hands at twenty yards, and at thirty-two
yards find the water boiling.

We must not stop too long in Guatemala.
Its cochineal plantations in Old Guatemala
and Amatitlan are its only scenes of reasonable
industry. It produces a little coffee and
a little cocoa; it can produce very fine vanilla
and large quantities of caoutchouc. Its chief
products now are robbers and revolutions.

We cross the River Paz, southward, within
sight of the Pacific, and have found our way
into the state of San Salvador. One of the
first things upon which we tumble, is a
volcano; that of Isolco, above Sonsonate.
This was born—sprouted out of the plain—
about eighty years ago, and has not yet done
growing. There used to be a cattle estate
where it now stands. It is continually in
eruption, and signalises the period of its
youth by throwing a large number of stones.
It is very regular in its habits, exploding
every sixteen minutes and three seconds, with
reports like a discharge of artillery, smoke
and stones, which fall upon its flank, and
that is how it grows. In Sonsonate, only
three leagues distant, this business-like
volcano, might be made a partial substitute for
clocks.

We go on to the capital, San Salvador.
Town on the usual model. Thieves on the
watch, soldiers asleep on the pavement,
covered with ants, very ragged, less respectable
than English beggars, and a revolution
come or coming. Where there is offal there are
turkey buzzards. Of course a volcano just
outside; the volcano of San Salvador, quiet
of late years. We hasten to San Miguel, the
seat of an annual trading market, which is
generally either spoilt or put off by the same
month's political convulsion. We pass through
a fine tobacco district; then by a volcano at
San Vicente; travel through the usual forest
tracks—the homes of pumas, parrots, snakes,
bees, scorpions, and ticks; cross the Lempa,
the chief river of the state, and go on through
the woods again until we are brought to a
stand-still by a wall twenty feet high, of
burning scoriæ, covered with charred trees,
a souvenir from the volcano of San Miguel.
The lava has come all this way, though we
are five leagues from the base of the volcano,
and ten leagues from its crater. We follow
a new roundabout path which has been made
requisite by this obstruction. Through
indigo plantations we come to San Miguel.

We will get a fever at San Miguel. It's
time to have a fever. Every traveller in
Central America must have a fever and get
well, or die. Being a phantom fever we can
soon get rid of it. We travel a few leagues,
and ascend the extinct volcano of Conchagna.
From there the view is fine. The Pacific, the
Bay of Conchagna, studded with islands,
tropical forests, rivers and mountains, and
eighteen volcanoes. On coming down we
find there is a fresh revolution, and take
flight by boat across the bay into the state of
Nicaragua. We don't wish to be ferried over
to the volcano of Cosiguina on the bay. That
is the volcano which broke out suddenly in
1835, breaking through a reputation for
extinctness, with shocks perceptible to all the
country round as far as Mexico, New
Granada, and Jamaica. It filled the air
with a fine powder, obscuring sun and stars,
so that there was a thick darkness for forty-
three hours, in which the light of torches was
not visible at three yards distance. The
lizards and the reptiles came to man for help,
and all was destroyed for leagues around the
fatal centre of activity. No, we don't visit
Cosiguina.

The chief produce of the State of San
Salvador is indigo, cultivated near San Vincente,
San Miguel, and San Salvador. From the
neighbourhood of Sonsonate, in this state,
comes all our Balsam of Peru. San Salvador
can produce, also, vinegar, ginger, and vanilla,

Across the Bay of Chinendega we are
floated to Nacoscolo, in the State of
Nicaragua—and travel by the usual mule track to
the chief town, Leon. Riding on these tracks
must be much like tossing in a blanket. We
come to Chinendega, a pretty town (near
an extinct volcano), in a country able to
produce large quantities of sugar and cotton.
We are now only three leagues from the
harbour of Realejo, the proposed Pacific
terminus to the grand ship canal; but we go
on to Leon. Leon is, after Guatemala, the
largest city in Central America, and contains,
perhaps, twenty-four thousand inhabitants;
it has contained twice as many. These towns
being all built on the same plan, one is
enough to look at. Here, as before, we
find rectangular streets, a square, a fountain,
ragged soldiers, thieves, a crisis, and a
revolution.

We quit Leon for Realejo; and our way
lies over level country, through thick forest,
on the usual mud-and-stump mule track.
Realejo, the town, is about two leagues
distant from Realejo, the harbour: it is a
mere collection of mud huts. The harbour is
a safe and good one, suited for large vessels,
and completely sheltered. This harbour will
perhaps be chosen on the Pacific side, as the
terminus of the proposed canal. San Juan
del Sur, a little further to the south, has also
its advocates.

Several fresh water streams run into the
creek which forms the harbour of Realejo.
One of these flow from within three leagues
of a lake—the Lake of Managua—over a
gentle slope. Let us imagine this stream on
the track of the canal; let us, indeed, imagine
the canal cut from Realejo into that lake.
With Lake Managua, the larger lake of
Nicaragua is connected already by a river,
which we will suppose transformed into canal.
We float then into the great Lake of
Nicaragua. A wind sweeps over it, and it is
rolling like a sea; before us there is no land
visible. From islands upon it, and from its