To return from this digression. Two leagues beyond Quesalguaque, the intervening country level and magnificently wooded, and the road broad and smooth, is the Pueblo of Posultega, an unpretending town of some five or six hundred inhabitants, and distinguished for nothing except an ancient church, more remarkable for its dilapidation than its architecture. The cura, who had called on me in Leon a few days before, was swinging in his hammock, between a couple of orange trees in front of his house; he leaped up as we approached, stopped me in the open street, and gave me an embrace “as was an embrace,” and from my elevated position on my horse, quite too near the belt to be comfortable. He insisted on our stopping for the rest of the afternoon and for the night at his poor house, (every house in Central America is called “_mi pobre casa_” by its owner), which I declined doing with a prodigious affectation of regret, that became real a moment after, when I discovered the padre’s _sobrina_ or niece, a fair, full-breasted girl, peeping slyly out between the bars of the window. Of course it is not reputable for padres to have females in their establishments, except near relatives,—aunts for housekeepers, and nieces for—companions! The aunts, I observed, were always old, but the nieces almost invariably young and pretty, as nieces are bound to be. The country, from Posultega to Chichigalpa, a considerable town, two leagues further on, preserves its flat surface, the monotony but slightly relieved by the occasional narrow and shallow channels which carry off the superabundant water of the rainy season. Chichigalpa, formerly a very large Indian town, still numbers from three to five thousand inhabitants; it is regularly laid out, and has a neat and attractive appearance. It was just sunset when we entered its streets. A heavy thunder-storm was piling up its black volumes behind the volcanoes in the east, and the calm and silence which precede the tempest rested upon the plain; the winds were still, and the leaves hung motionless on the trees. The adult inhabitants seemed to sympathize with the scene, and sat silently in the open doorways; but the children were as playful and noisy as ever, their voices rendered doubly distinct, and almost unnatural in the pervading quiet. Suddenly the bell of the oracion struck; the careless voices of the children were instantaneously hushed, and we mechanically stopped our horses, and uncovered our heads. A low murmur of prayer floated forth on the undulating waves of sound which seemed to subside in circles around us;—again the bell struck, again, and then, when the pulses had almost ceased to beat, that the straining ear might catch the expiring vibrations, rolled in the muffled sound of the distant thunder. It came down from the mountains with the majesty of an ocean poured along their trembling sides!