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THE PACIFIC AGAIN.

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shrink as if touched with a hot iron. I was unwilling to put the apparecho upon her back, and tried to hire a mule from one of the muleteers, but could not, and, putting the cargo upon the other mule, made Nicolas walk, and the cargo-mule go loose. I left the apparecho in the boca of the mountain: a great piece of profligacy, as Nicolas and the guide considered it.

We wound for a short distance among the hills that enclosed us, ascended a slight range, and came down directly upon the shore of the sea. I always had a high feeling when I touched the shore of the Pacific, and never more so than at this desolate place. The waves rolled grandly, and broke with a solemn roar. The mules were startled, and my macho shrank from the heaving water. I spurred him into it, and at a moment when I was putting in my pocket some shells which Nicolas had picked up, he ran away. He had attempted it several times before in the woods; and now, having a fair chance, I gave him the full sweep of the coast. We continued nearly an hour on the shore, when we crossed a high, rough headland, and again came down upon the sea. Four times we mount

ed headlands and again descended to the shore, and the heat became almost intolerable. The fifth ascent was steep, but we came upon a table covered with a thick forest, through which we proceeded until we came to a small clearing with two huts. We stopped at the first, which was occupied by a black man and his wife. He had plenty of corn; there was a fine pasture-ground near, so hemmed in by the woods that there was no danger of the mules escaping, and I hired the man and woman to sleep out of doors, and give me the hovel to myself.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Flores.-The San Juan.-Nature's Solitude.-Primitive Cookery.-Harbour of San Juan.-Route of the Great Canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.-Nicaragua.-Survey for the Canal.-Lake of Nicaragua.-Plan of the Canal-Lockage.-Estimate of Cost.-Former Efforts to construct the Canal.-Its Advantages.-Central American Hospitality.-Tierra Caliente.Horrors of Civil War.

I ROSE about an hour before daylight, and was in my saddle by break of day. We watered our mules at the River Flores, the boundary-line of the states of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In an hour we reached Skamaika, the name given to a single hut occupied by a negro, sick and alone. He was lying on a bedstead made of sticks, the very picture of wretchedness and desolation, worn to a skeleton by fever and ague. Soon after we came to another hut, where two women were sick with fever. Nothing could be more wretched than these huts along the Pacific. They asked me for remedios, and I gave them some quinine, but with little hope of their ever benefiting by it. Probably both the negro and they are now in their graves.

At twelve o'clock we reached the River St. John, the mouth of which was the terminating point of the great canal. The road to Nicaragua crossed the stream, and ours followed it to the sea, the port being situated at its mouth. Our whole road had been desolate enough, but this far surpassed anything I had seen; and as I looked at the little path that led to Nicaragua, I felt as if we were leaving a great highway. The valley of the river is about a hundred yards broad, and in the season of rain the whole is covered with water; but at this time the stream was small, and a great part of its bed

NATURE'S SOLITUDE.

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dry. The stones were bleached by the sun, and there was no track or impression which gave the slightest indication of a path. Very soon this stony bed became contracted and lost; the stream ran through a different soil, and high grass, shrubs, and bushes grew luxuriantly up to its bank. We searched for the track on both sides of the river, and it was evident that since the last wet season no person had passed. Leaving the river, the bushes were higher than our heads, and so thick that at every two or three paces I became entangled and held fast; at length I dismounted, and my guide cleared a way for me on foot with his machete. Soon we reached the stream again, crossed it, and entered the same dense mass on the opposite side. In this way we continued nearly two hours, with the river for our line. We crossed it more than twenty times, and when it was shallow rode in its bed. Farther down the valley was open, stony, and barren, and the sun beat upon it with prodigious force; flocks of sopilotes or turkey-buzzards, hardly disturbed by our approach, moved away on a slow walk, or, with a lazy flap of the wings, rose to a low branch of the nearest tree. In one place a swarm of the ugly birds were feasting on the carcass of an alligator. Wild turkeys were more numerous than we had seen them before, and so tame that I shot one with a pistol. Deer looked at us without alarm, and on each side of the valley large black apes walked on the tops of the trees, or sat quietly in the branches, looking at us. Crossing the river for the last time, which became broader and deeper until it emptied into the Pacific, we entered the woods on the right, and reached the first station of Mr. Bailey; but it was covered with young trees and bushes; the woods were thicker than before, and the path entirely undistinguishable. I had

read reports, papers, and pamphlets on the subject of the great canal, and expected at least to find a road to the port; but the desert of Arabia is not more desolate, and the track of the Children of Israel to the Red Sea a turnpike compared with it.

My beautiful gray, degraded into a cargo-mule, chafed under her burden; and here obstructed, and jerked first one way and then the other, the girths of the saddle became loose, the load turned on her side, and she rushed blindly forward, kicking, and threw herself among the bushes. Her back was badly hurt, and she was desperately frightened; but we were obliged to reload her, and, fortunately, we were near the end of our day's journey.

On the border of the woods we reached a stream, the last at which fresh water was procurable, and filling our calabash, entered a plain covered with high grass. In front was another piece of woodland, and on the left the River San Juan, now a large stream, emptying into the Pacific. In a few minutes we reached a small clearing, so near the shore that the waves seemed breaking at our feet. We tied our mules under the shade of a large tree on the edge of the clearing. The site of Mr. Bailey's rancho was on an eminence near, but hardly a vestige remained; and though it commanded a fine view of the port and the sea, it was so hot under the afternoon sun that I fixed our encampment under the large tree. We hung our saddles, saddlecloths, and arms upon its branches, and while Nicolas and José gathered wood and made a fire, I found, what was always the most important and satisfactory part of the day's journey, excellent pasture for the mules.

The next thing was to take care of ourselves. We had no trouble in deciding what to have for dinner.

PRIMITIVE

COOKERY.

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We had made provision, as we supposed, for three days; but, as usual, it always happened that, however abundant, it did not last more than one. At this time all was eaten up by ourselves or by vermin; and, but for the wild turkey, we should have been obliged to dine upon chocolate. It was a matter of deeply-interesting consideration how the turkey should be cooked. Boiling it was the best way; but we had nothing to boil it in except a small coffee-pot. We attempted to make a gridiron of our stirrups, and broil it; but those of Nicolas were wooden, and mine alone were not large enough. Roasting was a long and tedious process; but our guide had often been in such straits; and fixing in the ground two sticks with crotches, he laid another across, split open the turkey, and securing it by sticks crosswise, hung it like a spread eagle before a blazing fire. When one side was burned, he turned the other. In an hour it was cooked, and in less than ten minutes eaten up. A cup of chocolate, heavy enough to keep it from rising if it had been eaten with its wings on, followed, and I had dined.

Rested and refreshed, I walked down to the shore. Our encampment was about in the centre of the harbour, which was the finest I saw on the Pacific. It is not large, but beautifully protected, being almost in the form of the letter U. The arms are high and parallel, running nearly north and south, and terminating in high perpendicular bluffs. As I afterward learned from Mr. Bailey, the water is deep, and under either bluff, according to the wind, vessels of the largest class can ride with perfect safety. Supposing this to be correct, there is but one objection to this harbour, which I derive from Captain D'Yriarte, with whom I made the voyage from Zonzonate to Caldera. He has been nine years navi

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