In their food, the Nicaraguans are also exceedingly simple. Tortillas and frijoles are the standard dishes. The first are composed of maize, and if well made are really palatable. Fresh and unblemished maize on the ear is always selected. It is shelled, soaked in alkali to remove the hull, and then carefully and repeatedly washed in cold water. It is afterwards placed on a _metlatl_, or grinding stone, and reduced to the extremest fineness. A very little cheese is ground with it, to give it consistency. A roll is then taken in the hands, beaten into a flat cake, and placed on an earthen pan, already heated upon the fire. When sufficiently done upon one side, it is adroitly turned on the other, and is finally served hot and crisp at the table. I “cottoned” to the tortilla from the start, and always preferred it to the native bread, which although light and fair to the eye, is invariably spoiled by sweetening. The tortilla is an aboriginal invention; and the foregoing engraving represents an ancient _metlatl_ or grinding stone which was dug up during my residence in Leon. The form is unchanged to this day, although few are as elaborately ornamented as that here introduced, which is a favorable specimen of aboriginal carving. It will be observed that this stone is curiously ornamented with _grecques_, which are shown more distinctly in the subjoined enlarged sketches of the upper and lower extremities of the _metlatl_ (_a._ _b._) [Illustration: ORNAMENTS OF THE METLATL.] _Frijoles_, in plain English, are baked beans; but the beans are quite of a different flavor from those in use in more northern latitudes. They are small, white, black, or brown in color, and indigenous in the country. They are not usually relished at first, but a taste for them is gradually acquired, and a meal without _frijoles_ finally comes to lack an essential ingredient. The man who cannot “go” the _frijoles_ had better keep away from Central America. For the weary traveller, in soliciting the bill of fare at the Indian hut where, four times out of five, he is obliged to stop for the night, has generally this brief catalogue, “_hay tortillas, frijoles, frijolitos, frijolitos fritos, y huevos_,”—“tortillas, beans, little beans, little baked beans, and eggs!”