The muleteers sat up as I rode by, answering my “adios Señores” with “buen viaje, Caballero,” and then fell back in the sand again, and drew their sombreros over their faces. The sand of the beach was fetlock deep, and covered all over with white and rose-colored pebbles of pumice-stone. I spurred my horse up to the water, and dismounting led him along its edge, amusing myself by tossing the light pebbles out upon the tiny waves, and watching them come tipping back again, buoyant as corks. Hundreds of wild fowl, cranes, herons, and water-hens lined the shores, or stood soliloquizing on the rocks and sand-spits which projected into the water. They had the courtesy to give me the road as I walked along, but hardly anything more; and only ejaculated “cluck!” when I shouted at them, which I suppose meant “don’t be kicking up a row here, at noonday.” In fact I began to think that all nature, animate and inanimate, had entered into a grand compact to take a quiet snooze at this precise hour every day. The lake itself seemed dreaming, and the smoke from Momotombo rose in such a sleepy way, that I almost felt drowsy in watching it, and should certainly have lain down in the sand and taken a nap, had there been a tree or bush to protect me from the hot sun. My only alternative was therefore to jog on, which I did until I came to a place where the cliff projected forward almost to the water’s edge. Here I paused, and looked back for my companions, but they were not to be seen. Beyond this point the lake formed a little bay, and rocks worn into fantastic shapes by the water supplanted the sandy beach. These rocks seemed to be composed of a kind of volcanic breccia, for fragments of pumice-stone, bits of primitive rock, and an occasional large piece of trachyte were visible in the white and slightly porous masses. Yet, at a little distance, stratified sand rock appeared, overlying the breccia, and anon a vein of basaltic or trachytic rock, or a frowning heap of rough, black, and blistered masses of these materials, superimposed on the sand rock or conglomerate, would completely confound my uneducated notions of geological propriety. I presume all this apparent confusion is of easy explanation amongst those versed in the natural sciences; and if (as is more than likely) these can make nothing out of my description, they had better go there and examine for themselves. Geologically, as well as geographically and topographically, there is no more interesting region than that of Nicaragua, nor one which can better repay the investigations of the student of nature.