essequibo. As others like them, of undoubted Carib workmanship,
have been found in the Virgin Islands, it is possible that they are
all the work of that once-powerful race, and not of the settled
agricultural and statue-making Indians of the western part of the
continent.

We started from Esquipula early next morning, and crossed low
thinly-timbered hills and savannahs to Pital, a scattered
settlement of many small thatched houses, close to the borders of
the great forest; on the edge of which were clearings, made for
growing maize, which is cultivated entirely on burnt forest land.
At some parts they had already commenced cutting down trees for
fresh clearings; these would be burnt in April, and the maize sown
the following month, in the usual primitive way, just as it was in
Mexico before and at the Spanish conquest. In commencing a
clearing, the brushwood is first cut close to the ground, as it
would be difficult to do so after the large trees are felled. The
big timber is then cut down, and in April it is set fire to. All
the small wood and leaves burn well; but most of the large trunks
are left, and many of the branches. Most of the latter are cut up
to form a fence round the clearing, this at Pital and Esquipula
being made very close and high to keep out deer. In May, the maize
is sown; the sower makes little holes with a pointed stick, a few
feet apart, into each of which he drops two or three grains, and
covers them with his foot. In a few days the green leaves shoot up,
and grow very quickly. Numerous wild plants also spring up, and in
June these are weeded out; the success of the crop greatly
depending upon the thoroughness with which this is done. In July
each plant has produced two or three ears; and before the grain is
set these are pulled off, excepting one, as if more are left they
do not mature well. The young ears are boiled whole, and make a
tender and much-esteemed vegetable. They are called at this stage
"chilote," from the Aztec xilotl; and the ancient Mexicans in their
eighth month, which began on the 16th July, made a great festival,
called the feast of Xilonen. The poor Indians now have often reason
to rejoice when this stage is reached, as their stores of corn are
generally exhausted before then, and the "chilote" is the first
fruits of the new crop. In the beginning of August the grains are
fully formed, though still tender and white; and it is eaten as
green corn, now called "elote." In September the maize is ripe, and
is gathered when dry, and stowed away, generally over the rooms of
the natives. A second crop is often sown in December.

Maize is very prolific, bearing a hundredfold, and ripening in
April. From the most ancient times, maize has been the principal
food of the inhabitants of the western side of tropical America. On
the coast of Peru, Darwin found heads of it,* along with eighteen
species of marine shells, in a raised beach eighty-five feet above
the level of the sea (* "Geological Observations in South America"
1846 page 49 and "Animals and Plants under Domestication" volume 1
page 320.); and in the same country it has been found in tombs
apparently more ancient than the earliest times of the Incas.*
(*Von Tschudi "Travels in Peru" English edition page 177.) In
Mexico it was known from the earliest times of which we have any
record, in the picture writings of the Toltecs; and that ancient
people carried it with them in all their wanderings. In Central
America the stone grinders, with which they bruised it down, are
almost invariably found in the ancient graves, having been buried
with the ashes of the dead, as an indispensable article for their
outfit for another world. When Florida and Louisiana were first
discovered, the native Indian tribes all cultivated maize as their
staple food; and throughout Yucatan, Mexico, and all the western
side of Central America, and through Peru to Chili, it was, and
still is, the main sustenance of the Indians. The people that
cultivated it were all more or less advanced in civilisation; they
were settled in towns; their traders travelled from one country to
another with their wares; they were of a docile and tractable
disposition, easily frightened into submission. It is likely that
these maize-eating peoples belonged to closely affiliated races. In
the West India Islands they occupied most of Cuba and Hayti; but
from Porto Rico southwards the islands were peopled by the warlike
Caribs, who harassed the more civilised tribes to the north. From
Cape Gracias a Dios southward, the eastern coast of America was
peopled on its first discovery by much ruder tribes, who did not
grow maize, but made bread from the roots of the mandioca (Manihot
aipim); and still in British Guiana, on the Lower Amazon, and in
north-eastern Brazil, farina made from the roots of the mandioca is
the staple food. Maize has been introduced by the Portuguese, but
it has no native name, and is used mostly for feeding cattle and
fowls, scarcely at all for the food of the people. This fundamental
difference in the food of the indigenes points to a great
distinction between the peoples to which I shall have in the sequel
to revert. In the West India Islands, Cuba and Hayti seem to have
been peopled from Yucatan, and Florida, Porto Rico, and all the
islands to the southwards, from Venezuela.

In Central America, the bread made from the maize is prepared at
the present day exactly as it was in ancient Mexico. The grain is
first of all boiled along with wood ashes or a little lime; the
alkali loosens the outer skin of the grain, and this is rubbed off
with the hands in running water, a little of it at a time, placed
upon a slightly concave stone, called a metlate, from the Aztec
metlatl, on which it is rubbed with another stone shaped like a
rolling-pin. A little water is thrown on it as it is bruised, and
it is thus formed into paste. A ball of the paste is taken and
flattened out between the hands into a cake about ten inches
diameter and three-sixteenths of an inch thick, which is baked on a
slightly concave earthenware pan. The cakes so made are called
tortillas, and are very nutritious. When travelling, I preferred
them myself to bread made from wheaten flour. When well made and
eaten warm, they are very palatable.

There are a few small sugar plantations near Pital. The juice is
pressed out of the canes by rude wooden rollers set upright in
threes, the centre one driving the one on each side of it by
projecting cogs. The whole are set in motion by oxen travelling
round the same as in a thrashing-mill. The ungreased axles of the
rollers, squeaking and screeching like a score of tormented pigs,
generally inform the traveller of their vicinity long before he
reaches them. The juice is boiled, and an impure sugar made from
it. I do not think that the sugar-cane was known to the ancient
inhabitants of the country: it is not mentioned by the historians
of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, nor has it, like maize and
cacao, any native name.

As soon as we passed Pital we entered the great forest, the black
margin of which we had seen for many miles, that extends from this
point to the Atlantic. At first the road lay through small trees
and brushwood, a second growth that had sprung up where the
original forest had been cut for maize plantations; but after
passing a brook bordered by numerous plants of the pita, from which
a fine fibre is obtained, and which gives its name to Pital, we
entered the primeval forest. On each side of the road great trees
towered up, carrying their crowns out of sight amongst a canopy of
foliage; lianas wound round every trunk and hung from every bough,
passing from tree to tree, and entangling the giants in a great
network of coiling cables, as the serpents did Laocoon; the simile
being strengthened by the fact that many of the trees are really
strangled in the winding folds. Sometimes a tree appears covered
with beautiful flowers, which do not belong to it, but to one of
the lianas that twines through its branches and sends down great
rope-like stems to the ground. Climbing ferns and vanilla cling to
the trunks, and a thousand epiphytes perch themselves on the
branches. Amongst these are large arums that send down aerial
roots, tough and strong, and universally used instead of cordage by
the natives. Amongst the undergrowth several small species of
palms, varying in height from two to fifteen feet, are common; and
now and then magnificent tree ferns, sending off their feathery
crowns twenty feet from the ground, delight the sight with their
graceful elegance. Great broad-leaved heliconiae, leathery
melastomae, and succulent-stemmed, lop-sided-leaved begonias are
abundant, and typical of tropical American forests. Not less so are
the cecropia trees, with their white stems and large palmated
leaves standing up like great candelabra. Sometimes the ground is
carpeted with large flowers, yellow, pink, or white, that have
fallen from some invisible tree-top above, or the air is filled
with a delicious perfume, for the source of which one seeks around
in vain, as the flowers that cause it are far overhead out of
sight, lost in the great overshadowing crown of verdure. Numerous
babbling brooks intersect the forest, with moss-covered stones and
fern-clad nooks. One's thoughts are led away to the green dells in
English denes, but are soon recalled; for the sparkling pools are
the favourite haunts of the fairy humming-birds, and like an arrow
one will dart up the brook, and, poised on wings moving with almost
invisible velocity, clothed in purple, golden, or emerald glory,
hang suspended in the air; gazing with startled look at the
intruder, with a sudden jerk, turning round first one eye, then the
other, and suddenly disappear like a flash of light.

Unlike the plains and savannahs we crossed yesterday, where the
ground is parched up in the dry season, the Atlantic forest, bathed
in the rains distilled from the north-east trades, is ever verdant.
Perennial moisture reigns in the soil, perennial summer in the air,
and vegetation luxuriates in ceaseless activity and verdure, all
the year round. Unknown are the autumn tints, the bright browns and
yellows of English woods, much less the crimsons, purples, and
yellows of Canada, where the dying foliage rivals, nay, excels the
expiring dolphin in splendour. Unknown the cold sleep of winter;
unknown the lovely awakening of vegetation at the first gentle
touch of spring. A ceaseless round of ever-active life weaves the
forest scenery of the tropics into one monotonous whole, of which
the component parts exhibit in detail untold variety and beauty.

To the genial influence of ever-present moisture and heat we must
ascribe the infinite variety of the trees of these forests. They do
not grow in clusters or masses of single species, like our oaks,
beeches, and firs, but every tree is different from its neighbour,
and they crowd upon each other in unsocial rivalry, each trying to
overtop the other. For this reason we see the great straight trunks
rising a hundred feet without a branch, and carrying their domes of
foliage directly up to where the balmy breezes blow and the sun's
rays quicken. Lianas hurry up to the light and sunshine, and
innumerable epiphytes perch themselves high up on the branches.

The road through the forest was very bad, the mud deep and
tenacious, the hills steep and slippery, and the mules had to
struggle and plunge along through from two to three feet of sticky
clay. One part, named the Nispral, was especially steep and
difficult to descend, the road being worn into great ruts. We
crossed the ranges and brooks nearly at right angles, and were
always ascending or descending. About two we reached a clearing and
hacienda, belonging to an enterprising German, named Melzer, near a
brook called Las Lajas, who was cultivating plantains and
vegetables, and had also commenced brick and tile making, besides
planting some thousands of coffee trees. His large clearings were a
pleasant change from the forest through which we had been toiling,
and we stayed a few minutes at his house. After riding over another
league of forest-covered ranges, we reached Pavon, one of the mines
of the Chontales Company, and passing the Javali mine soon arrived
at Santo Domingo, the headquarters of the gold-mining company whose
operations I had come out to superintend.

CHAPTER 5.

Geographical position of Santo Domingo.
Physical geography.
The inhabitants.
Mixed races.
Negroes and Indians compared.
Women.
Establishment of the Chontales Gold-Mining Company.
My house and garden.
Fruits.
Plantains and bananas; probably not indigenous to America:
   propagated from shoots: do not generally mature their seeds.
Fig-trees.
Granadillas and papaws.
Vegetables.
Dependence of flowers on insects for their fertilisation.
Insect plagues.
Leaf-cutting ants: their method of defoliating trees: their nests.
Some trees are not touched by the ants.
Foreign trees are very subject to their attack.
Method of destroying the ants.
Migration of the ants from a nest attacked.
Corrosive sublimate causes a sort of madness amongst them.
Indian plan of preventing them ascending young trees.
Leaf-cutting ants are fungus-growers and eaters.
Sagacity of the ants.

The gold-mining village of Santo Domingo is situated in the
province of Chontales, Nicaragua, in latitude 12 degrees 16
minutes north and longitude 84 degrees 59 minutes west, nearly
midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific, where Central America
begins to widen out northward of the narrow isthmus of Panama and
Costa Rica. It is in the midst of the great forest that covers most
of the Atlantic slope of Central America, and which continues
unbroken from where we had entered it, at Pital, eastward to the
Atlantic; westward it terminates in a sinuous margin about seven
miles from the village, and there commence the lightly timbered and
grassy plains and savannahs stretching to the Lake of Nicaragua.
The surface of the land in the forest region forms a succession of
ranges and steep valleys, covered with magnificent timber and much
undergrowth. Santo Domingo lies about 2000 feet above the level of
the sea, and the hills around it rise from 500 to 1000 feet higher.
It is built in the bend of a small stream, the head waters of a
branch of the Blewfields river, on a level, low piece of ground,
with the brook winding almost round it, and, beyond that, encircled
by an amphitheatre of low hills in the hollow of which it lies. The
road to the mines runs through it, and forms the main street,
having on each side thatched stores and irregularly built houses.
The inhabitants, about three hundred in number, are entirely
dependent on the mines around, there being no cultivation or any
other employment in the immediate neighbourhood. The people are of
a mixed descent, in which Indian blood predominates, then Spanish
with a slight admixture of the Negro element, whilst amongst the
rising generation many fair-haired children can claim paternity
amongst the numerous German and English workmen that have been
employed at the mines. The store-keepers form the aristocracy of
the village. They are indolent; lounging about, or lying smoking in
their hammocks the greater part of the day, but generally civil and
polite. They are particular in their dress, and may often be seen
in faultless European costume, silk umbrella in hand, in twos or
threes, taking a short quiet walk up the valley. The lower class of
miners are scantily and badly clothed, especially when they come
first to the mines. They are bare-footed, with poor ragged cotton
trousers and a thin jacket of the same material. Generally, after
being a year or two at the mines, they begin to wear better
clothing, and may often be seen with a new shirt, which to show off
is worn hanging down outside, like a surtout coat. Amongst these
are many pure Indians, short sturdy men, who make the steadiest
workmen, patient and industrious, but with little appreciation of
the value of money, and spending the whole of their wages at the
end of the month, before they resume work. At these times the
commandant comes in from the town of Libertad, about nine miles
distant, with half-a-dozen bare-footed soldiers carrying old
muskets on their shoulders, and levies blackmail upon the poor
patient "Mosas," as they are called, in the shape of a fine for
drunkenness. But the "aguardiente," a native-made rum, is
nevertheless always kept on hand, being a government monopoly, and
ever ready, so that the Mosas may have no excuse to be sober and
escape being fined.

Even in their drink the poor Indians are not very violent, and get
intoxicated with surprising stolidity and quietness. Amongst the
half-breeds, especially where the Negro element exists, there are
often quarrellings and rows, when they slash away at each other
with their long knives or "machetes," and get ugly cuts, which,
however, heal again quickly.

Both the Negroes and Indians are decidedly inferior to the whites
in intellect, but they do not differ so much from the Europeans as
they do from each other. The Negro will work hard for a short
while, on rare occasions, or when compelled by another, but is
innately lazy. The Indian is industrious by nature, and works
steadily and well for himself; but if compelled to work for
another, loses all heart, and pines away and dies. The Negro is
talkative, vivacious, vain, and sensual; the Indian taciturn,
stolid, dignified, and moderate. As freemen, regularly though
poorly paid and kindly treated, the Indians work well and
laboriously in the mines; but the Negro seldom engages either in
that or any other settled employment, unless compelled as a slave,
in which condition he is happy and thoughtless. I do not defend
slavery, but I believe it to be a greater curse to the masters than
to the slaves, more deteriorating to the former than to the latter.
The Spaniards at first enslaved the Indians, but they died away so
rapidly that in a very short time the indigenes of the whole of the
once-populous islands of the West Indies were exterminated, and
large numbers of Indians were carried off from the mainland to
supply their places, but died with equal rapidity; so that the
Spaniards found it more profitable to bring negroes from Africa,
who thrived and multiplied in captivity as readily as the enslaved
Indians pined away and died. In Central America there never were
many black slaves; since the States threw off the yoke of Spain
there have been none; and this comparative scarcity of the Negro
element makes these countries much more pleasant and safer to dwell
in than the West Indies, where it is much larger. The Indian seldom
or never molests the whites, excepting in retaliation for some
great injury; whilst amongst the free Negroes, robbery, violence,
and murder need no other incentives than their own evil passions
and lust.

The women at Santo Domingo are much the same as those found at all
the small provincial towns of Central America. Morality is at a low
ebb, and most of them live as mistresses, not as wives, for which
they do not seem to suffer in the estimation of their neighbours.
This is greatly due in Nicaragua, as it is throughout Central and
South America, to the profligate lives led by the priests, who,
with few rare exceptions, live in concubinage more or less open.
The women have children at an early age, and make kind and
indulgent mothers.

(PLATE 4. COMMISSIONER'S HOUSE AT SANTO DOMINGO.)

The village is bounded to the eastward by the mines and hacienda of
the Chontales Mining Company, whose houses, workshops, and
machinery are on rising ground on each side of the valley, with the
brook running down between. About fifty acres of the forest have
been cut down, and a great deal of this is fenced in and covered
with grass. Going up the valley from the village, on the right hand
side, about fifty yards from the road, on a grass-covered slope,
stand the houses of the commissioner and cashier, in the latter of
which the medical officer also lives. The former, a large,
white-washed, square, two-storied, wooden house, with verandahs
round three sides of it, and communicating by a covered passage
with a detached kitchen behind, had been built by one of my
predecessors, Captain Hill, R.N., who did not live to inhabit it.
It was a roomy, comfortable house, commanding a view of the
machinery, workshops, and part of the mines on the other side of
the valley, and formed my residence for upwards of four years.

The slope in front of the house, down to the river, was covered
with weedy bushes when I arrived; but I had these cleared away, and
a fine greensward of grass took their place. On this I planted
young orange, lime, and citron trees; and I had the pleasure,
before I left, to see them beginning to bear their fine fruit. To
the west of the house was a dell, covered with fallen logs and
rubbish thrown from the hill, in which was a perennial spring of
limpid water. I had the logs and rubbish gathered together and
burnt, put a light fence round it, and formed a small vegetable,
fruit, and flower garden. The mango and avocado trees had not come
into bearing before I left; but pineapples, figs, grenadillas,
bananas, pumpkins, plantains, papaws, and chioties fruited
abundantly. The last named is a native of Mexico; it is a climbing
plant with succulent stems and vine-like leaves, and grows with
great rapidity. The fruit, of which it bears a great abundance, is
about the size and shape of a pear, covered with soft prickles. It
is boiled and eaten as a vegetable, and resembles vegetable marrow.
At Santo Domingo it continues to bear a succession of fruits during
eight months of the year.

Next to maize, plantains and bananas form the principal sustenance
of the natives. The banana tree shoots up its succulent stem, and
unfolds its immense entire leaves with great rapidity; and a group
of them waving their silky leaves in the sun, or shining ghostly
white in the moonlight, forms one of those beautiful sights that
can only be seen to perfection in the tropics. There are a great
many varieties of them, and they are cooked in many ways--boiled,
baked, made into pastry, or eaten as a fruit. The varieties differ
not only in their fruits, but in the colour of their leaves and
stems; the natives can distinguish them without seeing the fruit,
and have names for each, by which they are known throughout all
Central America, Mexico, and Peru. These names are of Spanish
origin; and this fact, together with the absence of any native,
Mexican, or Peruvian name for the fruit, inclines me to adopt the
opinion of Clavigero, who contends, in opposition to other writers,
that the plantain and banana were not known in these countries
before the Spanish conquest, but were first brought from the
Canaries to Hayti in 1516, and from thence taken to the mainland.

Neither the sugar-cane* nor the plantain is given in the list of
the indigenous productions of Mexico by the careful and accurate
Hernandez. (* The sugar-cane is said never to bear seed in the West
Indies, Malaga, India, Cochin China, or the Malay Archipelago.
--Darwin's "Animals and Plants under Domestication" volume 2 page
169.) The natives made sugar from the green stems of the maize.
Humboldt thinks that some species of plantain were indigenous to
America; but it seems incredible that such an important fruit could
have been overlooked by the early historians. In the old world the
cultivation of the banana dates from the earliest times of which
tradition makes mention. One of the Sanscrit names was
bhanu--fruit, from which probably the name "banana" was derived.*
(* Humboldt's "Aspects of Nature" volume 2 page 141.)

Both the plantain and the banana are always propagated from shoots
or suckers that spring from the base of the plants; and it is to be
remarked that the pineapple and the bread-fruit, that are also
universally grown from cuttings or shoots, and have been cultivated
from remote antiquity, have in a great measure lost the faculty of
producing mature seed. Such varieties could not arise in a state of
nature, but are due to selection by early races of mankind, who
would naturally propagate the best varieties; and, to do this, seed
was not required. As the finest kinds of bananas, pineapples, and
bread-fruit are almost seedless, it is probable that the nutriment
that would have been required for the formation of the seeds has
been expended in producing larger and more succulent fruits. We
find some varieties of oranges, which also have been cultivated
from very early ages, producing fruits without seeds; but as these
trees are propagated from seeds, these varieties could not become
so sterile as those just mentioned. There can be no doubt that the
seedless varieties of banana, bread-fruits, and pineapples have
been propagated for hundreds of years; and this fact ought to
modify the opinions generally entertained by horticulturists that
the life of plants and trees propagated from shoots or cuttings
cannot be indefinitely prolonged in that way. Perhaps this may be
the case in trees, such as apples, that have come under their
notice; and the reason that the varieties die out after a certain
time, if not reproduced from seed, may be that the vigour of the
trees is at last used up by the production of mature seed, but that
in the seedless bananas, pineapples, and bread-fruits this does not
happen.

Figs grow well in Nicaragua, and by many their luscious fruit is
preferred to all others. My trees suffered greatly from the attacks
of a large and fine longicorn beetle (Taeniotes scalaris, Fab.)
which laid its eggs in the green bark, and produced white grubs
that mined into the stem. I had to dig down to them with a knife to
extricate them and prevent them destroying the young trees. We were
surrounded at a short distance by the forest, in which grow many
species of wild fig-trees; and this probably was the reason that my
trees suffered so much, for at Granada the fig-growers were not
troubled with this insect.

The grenadilla is the fruit of one of the passion-flowers
(Passiflora quadrangularis), and is shaped like a large oblong
apple, which it also resembles in perfume. It makes fine tarts and
puddings, being somewhat like the gooseberry in taste. I had much
difficulty in preserving it from being eaten by small forest rats
that came out of the woods, where they had already been accustomed
to eat the wild fruit of this climber.

The moist, warm climate seemed to suit the papaw tree, as it grew
with great vigour, and produced very large and fine melon-like
fruits. The green fruits are excellent for making pastry, if
flavoured with a little lime-juice.

In vegetables, I grew three species of sweet potatoes--yellow,
purple, and white skinned, and which differ also in their leaves
and flowers; cabbages, kidney-beans, pumpkins, yuccas (Jatropha
manihot), quequisque (a species of arum, Colocasia esculenta),
lettuces, tomatoes, capiscums, endives, parsley, and carrots.

The climate was too damp to grow onions; neither could I succeed
with peas, potatoes, or turnips. Scarlet runners (Phaseolus
multiflorus) grew well, and flowered abundantly, but never produced
a single pod. Darwin has shown that this flower is dependent, like
many others, for its fertilisation upon the operations of the busy
humble-bee, and that it is provided with a wonderful mechanism, by
means of which its pollen is rubbed into the head of the bee, and
received on the stigma of the next plant visited.* (* "Gardener's
Chronicle" October 24, 1857 and November 14, 1858; also T.H. Farrer
in "Annals of Natural History" October 1868.) There are many
humble-bees, of different species from ours, in tropical America;
but none of them frequented the flowers of the scarlet runner, and
to that circumstance we may safely ascribe its sterility. An
analogous case has been long known. The vanilla plant (Vanilla
planifolia) has been introduced from tropical America into India,
but though it grows well, and flowers, it never fruits without
artificial aid. It is the same in the hothouses of Europe. Dr.
Morren, of Liege, has shown that, if artificially fertilised, every
flower will produce fruit; and ascribes its sterility to the
absence, in Europe and India, of some insect that in America
carries the pollen from one flower to another.* (* Taylor's "Annals
of Natural History" volume 3 page 1.) When those interested in the
acclimature of the natural productions of one country on the soil
of some distant one, study the mutual relations of plants and
animals, they will find that in the case of many plants it is
important that the insects specially adapted for the fertilisation
of their flowers should be introduced with them. Thus, if the
insect or bird that assists in the fertilisation of the vanilla
could be introduced into and would live in India, the growers of
that plant would be relieved of much trouble, and it might be
thoroughly naturalised. Judging from my experience, it would be
useless to attempt the acclimature of the scarlet-runner bean in
Chontales unless the humble-bee were also introduced.

Caterpillars, plant-lice, bugs, and insect pests of all kinds were
numerous, and did much harm to my garden; but the greatest plague
of all were the leaf-cutting ants, and I had to wage a continual
warfare against them. During this contest I gained much information
regarding their habits, and was successful in checking their
ravages, and I shall occupy the remainder of this chapter with an
account of them.

LEAF-CUTTING ANTS.

Nearly all travellers in tropical America have described the
ravages of the leaf-cutting ants (Oecodoma); their crowded,
well-worn paths through the forests, their ceaseless pertinacity in
the spoliation of the trees--more particularly of introduced
species--which are stripped bare and ragged with the midribs and a
few jagged points of the leaves only left. Many a young plantation
of orange, mango, and lemon trees has been destroyed by them. Again
and again have I been told in Nicaragua, when inquiring why no
fruit-trees were grown at particular places, "It is no use planting
them; the ants eat them up." The first acquaintance a stranger
generally makes with them is on encountering their paths on the
outskirts of the forest crowded with the ants; one lot carrying off
the pieces of leaves, each piece about the size of a sixpence, and
held up vertically between the jaws of the ant; another lot
hurrying along in an opposite direction empty-handed, but eager to
get loaded with their leafy burdens. If he follows this last
division, it will lead him to some young trees or shrubs, up which
the ants mount; and then each one, stationing itself on the edge of
a leaf, commences to make a circular cut, with its scissor-like
jaws, from the edge, its hinder feet being the centre on which it
turns. When the piece is nearly cut off, it is still stationed upon
it, and it looks as though it would fall to the ground with it;
but, on being finally detached, the ant is generally found to have
hold of the leaf with one foot, and soon righting itself, and
arranging its burden to its satisfaction, it sets off at once on
its return. Following it again, it is seen to join a throng of
others, each laden like itself, and, without a moment's delay, it
hurries along the well-worn path. As it proceeds, other paths, each
thronged with busy workers, come in from the sides, until the main
road often gets to be seven or eight inches broad, and more
thronged than the streets of the city of London.

After travelling for some hundreds of yards, often for more than
half a mile, the formicarium is reached. It consists of low, wide
mounds of brown, clayey-looking earth, above and immediately around
which the bushes have been killed by their buds and leaves having
been persistently bitten off as they attempted to grow after their
first defoliation. Under high trees in the thick forest the ants do
not make their nests, because, I believe, the ventilation of their
underground galleries, about which they are very particular, would
be interfered with, and perhaps to avoid the drip from the trees.
It is on the outskirts of the forest, or around clearings, or near
wide roads that let in the sun, that these formicariums are
generally found. Numerous round tunnels, varying from half an inch
to seven or eight inches in diameter, lead down through the mounds
of earth; and many more from some distance around, also lead
underneath them. At some of the holes on the mounds ants will be
seen busily at work, bringing up little pellets of earth from
below, and casting them down on the ever-increasing mound, so that
its surface is nearly always fresh and new-looking.

Standing near the mounds, one sees from every point of the compass
ant-paths leading to them, all thronged with the busy workers
carrying their leafy burdens. As far as the eye can distinguish
their tiny forms, troops upon troops of leaves are moving up
towards the central point, and disappearing down the numerous
tunnelled passages. The out-going, empty-handed hosts are partly
concealed amongst the bulky burdens of the incomers, and can only
be distinguished by looking closely amongst them. The ceaseless,
toiling hosts impress one with their power, and one asks--What
forests can stand before such invaders? How is it that vegetation
is not eaten off the face of the earth? Surely nowhere but in the
tropics, where the recuperative powers of nature are immense and
ever active, could such devastation be withstood.

Further acquaintance with the subject will teach the inquirer that,
just as many insects are preserved by being distasteful to
insectivorous birds, so very many of the forest trees are protected
from the ravages of the ants by their leaves either being
distasteful to them, or unfitted for the purpose for which they are
required, whilst some have special means of defence against their
attacks. None of the indigenous trees appear so suitable for them
as the introduced ones. Through long ages the trees and the ants of
tropical America have been modified together. Varieties of plants
that arose unsuitable for the ants have had an immense advantage
over others that were more suitable; and thus through time every
indigenous tree that has survived in the great struggle has done so
because it has had originally, or has acquired, some protection
against the great destroyer. The leaf-cutting ants are confined to
tropical America; and we can easily understand that trees and
vegetables introduced from foreign lands where these ants are
unknown could not have acquired, excepting accidentally, and
without any reference to the ants, any protection against their
attacks, and now they are most eagerly sought by them. Amongst
introduced trees, some species of even the same genus are more
acceptable than others. Thus, in the orange tribe, the lime (Citrus
lemonum) is less liked than the other species; it is the only one
that I ever found growing really wild in Central America: and I
have sometimes thought that even in the short time since the lime
was first introduced, about three hundred years ago, a wild variety
may have arisen, less subject to the attacks of the ants than the
cultivated variety; for in many parts I saw them growing wild, and
apparently not touched. The orange (Citrus aurantium) and the
citron (Citrus medicus), on the other hand, are only found where
they have been planted and protected by man; and, were he to give
up their cultivation, the only species that would ultimately
withstand the attacks of the ants, and obtain a permanent footing
in Central America, would be the lime. The reason why the lime is
not so subject to the attacks of the ants is unknown; and the fact
that it is so is another instance of how little we know why one
species of a particular genus should prevail over another nearly
similar form. A little more or less acridity, or a slight chemical
difference in the composition of the tissues of a leaf, so small
that it is inappreciable to our senses, may be sufficient to ensure
the preservation or the destruction of a species throughout an
entire continent.

The ravages of this ant are so great that it may not be without
interest for me to enter upon some details respecting the means I
took to protect my own garden against their attacks, especially as
the continual warfare I waged against them for more than four years
made me acquainted with much of their wonderful economy.

In June 1869, very soon after the formation of my garden, the
leaf-cutting ants came down upon it, and at once commenced denuding
the young bananas, orange, and mango trees of their leaves. I
followed up the paths of the invading hosts to their nest, which
was about one hundred yards distant, close to the edge of the
forest. The nest was not a very large one, the low mound of earth
covering it being about four yards in diameter. At first I tried to
stop the holes up, but fresh ones were immediately opened out: I
then dug down below the mound, and laid bare the chambers beneath,
filled with ant-food and young ants in every stage of growth; but I
soon found that the underground ramifications extended so far, and
to so great a depth, while the ants were continually at work making
fresh excavations, that it would be an immense task to eradicate
them by such means; and notwithstanding all the digging I had done
the first day, I found them the next as busily at work as ever at
my garden, which they were rapidly defoliating. At this stage, our
medical officer, Dr. J.H. Simpson,* came to my assistance, and
suggested pouring carbolic acid, mixed with water, down their
burrows. (* This gentleman, beloved by all who knew him, of rare
talent, and with every prospect of a prosperous career before him,
died at Jamaica from hydrophobia, between two and three months
after being bitten by a small dog that had not itself shown any
symptoms of that disease.) The suggestion proved a most valuable
one. We had a quantity of common brown carbolic acid, about a pint
of which I mixed with four buckets of water, and, after stirring it
well about, poured it down the burrows; I could hear it rumbling
down to the lowest depths of the formicarium four or five feet from
the surface. The effect was all I could have wished: the marauding
parties were at once drawn off from my garden to meet the new
danger at home. The whole formicarium was disorganised. Big fellows
came stalking up from the cavernous regions below, only to descend
again in the utmost perplexity.

Next day I found them busily employed bringing up the ant-food from
the old burrows, and carrying it to a new one a few yards distant;
and here I first noticed a wonderful instance of their reasoning
powers. Between the old burrows and the new one was a steep slope.
Instead of descending this with their burdens, they cast them down
on the top of the slope, whence they rolled down to the bottom,
where another relay of labourers picked them up and carried them to
the new burrow. It was amusing to watch the ants hurrying out with
bundles of food, dropping them over the slope, and rushing back
immediately for more. They also brought out great numbers of dead
ants that the fumes of the carbolic acid had killed. A few days
afterwards, when I visited the locality again, I found both the old
burrows and the new one entirely deserted, and I thought they had
died off; but subsequent events convinced me that the survivors had
only moved away to a greater distance.

It was fully twelve months before my garden was again invaded. I
had then a number of rose-trees and also cabbages growing, which
the ants seemed to prefer to everything else. The rose-trees were
soon defoliated, and great havoc was made amongst the cabbages. I
followed them to their nest, and found it about two hundred yards
from the one of the year before. I poured down the burrows, as
before, several buckets of water with carbolic acid. The water is
required to carry the acid down to the lowest chambers. The ants,
as before, were at once withdrawn from my garden; and two days
afterwards, on visiting the place, I found all the survivors at
work on one track that led directly to the old nest of the year
before, where they were busily employed making fresh excavations.
Many were bringing along pieces of the ant-food from the old to the
new nests; others carried the undeveloped white pupae and larvae.
It was a wholesale and entire migration; and the next day the
formicarium down which I had last poured the carbolic acid was
entirely deserted. I afterwards found that when much disturbed, and
many of the ants destroyed, the survivors migrate to a new
locality. I do not doubt that some of the leading minds in this
formicarium recollected the nest of the year before, and directed
the migration to it.

Don Francisco Velasquez informed me, in 1870, that he had a powder
which made the ants mad, so that they bit and destroyed each other.
He gave me a little of it, and it proved to be corrosive sublimate.
I made several trials of it, and found it most efficacious in
turning a large column of the ants. A little of it sprinkled across
one of their paths in dry weather has a most surprising effect. As
soon as one of the ants touches the white powder, it commences to
run about wildly, and attack any other ant it comes across. In a
couple of hours, round balls of the ants will be found all biting
each other; and numerous individuals will be seen bitten completely
in two, whilst others have lost some of their legs or antennae.
News of the commotion is carried to the formicarium, and huge
fellows, measuring three-quarters of an inch in length, that only
come out of the nest during a migration or an attack on the nest or
one of the working columns, are seen stalking down with a
determined air, as if they would soon right matters. As soon,
however, as they have touched the sublimate, all their stateliness
leaves them: they rush about; their legs are seized hold of by some
of the smaller ants already affected by the poison; and they
themselves begin to bite, and in a short time become the centres of
fresh balls of rabid ants. The sublimate can only be used
effectively in dry weather. At Colon I found the Americans using
coal tar, which they spread across their paths when any of them led
to their gardens. I was also told that the Indians prevent them
from ascending young trees by tying thick wisps of grass, with the
sharp points downwards, round the stems. The ants cannot pass
through the wisp, and do not find out how to surmount it, getting
confused amongst the numberless blades, all leading downwards. I
mention these different plans of meeting and frustrating the
attacks of the ants at some length, as they are one of the greatest
scourges of tropical America, and it has been too readily supposed
that their attacks cannot be warded off. I myself was enabled, by
using some of the means mentioned above, to cultivate successfully
trees and vegetables of which the ants were extremely fond.

(PLATE 5. NEST OF LEAF-CUTTING ANT.)

Notwithstanding that these ants are so common throughout tropical
America, and have excited the attention of nearly every traveller,
there still remains much doubt as to the use to which the leaves
are put. Some naturalists have supposed that they use them directly
as food; others, that they roof their underground nests with them.
I believe the real use they make of them is as a manure, on which
grows a minute species of fungus, on which they feed;--that they
are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters. This explanation is
so extraordinary and unexpected, that I may be permitted to enter
somewhat at length on the facts that led me to adopt it. When I
first began my warfare against the ants that attacked my garden, I
dug down deeply into some of their nests. In our mining operations
we also, on two occasions, carried our excavations from below up
through very large formicariums, so that all their underground
workings were exposed to observation. I found their nests below to
consist of numerous rounded chambers, about as large as a man's
head, connected together by tunnelled passages leading from one
chamber to another. Notwithstanding that many columns of the ants
were continually carrying in the cut leaves, I could never find any
quantity of these in the burrows, and it was evident that they were
used up in some way immediately they were brought in. The chambers
were always about three parts filled with a speckled, brown,
flocculent, spongy-looking mass of a light and loosely connected
substance. Throughout these masses were numerous ants belonging to
the smallest division of the workers, which do not engage in
leaf-carrying. Along with them were pupae and larvae, not gathered
together, but dispersed, apparently irregularly, throughout the
flocculent mass. This mass, which I have called the ant-food,
proved, on examination, to be composed of minutely subdivided
pieces of leaves, withered to a brown colour, and overgrown and
lightly connected together by a minute white fungus that ramified
in every direction throughout it. I not only found this fungus in
every chamber I opened, but also in the chambers of the nest of a
distinct species that generally comes out only in the night-time,
often entering houses and carrying off various farinaceous
substances, and which does not make mounds above its nests, but
long, winding passages, terminating in chambers similar to the
common species, and always, like them, three parts filled with
flocculent masses of fungus-covered vegetable matter, amongst which
are the ant-nurses and immature ants. When a nest is disturbed, and
the masses of ant-food spread about, the ants are in great concern
to carry every morsel of it under shelter again; and sometimes,
when I had dug into a nest, I found the next day all the earth
thrown out filled with little pits that the ants had dug into it to
get out the covered up food. When they migrate from one part to
another, they also carry with them all the ant-food from their old
habitations. That they do not eat the leaves themselves I convinced
myself; for I found near the tenanted chambers, deserted ones
filled with the refuse particles of leaves that had been exhausted
as manure for the fungus, and were now left, and served as food for
larvae of Staphylinidae and other beetles.* (*This theory that the
leaf-cutting ants feed on a fungus which they cultivate has been
confirmed by Mr. Fritz Muller, who had arrived at it independently
in Brazil. His observations on this and various other habits of
insects are contained in a letter to Mr. Charles Darwin, published
in "Nature" of June 11, 1874.)

These ants do not confine themselves to leaves, but also carry off
any vegetable substance that they find suitable for growing the
fungus on. They are very partial to the inside white rind of
oranges, and I have also seen them cutting up and carrying off the
flowers of certain shrubs, the leaves of which they neglected. They
are particular about the ventilation of their underground chambers,
and have numerous holes leading up to the surface from them. These
they open out or close up, apparently to keep up a regular degree
of temperature below. The great care they take that the pieces of
leaves they carry into the nest should be neither too dry nor too
damp, is also consistent with the idea that the object is the
growth of a fungus that requires particular conditions of
temperature and moisture to ensure its vigorous growth. If a sudden
shower should come on, the ants do not carry the wet pieces into
the burrows, but throw them down near the entrances. Should the
weather clear up again, these pieces are picked up when nearly
dried, and taken inside; should the rain, however, continue, they
get sodden down into the ground, and are left there. On the
contrary, in dry and hot weather, when the leaves would get dried
up before they could be conveyed to the nest, the ants, when in
exposed situations, do not go out at all during the hot hours, but
bring in their leafy burdens in the cool of the day and during the
night. As soon as the pieces of leaves are carried in they must be
cut up by the small class of workers into little pieces. I have
never seen the smallest class of ants carrying in leaves; their
duties appear to be inside, cutting them up into smaller fragments,
and nursing the immature ants. I have, however, seen them running
out along the paths with the others; but instead of helping to
carry in the burdens, they climb on the top of the pieces which are
being carried along by the middle-sized workers, and so get a ride
home again. It is very probable that they take a run out merely for
air and exercise. The largest class of what are called workers are,
I believe, the directors and protectors of the others. They are
never seen out of the nest, excepting on particular occasions, such
as the migrations of the ants, and when one of the working columns
or nests is attacked; they then come stalking up, and attack the
enemy with their strong jaws. Sometimes, when digging into the
burrows, one of these giants has unperceived climbed up my dress,
and the first intimation of his presence has been the burying of
his jaws in my neck, from which he would not fail to draw the
blood. The stately observant way in which they stalk about, and
their great size, compared with the others, always impressed me
with the idea that in their bulky heads lay the brains that
directed the community in its various duties. Many of their
actions, such as that I have mentioned of two relays of workmen
carrying out the ant-food, can scarcely be blind instinct. Some of
the ants make mistakes, and carry in unsuitable leaves. Thus grass
is nearly always rejected by them, yet I have seen some ants,
perhaps young ones, carrying in leaves of grass. After a while
these pieces were invariably brought out again and thrown away. I
can imagine a young ant getting a severe earwigging from one of the
major-domos for its stupidity.

I shall conclude this long account of the leaf-cutting ants with an
instance of their reasoning powers. A nest was made near one of our
tramways, and to get to the trees the ants had to cross the rails,
over which the waggons were continually passing and repassing.
Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death.
They persevered in crossing for several days, but at last set to
work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the waggons
were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but
although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut off from the
nest, they would not cross the rails, but set to work making fresh
tunnels underneath them. Apparently an order had gone forth, or a
general understanding been come to, that the rails were not to be
crossed.

These ants do not appear to have many enemies, though I sometimes
found holes burrowed into their nests, probably by the small
armadillo. I once saw a minute parasitic fly hovering over a column
of ants, near a nest, and every now and then darting down and
attaching an egg to one entering. Large, horned beetles (Coelosis
biloba) and a species of Staphylinus are found in the nests, but
probably their larvae live on the rotten leaves, after the ants
have done with them.

CHAPTER 6.

Configuration of the ground at Santo Domingo.
Excavation of valleys.
Geology of the district.
Decomposition of the rocks.
Gold-mining.
Auriferous quartz veins.
Mode of occurrence of the gold.
Lodes richer next the surface than at lower depths.
Excavation and reduction of the ore.
Extraction of the gold.
"Mantos".
Origin of mineral veins: their connection with intrusions
   of Plutonic rocks.

THERE is scarcely any level land around Santo Domingo, but in every
direction a succession of hills and valleys. The hills are not
isolated; they run in irregular ranges, having mostly an east and
west direction, but with many modifications in their trend. From
the main valleys numerous auxiliary ones cut deeply into the
ranges, and bifurcate again and again, like the branches of a tree,
forming channels for carrying off the great quantity of water that
falls in these rainy forests. The branching valleys, all leading
into main ones, and these into the rivers, have been excavated by
subaerial agency, and almost entirely by the action of running
water. It is the system that best effects the drainage of the
country, and has been caused by that drainage.

The wearing out of valleys near Santo Domingo proceeds more rapidly
than in regions where less rain falls, and where the rocks are not
so soft and decomposed. Even during the few years I was in
Nicaragua there were some modifications of the surface effected; I
saw the commencement of new valleys, and the widening and
lengthening of others, caused not only by the gradual denudation of
the surface, but by landslips, some of which occur every wet
season.

The rocks of the district are dolerytes, with bands and protrusions
of hard greenstones. The decomposition of the dolerytes is very
great, and extends from the tops of the hills to a depth (as proved
in the mines), of at least two hundred feet. Next the surface they
are often as soft as alluvial clay, and may be cut with a spade.
This decomposition of the rocks near the surface prevails in many
parts of tropical America, and is principally, if not always,
confined to the forest regions. It has been ascribed, and probably
with reason, to the percolation through the rocks of rain-water
charged with a little acid from the decomposing vegetation. If this
be so, the great depth to which it has reached tells of the immense
antiquity of the forests.

Gold-mining at Santo Domingo is confined almost entirely to
auriferous quartz lodes, no alluvial deposits having been found
that will pay for working. The lodes run east and west, and are
nearly perpendicular, sometimes dipping a little to the north,
sometimes a little to the south, and near the surface, generally
turning over towards the face of the hill through which they cut.
The trend of the main ranges, also nearly east and west, is
probably due to the direction of the outcrops of the lodes which
have resisted the action of the elements better than the soft
dolerytes. The quartz veins now form the crests of many of the
ranges, but are everywhere cut through by the lateral valleys. The
beds of doleryte lie at low angles, through which the quartz veins
cut nearly vertically. Excepting that they are very irregular in
thickness, and often branch and send thin offshoots into the
enclosing rocks, they resemble coal seams that have been turned up
on edge, so as to be vertical instead of horizontal. They run for a
great distance. Near Santo Domingo they had been traced for two
miles in length, and probably they extend much further. They are
what are called fissure-veins, owing their origin to cracks or
fractures in the rocks that have been filled up with mineral
substances through chemical, thermal, aqueous, or plutonic
agencies. In depth, the bottom of fissure-veins has never been
reached, and taking into consideration the deep-seated forces
required to produce fissures of such great length and regularity,
we may safely assume that they run for miles deep into the
earth--that their extension vertically is as great as it is
horizontally. The possibility that they extend to immense depths is
increased when we reflect that mineral veins occur in parallel
groups that run with great regularity for hundreds of miles; and
further by the fact that, in all the changes of the earth's
surface, by which deep-seated rocks have been brought up and
exposed by denudation, no instance is known of the bottom of a
fissure-vein having been brought by such movements within the reach
of man.

The gold-mines of Santo Domingo are in veins or loads of auriferous
quartz that run parallel to each other, and are so numerous that
across a band more than a mile in width one may be found every
fifty yards. All that have been worked vary greatly in thickness;
sometimes within a hundred yards a lode will thicken out from one
to seventeen feet. Their auriferous contents vary still more than
their width. The richest ore, worth from one to four ounces per
ton, occurs in irregular patches and bands very small in comparison
with the bulk of the ore stuff, which varies in value from two to
seven pennyweights per ton. The average value of all the ore
treated by the Chontales Mining Company, up to the end of 1871, has
been about seven pennyweights per ton, and during that time small
patches have been met with worth one hundred ounces of gold per
ton. The gold does not occur pure, but is a natural alloy of gold
and silver, containing about three parts of the former to one of
the latter. Besides this metallic alloy (to which, for brevity, I
shall, in the remarks I have to make, give its common designation
of gold), the quartz lodes contain sulphide of silver, peroxide of
manganese, peroxide of iron, sulphides of iron and copper, and
occasionally ores of lead.

The quartz is generally very friable, full of drusy cavities, and
broken up into innumerable small pieces that are often coloured
black by the peroxide of manganese. The gold is in minute grains,
and generally distributed loosely amongst the quartz. Pieces as
large as a pin's head are rare, and specimens of quartz showing the
gold in it are seldom met with, even in the richest portions of a
lode. The fine gold-dust can, however, easily be detected by
washing portions of the lode-stuff in a horn. The quartz and clay
is washed away, and the gold-dust sinks to the bottom, and is
retained in the horn. This is the usual way in which a lode is
tested by the mining agents, and long practice has made them very
expert in valuing the ore by the wash in the "spoon." Although most
of the gold occurs loose, amongst the soft portions of the lode,
the hard quartz also contains it disseminated in minute grains
throughout. These can be obtained in the horn by pounding the
quartz to powder and then washing it.

(PLATE 6. MACHINERY OF CHONTALES GOLD-MINING COMPANY.)

One feature in the distribution of gold in the quartz lodes of
Santo Domingo led to a most exaggerated opinion of their value when
they were first mined by English companies. On the hills, near the
outcrops of the lodes, the ore was in some places exceedingly rich.
One thousand ounces of gold were obtained from a small patch of ore
near the surface of the Consuelo lode, and at Santo Domingo, San
Benito, San Antonio, and Javali lodes, very rich ore was also
discovered within a few fathoms of the surface. When, however,
these deposits were followed downwards, they invariably got poorer,
and at one hundred feet from the surface, no very rich ore had been
met with. Below that, when the works are prosecuted still deeper,
there does not appear to be any further progressive deterioration
in the value of the ore, and it varies in yield from two to seven
pennyweights of gold per ton, upon which yield further depth does
not seem to have any effect. The cause of these rich deposits near
the surface does not appear to me to be that the lodes originally,
before they were exposed by denudation, contained more gold in
their upper portions than below, but to be the effect of the
decomposition and wearing down of the higher parts, and the
concentration of the gold they contained in the lode below that
worn away. We have seen that in the decomposed parts of the lode
the gold exists in loose fine grains. During the wet season water
percolates freely from the surface down through the lodes, and the
gold set free by the decomposition of the ore at the surface must
be carried down into it, so that in the course of ages, during the
gradual degradation and wearing away of the surface, there has, I
believe, been an accumulation of the loose gold in the upper parts
of the lodes from parts that originally stood much higher, and have
now been worn away by the action of the elements.

This accumulation of loose gold near the surface of auriferous
veins, set at liberty from its matrix by the decomposition of the
ore, and concentrated by degradation, is probably the reason of the
great richness of many of what are called the "caps" of quartz
veins; that is, the parts next the existing surface, and has also,
perhaps, originated the belief that auriferous lodes deteriorate in
value in depth. I at one time, after having studied the auriferous
quartz veins of Australia, advocated this theory, which was first
insisted upon by Sir R.I. Murchison, but further experience in
North Wales, Nova Scotia, Brazil, and Central America has led me to
doubt its correctness, excepting in cases such as we have been
considering, where there has been an accumulation of gold in the
superficial portions of lodes since their original formation. Gold
is distributed in quartz veins in bands, and in patches of richer
stone of more or less extent. These richer portions of the lodes,
if sunk upon perpendicularly, will be passed through, but so also
they would be if followed horizontally, their extent in one
direction being as great as it is in the other. The chances of
meeting with further patches of rich ore in depth, after one has
been passed through, are about the same as they are in driving
horizontally, and the frequency therefore with which the auriferous
ores are met with along the surface will, as a rule, be an index of
their occurrence in depth, if we be careful in distinguishing
deposits belonging to the original condition of the lodes, and
those due to subsequent concentration. To do this we must get below
the immediate surface, and take as our guide the gold occurring in
the solid undecomposed quartz, and not the loose grains contained
in the fissures and cavities.

(PLATE 7. SECTION OF MINE SHOWING METHOD OF EXTRACTING THE ORE.
  SECTION OF GOLD MINE.
  Diagram showing method of excavating ore at Santo Domingo Mines.
    A, Levels.
    B, Rise, down which the ore is thrown.
    D, Stopes.
    C, Stopes refilled with clay and barren rock.
  Lowest level, Tramway to Stamps.)

The lodes of Santo Domingo are worked by means of levels driven
from near the bottoms of the valleys that intersect them. When
these levels have entered sufficiently far into the hills, shafts
are driven upwards from them to the surface, and other levels
driven sixty feet higher than the first. This process is continued
until the lode lying above the lowest level has been divided off
into horizontal bands, each about sixty feet in depth. The quartz
is then excavated above the topmost level, and thrown down the
shafts to the lowest, where it is received into waggons and
conveyed to the reduction works. As both the ore and the enclosing
rocks are greatly decomposed and very soft, the whole of the ground
has to be securely timbered as the work proceeds. The levels are
timbered with "nispera," a wood of great durability and strength,
but the excavated portions between them are only temporarily
secured with common soft wood, and at the end of every fortnight
filled up with clay and barren rock. The mining is entirely
executed by native workmen, principally Mestizos from the border
lands of Honduras and Nicaragua, where they have been engaged in
silver-mining. They are paid according to the amount of ground
excavated, and are very industrious when poor; but when they
accumulate a little money, they take fits of idleness and
dissipation until it is spent.

The ore is taken down to the reduction works in waggons that run
down by gravitation, and are drawn up by mules. It is then stamped
to powder by iron beaters, each of which is lifted by cams, and let
fall seventy times per minute. The stamped ore, in the form of fine
sand, is carried by a stream of water over inclined copper plates
covered with mercury, with which is mixed a little metallic sodium.
Nearly the whole of the free gold is caught by the mercury, for
which it has a great affinity, and accumulates as amalgam on the
copper plates, from which it is cleaned off every twelve hours. The
sand and water then pass over inclined tables covered with
blankets, the fibres of which intercept particles of gold and
mercury that have escaped from the first process, and afterwards
into a concentrating box, where the coarsest grains of sand and the
sulphurets of iron, copper, and silver are caught, and with the
sand from the blankets re-treated in arrastres. These arrastres are
round troughs, twelve feet in diameter, paved with stones. Four
large stones of quartz are dragged round and round in this trough,
and grind the coarse sand to fine powder. The gold liberated sinks
into the crevices in the stone pavement, a little mercury being put
into the trough to form it into amalgam. The arrastres and all the
amalgamating apparatus is cleaned up once a month. The amalgam
obtained is squeezed through thin dressed skins, and is then of the
consistence of stiff putty, and of a silver colour. These balls of
amalgam are placed in iron retorts, and the mercury driven off by
heat and condensed again in water. The balls of gold so obtained
are then melted into bars weighing about one hundred ounces each,
and in that state sent to England. At Santo Domingo about two
thousand tons of ore are treated monthly, and the whole cost of
treatment, including all charges for mining, carriage, reduction,
amalgamation, and management, is only about eight shillings per
ton. The loss of mercury is about twenty pounds for every thousand
tons of ore treated; the smallness of the loss in comparison with
that of many other gold-extracting establishments being greatly due
to the employment of sodium in the amalgamating process. The loss
of mercury usually occurring in amalgamation work is principally
caused by its mineralisation, and sodium has such an intense
affinity for oxygen and sulphur, that it reduces the mercury to its
metallic form again, and prevents its being carried off in light
mineralised flakes and powder.

(PLATE 8. SECTION ACROSS SAN ANTONIO LODE.
  A, Lode.
  B, Decomposed doleryte.
  C, Surface soil.
  D. Quartz rocks in surface soil.)

The band of auriferous quartz veins worked at Santo Domingo
continues westward for eight miles, as far as the savannahs near
Libertad, and has been largely mined in the neighbourhood of that
town, and between that point and Santo Domingo. Besides the working
of the mines proper, some surface deposits, called by the Spaniards
"Mantos," are also worked for gold, especially in the neighbourhood
of Libertad. The "Mantos" consist of broken quartz, covering the
faces of the hills in the neighbourhood of some of the lodes. In
some places they form a broken but regular stratum over the whole
side of a hill, and I was much puzzled at first to account for
their origin.

I have already mentioned that the lodes near their summit incline
over towards the face of the hill through which they cut. In some
cases, as in the San Antonio mine, the lode is in parts bent
completely round, as shown in the section in Plate 8. This bending
over of the lodes is always towards the face of the hill, and is, I
think, produced by successive small landslips. It is evident that
if carried still further than in the case shown in the diagram, the
lode would be brought down over the face of the hill, and the
result has, I think, been achieved in some places, and a regular
"Manto" produced. I have already stated that small landslips are of
frequent occurrence on the sides of the hills. We had several times
the entrance to our mines temporarily closed by them in the wet
season.

Mr. David Forbes,* (* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"
volume 17.) in his account of the geology of Peru and Bolivia, has
advanced the opinion that auriferous quartz veins belong to two
different systems, one occurring in connection with Granitic, the
other with Diorytic intrusive rocks. In later papers he has shown
that this occurrence of gold is not confined to South America, but
appears to prevail in all parts of the world.* (* "Geological
Magazine" September 1866.) One of the latest writers on the
subject, Mr. R. Daintree, in his "Notes on the Geology of
Queensland", has shown that the auriferous veinstones in that
colony occur in connection with, or in the near vicinity of certain
intrusive trap-rocks, and that even some of the trappean dykes
themselves are auriferous.* (* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society" volume 28 page 308.) Several years ago, I endeavoured to
show that mineral veins in granitic districts occurred in regular
sequences, with certain intrusive rocks, as follows:--first,
Intrusion of main mass of granite; second, Granitic veins; third,
Elvan dykes; and, lastly, Mineral veins, cutting through all the
other intrusive rocks.* (* See "Geological Survey of Canada" pages
141 and 173.) Later observations have led me to conclude that a
similar sequence of events characterised the occurrence of
auriferous quartz veins in connection with the intrusive rocks,
commonly designated Greenstones, in some districts consisting of
diabase, as in North Wales, near Dolgelly; in others of dioryte, as
in Santo Domingo; and in many parts of South America and Australia.
In North Wales we have, firstly, an intrusion of diabase, occurring
in great mountain masses; secondly, Irregular tortuous dykes of
diabase; thirdly, Elvan dykes; and, lastly, auriferous quartz
veins. In every region of intrusive plutonic rocks that has been
thoroughly explored, a similar succession of events, culminating in
the production of mineral veins, has been proved to have taken
place,* (* "Mineral Veins" page 16.) and it appears that the origin
of such veins is the natural result of the plutonic intrusion.
There is, also, sometimes a complete gradation from veins of
perfectly crystallised granite, through others abounding in quartz
at the expense of the other constituents, up to veins filled with
pure quartz, as at Porth Just, near Cape Cornwall; and, again, the
same vein will in some parts be filled with felspar; in others,
contain irregular masses of quartz, apparently the excess of silica
beyond what has been absorbed in the trisilicate compound of
felspar.* (* Mr. John Phillips in "Memoirs, Geological Survey of
Great Britain" volume 2 page 45.) Granitic, porphyritic, and
trappean dykes* also sometimes contain gold and other metals; (*
Sir R.I. Murchison "Siluria" pages 479, 481, 488 and 500; and R.
Daintree "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 28
pages 308, 310.) and I think the probability is great that quartz
veins have been filled in the same manner--that if dykes and veins
of granite have been an igneous injection, so have those of quartz.
By an igneous injection, I do not mean that the fused rock owed its
fluidity to dry heat. The celebrated researches of Sorby on the
microscopical fluid cavities in the quartz of granite and quartz
veins, have shown beyond a doubt that the vapour of water was
present in comparatively large quantities when the quartz was
solidifying. All strata below the surface contain water, and if
melted up would still hold it as super-heated steam; and M. Angelot
has suggested that fused rock under great pressure may dissolve
large quantities of the vapour of water, just as liquids dissolve
gases. The presence of the vapour of water would cause the
liquefaction of quartz at a much lower temperature than would be
possible by heat alone, unaided by water.* (* H.C. Sorby "Journal
of the Geological Society" volume 14.) I know that this opinion is
contrary to that usually held by geologists, the theory generally
accepted being that mineral veins have been produced by deposits
from hot springs; but during twenty years I have been engaged in
auriferous quartz-mining in various parts of the world, and nowhere
have I met with lodes, the phenomena of which could be explained on
this hypothesis. The veinstone is pure quartz containing water in
microscopical cavities, as in the quartz crystals of granite, but
not combined as in the hydrous siliceous sinter deposited from hot
springs. The lodes are not ribboned, but consist of quartz, jointed
across from side to side, exactly like trappean dykes. There is
often a banded arrangement produced by the repeated re-opening and
filling of the same fissure; but never, in quartz veins, a regular
filling up from the sides towards the centre, as in veins produced
by deposits from springs. Quartz veins extend sometimes for miles,
and it is necessary to suppose on the hydro-thermal theory that the
fissures remained open sufficiently long for the gradual deposition
of the veinstones, without the soft and shattered rocks at their
sides falling in, nor yet fragments from above; although there are
many lodes, fully twenty feet in width, filled entirely with quartz
and mineral ores, without any included fragments of fallen rocks,
and nowhere showing any trace of regular deposition on the sides.
The gold also found in auriferous lodes is never pure, but forms
varies alloys of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, and bismuth; and
no way is known of producing these alloys except by fusion.

It is true that mineral veins contain many minerals that could not
exist together undecomposed with even a moderate degree of heat;
but it is only here contended that the original filling of the
lodes was an igneous injection, not that the present arrangement
and composition of all the minerals is due to the same action.
Since the lodes were first filled they have been subjected to every
variety of hydro-thermal and aqueous influence; for the cooling of
the heated rocks must have been a slow process, and undoubtedly the
veins have often been the channels both for the passage of hot
water and steam from the interior, and of cold water charged with
carbonic acid and carbonate of lime from the surface, and many
changes must have taken place. Auriferous quartz veins have
resisted these influences better than others, because neither the
veinstone nor the metal is easily altered, and such veins therefore
form better guides for the study of the origin of mineral lodes
than fissures filled with calc spar and ores of the baser metals,
all readily dissolved and re-formed by hydro-thermal agencies. Our
mineralogical museums are filled with beautiful specimens of
crystals of quartz, fluor spar, and various ores deposited one on
the other; and the student who confines his attention to these is
naturally led to believe that he sees before him the process by
which mineral veins have been filled. But the miner, working far
underground, knows that such crystals are only found in cavities
and fissures, and that the normal arrangement of the minerals is
very different. The deposition of various spars one on the other in
cavities is a secondary operation even now going on, and has
nothing necessarily to do with the original filling of the lodes;
indeed, their arrangement is so different that it helps to prove
they have been differently formed.

It would take a volume to discuss this question in all its
bearings, and as I have already entered more fully into it in
another place,* (* "Mineral Veins" by Thomas Belt. John Weale 1861.
) I shall only now give a brief resume of the conclusions I have
arrived at respecting the origin of mineral veins.

1. Sedimentary strata have been carried down, by movements of the
earth's crust, far below the surface, covered by other deposits,
and subjected to great heat, which, aided by the water contained in
the rocks and various chemical reactions, has effected a
re-arrangement of the mineral contents of the strata, so that by
molecular movements, the metamorphic crystalline rocks, including
interstratified granites and greenstones, have been formed.

2. Carried to greater depths and subjected to more intense heat,
the strata have been completely fused, and the liquid or pasty
mass, invading the contorted strata above it, has formed perfectly
crystalline intrusive granites and greenstones.

3. As the heated rocks cooled from their highest parts downwards,
cracks or fissures have been formed in them by contraction, and
these have been filled from the still-fluid mass below. At the
beginning these injections have been the same as the first massive
intrusive rocks, either granite or greenstone; but as the rocks
gradually cooled, the fissures reached greater and greater depths;
and the lighter constituents having been drawn off and exhausted,
only the heavier molten silica, mingled with metallic and aqueous
vapours, has been left, and with these the last-formed and deepest
fissures have been filled. These injections never reached to the
surface--probably never beyond the area of heated rocks; so that
there have been no overflows from them, and they have only been
exposed by subsequent great upheaval and denudation.

4. Probably the molten matter was injected into the fissures of
rocks already greatly heated, and the cooling of these rocks has
been prolonged over thousands of years, during which the lodes have
been exposed to every degree of heat, from that of fusion to their
present normal temperature. During the slow upheaval and denudation
of the lodes, they have been subjected to various chemical,
hydro-thermal, and aqueous agencies, by which many of their
contents have been re-arranged and re-formed, new minerals have
been brought in by percolation of water from the surrounding rocks,
and possibly some of the original contents have been carried out by
mineral springs rising through the lines of fissures which are not
completely sealed by the igneous injection, as the contraction of
the molten matter in cooling has left cracks and crevices through
which water readily passes.

5. Some of the fissures may have been re-opened since they were
raised beyond the reach of molten matter, and the new rent may have
been filled by hydro-thermal or aqueous agencies, and may contain,
along with veinstones of calcite derived from neighbouring beds of
limestone, some minerals due to a previous igneous injection.
Crevices and cavities, called "vughs" by the miners, have been
filled more or less completely with crystals of fluor spar, quartz,
and various ores of metals from true aqueous solutions, or by the
action of super-heated steam.

6. By these means the signs of the original filling of many mineral
lodes, especially those of the baser metals, have been obscured or
obliterated; but in auriferous quartz lodes both the metal and the
veinstone have generally resisted all these secondary agencies, and
are presented to us much the same as they were first deposited,
excepting that the associated minerals have been altered, and in
some cases new ones introduced, by the passage of hot springs from
below or percolation of water from the surface.

CHAPTER 7.

Climate of the north-eastern side of Nicaragua.
Excursions around Santo Domingo.
The Artigua.
Corruption of ancient names.
Butterflies, spiders, and wasps.
Humming-birds, beetles, and ants.
Plants and trees.
Timber.
Monkey attacked by eagle.
White-faced monkey.
Anecdotes of a tame one.
Curassows and other game birds.
Trogons, woodpeckers, mot-mots, and toucans.

THE climate of Santo Domingo and of the whole north-eastern side of
Nicaragua is a very damp one. The rains set in in May, and continue
with occasional intermission until the following January, when the
dry season of a little more than three months begins. Even during
the short-lived summer there are occasional rains, so that although
the roads dry up, vegetation never does, the ground in the woods is
ever moist, and the brooks perennial. In the shady forest,
mosquitoes and sand-flies are rather troublesome; but the large
cleared space about the houses of the mining company is almost free
from them, and in the beautiful light evenings one can sit under
the verandahs undisturbed, watching the play of the moonbeams on
the silky leaves of the bananas, the twinkling north star just
peeping over the range in front, with "Charlie's Wain" in the upper
half of its endless circlings, whilst in the opposite direction the
eye rests on the beautiful constellations of the southern
hemisphere. On the darkest nights innumerable fire-flies flash
their intermittent lights as they pass amongst the low bushes or
herbage, making another twinkling firmament on earth. On other
evenings, sitting inside with lighted candles and wide opened
doors, great bats flap inside, make a round of the apartment, and
pass out again, whilst iris-winged moths, attracted by the light,
flit about the ceiling, or long-horned beetles flop down on the
table. In this way I made my first acquaintance with many
entomological rarities.* (* In moths, numerous fine Sphingidae and
Bombycidae; and in beetles, amongst many others, the rare Xestia
nitida (Bates) and Hexoplon albipenne (Bates) were first described
from these evening captures.)

The heaviest rains fall in July and August, and at these times the
brooks are greatly swollen. The one in front of my house sometimes
carried away the little wooden bridge that crossed it, and for an
hour or two became impassable, but subsided again almost as soon as
the heavy rain ceased falling, for the watershed above does not
extend far. Every year our operations were impeded by runs in the
mines, or by small landslips stopping up our tramways and levels,
or floods carrying away our dam or breaking our watercourses; but
after August we considered our troubles on this score at an end for
the season. Occasionally the rains lasted three or four days
without intermission, but generally they would come on in the
afternoon, and there would be a downpour, such as is only seen in
the tropics, for an hour or two, then some clear weather, until
another great bank of clouds rolled up from the north-east and sent
down another deluge. In September, October, and November there are
breaks of fine weather, sometimes lasting for a fortnight; but
December is generally a very wet month, the rains extending far
into January, so that it is not until February that the roads begin
to dry up.

I had much riding about. The mines worked by us, when I first went
out, extended from Consuelo, a mile higher up the valley, to Pavon,
a mile below Santo Domingo; and even after I had concentrated our
operations on those nearer to our reduction works, there were many
occasions for me to ride into the woods. I had to look after our
wood-cutters and charcoal-burners, to see that they did not
encroach upon the lands of our neighbours, as they were inclined to
do, and involve us in squabbles and lawsuits; paths had to be
opened out, to bring in nispera and cedar timber, our property
surveyed, and new mines, found in the woods, visited and explored.
Besides this, I spent most of my spare time in the forest, which
surrounded us on every side. Longer excursions were frequent. The
Nicaraguans, like all Spanish Americans, are very litigious, and
every now and then I would be summoned, as the representative of
the company, to appear at Libertad, Juigalpa, or Acoyapo, to answer
some frivolous complaint, generally made with the expectation of
extorting money, but entertained and probably remanded from time to
time by unscrupulous judges, who are so badly paid by the
government that they have to depend upon the fees of suitors for
their support, and are much open to corruption. These rides and
strolls into the woods were very fruitful in natural-history
acquisitions and observations. I shall give an account of some of
those made in the immediate vicinity of Santo Domingo, and I wish I
could transfer to my readers some of the pleasure that they
afforded me. They gave the relief that enabled me to carry on for
years an incessant struggle, under great difficulties, to bring the
mines into a paying state, continually hampered for want of
sufficient capital, with most inadequate machinery, and all the
annoyances, delays, and disappointments inevitable in carrying on
such a precarious enterprise as gold-mining far in the interior of
a half-civilised country.

The brook that ran at the foot of the bank below my house, and
there called the "Quebrada de Santo Domingo," is dignified half a
mile lower down, after passing the mines of the Javali Company and
receiving the waters of another brook coming down from the
westward, by the name of the Javali river. The Indians, however,
both at the Indian village of Carca, seven miles back in the
mountains, and those lower down the river itself, call it "Artigua."
The preservation of these old Indian names is important, as they
might some time or other throw considerable light on the early
inhabitants of the country. In all parts of the world the names of
mountains, valleys, lakes, and rivers are among the most certain
memorials of the ancient inhabitants. The reason the names of the
natural features of a country remain unchanged under the sway of
successive nations, speaking totally different languages, appears
to be this. The successful invaders of a country, even in the most
cruel times, never exterminated the people they conquered; at the
least, the young women were spared. The conquerors established
their own language, and to everything they had known in their own
land they gave their own names; but to things quite new to them,
which nearly always included the mountains, valleys, lakes, and
rivers, and often the towns and many of the natural productions,
they accepted the existing names from the survivors of the
conquered people. Often the names were corrupted, the new
inhabitants altering them just a little, to render their
pronunciation easier, or to make them significant in their own
language. Thus the fruit of the Persea gratissima was called
"ahuacatl" by the ancient Mexicans; the Spaniards corrupted it to
"avocado," which means an advocate; and our sailors still further,
to "alligator pears." The town of Comelapa, in Chontales, the name
of which means, in Spanish, "Eat a macaw," is undoubtedly a
corruption of some old Indian name of similar form to that of the
neighbouring village of Comoapa, although the Spaniards give an
absurd explanation of it, evidently invented, according to which it
was so called because a sick man was cured of a deadly disease by
eating the bird indicated.

The Artigua--I shall call it so, to do what I can to save the name
from oblivion--is woefully polluted by the gold-mining on its
banks, and flows, a dark muddy stream, through the village of Santo
Domingo, and just below it precipitates itself one hundred and
twenty feet over a rocky fall. One of the forest roads leads down
its banks for several miles to some small clearings, where a few
scattered, Spanish-speaking Indians and half-breeds cultivate maize
and plantains. After leaving Santo Domingo, it at first follows the
left bank of the stream, through low bushes and small trees of
second growth, then crosses a beautiful clear brook coming down
from the east, and finally winding round a slope covered with great
trees and dense undergrowth, reaches the site chosen for the
machinery at Pavon, where a large space has been cleared, much of
which is covered with grass. After descending a steep hill, the
Artigua, with its muddy water, is crossed. Here, in the dry season,
in the hot afternoons, the wet sandy banks were the favourite
resorts of multitudes of butterflies, that gathered in great masses
on particular moist spots in such numbers that with one swoop of my
net I have enclosed more than thirty in its gauzy folds. These
butterflies were principally different species of Callidryas,
yellow and white, mixed with brown and red species of Timetes,
which, when disturbed, rose in a body and circled about; on the
ground, looking like a bouquet; when rising, like a fountain of
flowers. In groups, by themselves, would be five or six specimens
of yellow and black Papilios, greedily sucking up the moisture, and
vibrating their wings, now and then taking short flights and
settling again to drink. Hesperidae, too, abounded; and in a
favourable afternoon more than twenty different species of
butterflies might be taken at these spots, the finest being a
lovely white, green, and black swallow-tailed Papilio, the first
capture of which filled me with delight. Near the river were some
fallen-down wooden sheds, partly overgrown with a red-flowered
vine. Here a large spider (Nephila) built strong yellow silken
webs, joined one on to the other, so as to make a complete curtain
of web, in which were entangled many large butterflies, generally
forest species, caught when flying across the clearing. I was at
first surprised to find that the kinds that frequent open places
were not caught, although they abounded on low white-flowered
shrubs close to the webs; but, on getting behind them, and trying
to frighten them within the silken curtain, their instinct taught
them to avoid it, for, although startled, they threaded their way
through open spaces and between the webs with the greatest ease. It
was one instance of many I have noticed of the strong instinct
implanted in insects to avoid their natural enemies. I shall
mention two others. The Heliconidae, a tribe of butterflies
peculiar to tropical America, with long, narrow, weak wings, are
distasteful to most animals: I have seen even spiders drop them out
of their webs again; and small monkeys, which are extremely fond of
insects, will not eat them, as I have proved over and over again.
Probably, in consequence of this special protection, they have not
needed stronger wings, and hence their weak flight. They are also
very bold, allowing one to walk close up to flowers on which they
alight. There is one genus with transparent wings that frequents
the white-flowered shrubs in the clearings, and I have sometimes
advanced my hand within six inches of them without frightening
them. There is, however, a yellow and black banded wasp that
catches them to store his nest with; and whenever one of these came
about, they would rise fluttering in the air, where they were safe,
as I never saw the wasp attack them on the wing. It would hawk
round the groups of shrubs, trying to pounce on one unawares; but
their natural dread of this foe made it rather difficult to do so.
When it did catch one, it would quietly bite off its wings, roll it
up into a ball, and fly off with it. Again, the cockroaches that
infest the houses of the tropics are very wary, as they have
numerous enemies--birds, rats, scorpions, and spiders: their long,
trembling antennae are ever stretched out, as if feeling the very
texture of the air around them; and their long legs quickly take
them out of danger. Sometimes I tried to chase one of them up to a
corner where on the wall a large cockroach-eating spider stood
motionless, looking out for his prey; the cockroach would rush away
from me in great fear; but as soon as it came within a foot of its
mortal foe nothing would force it onwards, but back it would
double, facing all the danger from me rather than advance nearer to
its natural enemy.

To return to the spiders. Besides the large owner and manufacturer
of each web who was stationed near its centre, there were on the
outskirts several very small ones, belonging, I think, to two
different species. I sometimes threw a fly into one of the webs.
The large spider would seize it and commence sucking its blood. The
small ones, attracted by the sight of the prey, would advance
cautiously from the circumference, but generally stop short about
halfway up the web, evidently afraid to come within reach of the
owner; thus having to content themselves with looking at the
provisions, like hungry urchins nosing the windows of an
eating-house. Sometimes a more audacious one would advance closer,
but the owner would, when it came within reach, quickly lift up one
of its feet and strike at it, like a feeding horse kicking at
another that came near its provender, and the intruder would have
to retire discomfited. These little spiders probably fed on minute
insects entangled in the web, too small for the consideration of
the huge owner, to whom they may be of assistance in clearing it.

(PLATE 9. HUMMING-BIRDS (Florisuga mellivora, LINN.).)

(PLATE 10. TONGUE OF HUMMING-BIRD AND WOODPECKER.
  TONGUE OF HUMMING-BIRD, WITH THE BLADES A LITTLE OPENED.
  TONGUE OF LARGE RED-CRESTED WOODPECKER.)

Soon after crossing the muddy Artigua below Pavon, a beautifully
clear and sparkling brook is reached, coming down to join its pure
waters with the soiled river below. In the evening this was a
favourite resort of many birds that came to drink at the pellucid
stream, or catch insects playing above the water. Amongst the last
was the beautiful blue, green, and white humming-bird (Florisuga
mellivora, Linn.); the head and neck deep metallic-blue, bordered
on the back by a pure white collar over the shoulders, followed by
deep metallic-green; on the underside the blue neck is succeeded by
green, the green from the centre of the breast to the end of the
tail by pure white; the tail can be expanded to a half circle, and
each feather widening towards the end makes the semicircle complete
around the edge. When catching the ephemeridae that play above the
water, the tail is not expanded: it is reserved for times of
courtship. I have seen the female sitting quietly on a branch, and
two males displaying their charms in front of her. One would shoot
up like a rocket, then suddenly expanding the snow-white tail like
an inverted parachute, slowly descend in front of her, turning
round gradually to show off both back and front. The effect was
heightened by the wings being invisible from a distance of a few
yards, both from their great velocity of movement and from not
having the metallic lustre of the rest of the body. The expanded
white tail covered more space than all the rest of the bird, and
was evidently the grand feature in the performance. Whilst one was
descending, the other would shoot up and come slowly down,
expanded. The entertainment ended in a fight between the two
performers; but whether the more beautiful or the more pugnacious
were the accepted suitor, I know not. Another fine humming-bird
seen about this brook was the long-billed, fire-throated
Heliomaster pallidiceps (Gould), generally engaged in probing long
narrow-throated red flowers, forming, with their attractive nectar,
complete traps for the small insects on which the humming-birds
principally feed, the bird returning the favour by carrying the
pollen of one flower to another. A third species, also seen at this
brook, Petasophora delphinae, Less., is of a dull brown colour,
with brilliant purple ear-feathers and metallic-green throat. Both
it and Florisuga mellivora are short billed, generally catching
flying insects, and do not frequent flowers so much as other
humming-birds. I have seen the Petasophora fly into the centre of a
dancing column of midges and rapidly darting first at one and then
at another, secure half-a-dozen of the tiny flies before the column
was broken up; then retire to a branch and wait until it was
re-formed, when it made another sudden descent on them. A fourth
species (Heliothrix barroti, Bourc.), brilliant green above, white
below, with a shining purple crest, has also a short bill, and I
never saw it about flowers, but always hovering underneath leaves
and searching for the small soft-bodied spiders that are found
there. Two of them that I examined had these spiders in their
crops. I have no doubt many humming-birds suck the honey from
flowers, as I have seen it exude from their bills when shot, but
others do not frequent them. The principal food of all is small
insects. I have examined scores of them, and never without finding
insects in their crops. Their generally long bills have been spoken
of by some naturalists as tubes into which they suck the honey by a
piston-like movement of the tongue; but suction in the usual way
would be just as effective; and I am satisfied that this is not the
primary use of the tongue, nor of the mechanism which enables it to
be exserted to a great length beyond the end of the bill. The
tongue, for one-half of its length, is semi-horny and cleft in two,
the two halves are laid flat against each other when at rest, but
can be separated at the will of the bird and form a delicate
pliable pair of forceps, most admirably adapted for picking out
minute insects from amongst the stamens of the flowers. The
woodpecker, which has a similar extensile mechanism for exserting
its tongue to a great length, also uses it to procure its food--in
its case soft grubs from holes in rotten trees--and to enable it to
pull these out, the end of the tongue is sharp and horny, and
barbed with short stiff recurved bristles.

Continuing down the river, the road again crosses it, and enters on
the primeval forest almost untouched by the hand of man, excepting
in spots where the trees that furnish the best charcoal have been
cut down by the charcoal-burners, or a gigantic isolated cedar
(Cedrela odorata) has been felled for shingles, bringing down in
its fall a number of the neighbouring trees entangled in the great
bush ropes. Such open spots, letting in the sunshine into the thick
forests, were favourite stopping-places; for numerous butterflies
frequent them, all beautiful and most varied in their colours and
marking. The fallen trees, too, are the breeding-places of
multitudes of beetles, whose larvae riddle them with holes. Some
beetles frequent different varieties of timber, others are peculiar
to a single tree. The most noticeable of these beetles are the
numerous longicorns, to the collection of which I paid a great deal
of attention, and brought home more than three hundred species.
More than one-half of these were new to science, and have been
described by Mr. Bates. To show how prolific the locality was in
insect life, I need only state that about two hundred and ninety of
the species were taken within a radius of four miles, having on one
side the savannahs near Pital, on the other the ranges around Santo
Domingo. Some run and fly only in the daytime, others towards
evening and in the short twilight; but the great majority issue
from their hiding-places only in the night-time, and during the day
lie concealed in withered leaves, beneath fallen logs, under bark,
and in crevices amongst the moss growing on the trunks of trees, or
even against the bare trunk, protected from observation by their
mottled brown, grey, and greenish tints--assimilating in colour and
appearance to the bark of the tree. Up and down the fallen timber
would stalk gigantic black ants, one inch in length, provided with
most formidable stings, and disdaining to run away from danger.
They are slow and stately in their movements, seeming to prey
solely on the slow-moving wood-borers, which they take at a great
disadvantage when half buried in their burrows, and bear off in
their great jaws. They appear to use their sting only as a
defensive weapon; but other smaller species that hunt singly, and
are very agile, use their stings to paralyse their prey. I once saw
one of these on the banks of the Artigua chasing a wood-louse
(Oniscus), very like our common English species, on a nearly
perpendicular slope. The wood-louse, when the ant got near it, made
convulsive springs, throwing itself down the slope, whilst the ant
followed, coursing from side to side, and examining the ground with
its vibrating antennae. The actions of the wood-louse resembled
that of the hunted hare trying to throw the dog off its scent, and
the ant was like the dog in its movements to recover the trail. At
last the wood-louse reached the bottom of the slope, and concealed
itself amongst some leaves; but the ant soon discovered it,
paralysed it with a sting, and was running away with it, turned
back downwards, beneath itself, when I secured the hunter for my
collection. All these ants that hunt singly have the eyes well
developed, and thus differ greatly from the Ecitons, or army ants.

The road, continuing down the Artigua, crosses it again, winds away
from it, then comes to it again, at a beautiful rocky spot overhung
by trees; the banks covered with plants and shrubs, and the rocks
with a great variety of ferns, whilst a babbling, clear brook comes
down from the ranges to the right. Some damp spots near the river
are covered with a carpet of a beautiful variegated, velvety-leaved
plant (Cyrtodeira chontalensis) with a flower like an achimenes,
whilst the dryer slopes bear melastomae and a great variety of
dwarf palms, amongst which the Sweetie (Geonoma sp.), used for
thatching houses, is the most abundant. About here grows a species
of cacao (Herrania purpurea) differing from the cultivated species
(Theobroma cacao). Amongst the larger trees is the "cortess,"
having a wood as hard as ebony, and at the end of March entirely
covered with brilliant yellow flowers, unrelieved by any green, the
tree casting its leaves before flowering. The great yellow domes
may be distinguished amongst the dark green forest at the distance
of five or six miles. Near at hand they are absolutely dazzling
when the sun is shining on them; and when they shed their flowers,
the ground below is carpeted as with gold. Another valuable timber
tree, the "nispera" (Achras sapota), is also common, growing on the
dryer ridges. It attains to a great size, and its timber is almost
indestructible, so that we used it in the construction of all our
permanent works. White ants do not eat it, nor, excepting when
first cut, and before it is barked, do any of the wood-boring
beetles. It bears a round fruit about the size of an apple, hard
and heavy when green, and at this time is much frequented by the
large yellowish-brown spider-monkeys (Ateles), which roam over the
tops of the trees in bands of from ten to twenty. Sometimes they
lay quiet until I was passing underneath, and then shaking a branch
of the nispera tree, they would send down a shower of the hard
round fruit. Fortunately I was never struck by them. As soon as I
looked up, they would commence yelping and barking, and putting on
the most threatening gestures, breaking off pieces of branches and
letting them fall, and shaking off more fruit, but never throwing
anything, simply letting it fall. Often, when on lower trees, they
would hang from the branches two or three together, holding on to
each other and to the branch with their fore feet and long tail,
whilst their hind feet hung down, all the time making threatening
gestures and cries. Occasionally a female would be seen carrying a
young one on its back, to which it clung with legs and tail, the
mother making its way along the branches, and leaping from tree to
tree, apparently but little encumbered with its baby. A large black
and white eagle is said to prey upon them, but I never witnessed
this, although I was constantly falling in with troops of the
monkeys. Don Francisco Velasquez, one of our officers, told me that
one day he heard a monkey crying out in the forest for more than
two hours, and at last, going to see what was the matter, he saw
one on a branch and an eagle beside it trying to frighten it to
turn its back, when it would have seized it. The monkey, however,
kept its face to its foe, and the eagle did not care to engage with
it in this position, but probably would have tired it out.
Velasquez fired at the eagle, and frightened it away. I think it
likely from what I have seen of the habits of the spider-monkeys
that they defend themselves from this peril by keeping two or three
together, thus assisting each other, and that it is only when the
eagle finds one separated from its companions that it dares to
attack it.

Sometimes, but more rarely, we would fall in with a troop of the
white-faced cebus monkey, rapidly running away, throwing themselves
from tree to tree. This monkey feeds also partly on fruit, but is
incessantly on the look-out for insects, examining the crevices in
trees and withered leaves, seizing the largest beetles and munching
them up with great relish. It is also very fond of eggs and young
birds, and must play havoc amongst the nestlings. Probably owing to
its carnivorous habits, its flesh is not considered so good by
monkey-eaters as that of the fruit-feeding spider-monkey, but I
never myself tried either. It is a very intelligent and mischievous
animal. I kept one for a long time as a pet, and was much amused
with its antics. At first, I had it fastened with a light chain;
but it managed to open the links and escape several times, and then
made straight for the fowls' nest, breaking every egg it could get
hold of. Generally, after being an hour or two loose, it would
allow itself to be caught again. I tried tying it up with a cord,
and afterwards with a raw-hide thong, but had to nail the end, as
it could loosen any knot in a few minutes. It would sometimes
entangle itself round a pole to which it was fastened, and then
unwind the coils again with great discernment. Its chain allowed it
to swing down below the verandah, but it could not reach to the
ground. Sometimes, when there were broods of young ducks about, it
would hold out a piece of bread in one hand, and, when it had
tempted a duckling within reach, seize it by the other, and kill it
with a bite in the breast. There was such an uproar amongst the
fowls on these occasions, that we soon knew what was the matter,
and would rush out and punish Mickey (as we called him) with a
switch, which ultimately cured him of his poultry-killing
propensities. Once, when whipping him, I held up the dead duckling
in front of him, and at each blow of the light switch told him to
take hold of it, and at last, much to my surprise, he did so,
taking it and holding it tremblingly in one hand. He would draw
things towards him with a stick, and even use a swing for the same
purpose. It had been put up for the children, and could be reached
by Mickey, who now and then indulged himself with a swing on it.
One day, I had put down some bird-skins on a chair to dry, far
beyond, as I thought, Mickey's reach; but, fertile in expedients,
he took the swing and launched it towards the chair, and actually
managed to knock the skins off in the return of the swing, so as to
bring them within his reach. He also procured some jelly that was
set out to cool in the same way. Mickey's actions were very
human-like. When any one came near to fondle him, he never
neglected the opportunity of pocket-picking. He would pull out
letters, and quickly take them from their envelopes. Anything
eatable disappeared into his mouth immediately. Once he abstracted
a small bottle of turpentine from the pocket of our medical
officer. He drew the cork, held it first to one nostril then to the
other, made a wry face, recorked it, and returned it to the doctor.
Another time, when he got loose, he was detected carrying off the
cream-jug from the table, holding it upright with both hands, and
trying to move off on his hind limbs. He gave the jug up without
spilling a drop, all the time making an apologetic grunting chuckle
he often used when found out in any mischief, and which meant, "I
know I have done wrong, but don't punish me; in fact, I did not
mean to do it--it was accidental." Whenever, however, he saw he was
going to be punished, he would change his tone to a shrill,
threatening note, showing his teeth, and trying to intimidate. He
had quite an extensive vocabulary of sounds, varying from a gruff
bark to a shrill whistle; and we could tell by them, without seeing
him, when it was he was hungry, eating, frightened, or menacing;
doubtless, one of his own species would have understood various
minor shades of intonation and expression that we, not entering so
fully into his feelings and wants, passed over as unintelligible.*
There is a third species of monkey (Mycetes palliatus), called by
the natives the congo, which occasionally is heard howling in the
forest; but they are not often seen, as they generally remain quiet
amongst the upper branches of particular trees.

[* Mickey came into Belt's possession in rather an interesting way.
He belonged to the well-known German botanist Dr. Seemann, who was
the manager at that time of the neighbouring Javali mine. Seemann
died at Javali; and when Belt went to read the Burial Service over
him, as was his custom upon the death of any European, the monkey
sprang upon him and, seizing him by the neck, clung to him with all
his might. So determined was he to adopt Belt as his protector that
the matter ended by his being taken back to Chontales where he
lived in great contentment.

This frantic clinging to some one for protection was always the
conclusion of Mickey's short experiences of freedom. He probably
did not find his captivity at all irksome, for on getting loose
from his chain he made no attempt to escape into the adjoining
forest, but contented himself with running round and round the
house and garden thoroughly enjoying the hue and cry after him. But
becoming either alarmed at or weary of his escapade, he always
ended by making a rush for the eldest of the children whom he half
throttled with his sinewy little arms while offering voluble
excuses in his own language. On one occasion, however, it was
feared that Mickey was really gone, for, contrary to all precedent,
he had left the garden and betaken himself to the forest where of
course all trace of him was at once lost. But after nightfall a
pattering of small feet was heard in the passage, and there was
Mickey with a very woe-begone and penitent expression on his white
face, asking to be received and forgiven.]

One day, when riding down this path, I came upon a pack of pisotes
(Nasua fusca, Desm.), a raccoon-like animal, that ascends all the
small trees, searching for birds' nests and fruits. There were not
less than fifty in the pack I saw, and nothing seemed likely to
escape their search in the track they were travelling. Sometimes
solitary specimens of the pisoti are met with, hunting alone in the
forest. I once saw one near Juigalpa, ascending tree after tree,
and climbing every branch, apparently in search of birds' nests.
They are very fond of eggs; and the tame ones, which are often kept
as pets, play havoc amongst the poultry when they get loose. They
are about the size of a hare, with a taper snout, strong tusks, a
thick hairy coat, and bushy tail. When passing down this road, I at
times saw the fine curl-crested curassow (Crax globicera), as large
as a turkey, jet black, excepting underneath. This kind would
always take to the trees, and was easy to shoot, and as good eating
as it was noble in appearance. The female is a very
different-looking bird from the male, being of a fine brown colour.
Dr. Sclater, in a paper read before the Zoological Society of
London, June 17th, 1873, stated that in the South and Central
American species of Crax there is a complete gradation from a
species in which the sexes scarcely differ, through others in which
they differ more and more, until in Crax globicera they are quite
distinctly coloured, and have been described as different species.
The natives call them "pavones," and often keep them tame; but I
never heard of them breeding in confinement. Another fine game bird
is a species of Penelope, called by the natives "pavos." It feeds
on the fruits of trees, and I never saw it on the ground. A
similar, but much smaller, bird, called "chachalakes," is often met
with in the low scrub.

Mountain hens (species of Tinamus) were not uncommon, about the
size of a plump fowl, and tasting like a pheasant. There were also
two species of grouse and a ground pigeon, all good eating.

Amongst the smaller birds were trogons, mot-mots, toucans, and
woodpeckers. The trogons are general feeders. I have taken from
their crops the remains of fruits, grasshoppers, beetles, termites,
and even small crabs and land shells. Three species are not
uncommon in the forest around Santo Domingo. In all of them the
females are dull brown or slaty black on the back and neck, these
parts being beautiful bronze green in the males. The largest
species (Trogon massena, Gould) is one foot in length, dark bronze
green above, with the smaller wing feathers speckled white and
black, and the belly of a beautiful carmine. Sometimes it sits on a
branch above where the army ants are foraging below; and when a
grasshopper or other large insect flies up and alights on a leaf,
it darts after it, picks it up, and returns to its perch. I found
them breaking into the nests of the termites with their strong
bills, and eating the large soft-bodied workers; and it was from
the crop of this species that I took the remains of a small crab
and a land shell (Helicina). Of the two smaller species, one
(Trogon atricollis, Vieill.) is bronze green above, with speckled
black and white wings, belly yellow, and under feathers of the tail
white, barred with black. The other (Trogon caligatus, Gould) is
rather smaller, of similar colours, excepting the head, which is
black, and a dark blue collar round the neck. Both species take
short, quick, jerky flights, and are often met with along with
flocks of other birds--fly-catchers, tanagers, creepers,
woodpeckers, etc., that hunt together, traversing the forests in
flocks of hundreds together, belonging to more than a score
different species; so that whilst they are passing over, the trees
seem alive with them. Mr. Bates has mentioned similar gregarious
flocks met with by him in Brazil; and I never went any distance
into the woods around Santo Domingo without seeing them. The reason
of their association together may be partly for protection, as no
rapacious bird or mammal could approach the flock without being
discovered by one or other of them, but the principal reason
appears to be that they play into each other's hands in their
search for food. The creepers and woodpeckers and others drive the
insects out of their hiding-places under bark, amongst moss, and in
withered leaves. The fly-catchers and trogons sit on branches and
fly after the larger insects, the fly-catchers taking them on the
wing, the trogons from off the leaves on which they have settled.
In the breeding season, the trogons are continually calling out to
each other, and are thus easily discovered. They are called "viduas,"
that is, "widows," by the Spaniards.

Woodpeckers are often seen along with the hunting flocks of birds,
especially a small one (Centrurus pucherani, Mahl), with red and
yellow head and speckled back. This species feeds on fruits, as
well as on grubs taken out of dead trees. A large red-crested
species is common near recently-made clearings, and I successively
met with one of an elegant chocolate-brown colour, and another
brown with black spots on the back and breast, with a
lighter-coloured crested head (Celeus castaneus, Wagl.).

Of the mot-mots, I met with four species in the forest, all more or
less olive green in colour (Momotus martii and lessoni, and
Prionyrhynchus carinatus and platyrhynchus), having two of the
tail-feathers very long, with the shafts denuded about an inch from
the end. The mot-mots have all hoarse croak-like cries, heard at a
great distance in the forest, and feed on large beetles and other
insects.

The toucans are very curious-looking birds, with their enormous
bills. They hop with great agility amongst the branches. The
largest species at Santo Domingo was the Rhamphastus tocard,
Vieill., twenty-three inches in length, of which one-fourth was
taken up by the long bill and another fourth by the tail; above,
all black, excepting the tail-coverts, which are white; below,
throat and breast clear lemon yellow, bordered with red, the rest
black, excepting the under tail-coverts, red. When alive, the bill
is beautifully painted with red, brown, and yellow. I kept a young
one for some time as a pet until it was killed by my monkey. It
became very tame, and was expert in catching cockroaches,
swallowing them with a jerk of its bill.

After passing through some low scrubby forest, very thick with
tangled second growth, the clearings of the mestizoes were reached,
about five miles below Santo Domingo. Maize, plantains, and a few