All danger past, we had an opportunity to look about us. We were not more than two cable-lengths from a low sandy shore, upon which was ranged, in a line parallel to the water, a double row of houses, or rather huts, some built of boards, but most of reeds, and all thatched with palm-leaves. Some came down to the water, like sheds, and under one end were drawn up pit-pans and canoes. Larger contrivances for navigating the San Juan river, resembling canal-boats, were also moored close in shore, and upon each might be seen a number of very long and very black legs, every pair of which was surmounted by a very short white shirt. In the centre of the line of houses, which was no other than the town of San Juan de Nicaragua, was an open space, and in the middle of this was a building larger than the others, but of like construction, surrounded by a high fence of canes, and near one end rose a stumpy flag-staff, and from its top hung a dingy piece of bunting, closely resembling the British Union Jack; and this was the custom-house of San Juan, the residence of all the British officials; and the flag was that of the “King of the Mosquitos,” the “ally of Great Britain!” But of this mighty potentate, and how the British officials came there, more anon. Just opposite us, on the shore, was an object resembling some black monster which had lost its teeth and eyes, and seemed sorry that it had left its kindred at the Novelty Works. It was the boiler of a steamer, which some adventurous Yankees had proposed putting up here, but which, from some defect, had proved useless. Behind the town rose the dense tropical forest. There were no clearings, no lines of road stretching back into the country; nothing but dense, dark solitudes, where the tapir and the wild boar roamed unmolested; where the painted macaw and the noisy parrot, flying from one giant cebia to another, alone disturbed the silence; and where the many-hued and numerous serpents of the tropics coiled among the branches of strange trees, loaded with flowers and fragrant with precious gums. The whole scene was unprecedentedly novel and picturesque. There was a strange blending of objects pertaining to the extremes of civilization. The boiler of the steamer was side by side with the graceful canoe, identical with that in which the simple natives of Hispaniola brought fruits to Columbus; and men in stiff European costumes were seen passing among others, whose dark, naked bodies, protected only at the loins, indicated their descent from the aborigines who had disputed the possession of the soil with the mailed followers of Cordova, and made vain propitiations to the symbolical sun to assist them against their enemies. Here they were, unknowing and careless alike of Cordova or the sun, and ready to load themselves like brutes, in order to earn a sixpence with which to get drunk that night, in concert with the monotonous twanging of a two-stringed guitar!