Little note takes the Nicaraguan of the lavish favours of nature, whose grandest mystery but awakens a languid _Quien Sabe?_ and whose most winning plea extorts only a more languid _Poco tiempo_--the eternal by and by of indolence. One per cent. of the whole population makes a show of studying the elements of education. Why should they vex their souls in search of knowledge, when all that life needs can be had for the asking? Not, surely, to heap up wealth. Nature takes care even of that, for money grows upon trees of Nicaragua--that is to say, the fractional currency of the people is nuts, one cacao-nut being equal to a fortieth of a _medio_ in value, and passing current as such in all the smaller affairs of trade. Nor is it worth the trouble of mastering letters where illiteracy is no bar to civil or military advancement, and where, especially if the "Serviles" be in power, an unlettered bandit ranks almost as high as a rascally advocate. In the days of President Chamorro the most notorious ruffians held high office, the revenues of the state were farmed out on the system which prevails to-day only in the more barbarous parts of Asia, so that it was a saying in the neighboring states, where, too, glass-houses are not scarce, that "the calf was not safe in the cow, from the thieves of Nicaragua." It was not always so in Nicaragua. Years before the mail-clad Spaniard brought the curse of civilization across the western ocean, the simple Aztec built his altars to the sun on every hill-top from sea to sea. Centuries ere the Aztec, there flourished a semi-civilized race whose history is written in hieroglyphics of a language utterly dead and forgotten, and who have left no lineal descendants. Even such fragments of Aztec lore as survived the fanaticism of the Conquistadores in Mexico are wanting to the annals of the earlier Central American civilization. It was a culture of rich growth in its day and place, destined like that of the contemporary Roman Empire, to tempt the cupidity of a hardier race, and after an unavailing struggle, to fall before the might of numbers and superior physique. Howbeit, the Aztec Goths and Vandals overran the isthmus, and when the Spanish invasion came, it met only the late subjects of Montezuma's widespread, ill-governed kingdom. The religion of Nicaragua before the conquest was a gloomy idolatry. The predecessors of the Aztec are conjectured to have been a gentle race, but no match in prowess for their conquerors. The Spaniards found a people of sun-worshippers degraded by human sacrifice and attendant cannibalism. Between them and distant Anahuac, to which they owed allegiance, lay the dense forests and trackless swamps of Yucatan. The journey by land at this day is long and toilsome. Cortez, nevertheless, projected and carried out an exploration as far as Honduras, until his appalled veterans refused to go further southward.