One hut had been vacated for the moment; against it the fishing-rods and spears of its occupants were resting, and in front a canoe was drawn up; this attracted our particular notice, and I had a sketch made of it on the spot. As we paddled along the shore, we saw many thatched huts in cool, leafy arbors, surrounded by spots of bare, hard ground, fleckered with the sunlight, which danced in mazes as the wind waved the branches above. Around them were dark, naked figures, and before them were light canoes, drawn close to the bank, filling out the foreground of pictures such as we had imagined in reading the quaint recitals of the early voyagers, and the effects of which were heightened by the parrots and macaws, fluttering their bright wings on the roofs of the huts, and deafening the spectator with their shrill voices. Occasionally a tame monkey was seen swinging by his tail from the branches of the trees, and making grimaces at us as we passed. The habits of the natives were unchanged in the space of three hundred years; their dwellings were the same; the scenes we gazed upon were counterparts of those which the Discoverers had witnessed. Eternal summer reigned above them; their wants were few and simple, and profuse nature supplied them in abundance with all the necessaries of existence. They little thought that the party of strangers, gliding silently before them, were there to prepare the way for the clanging steamer, and that the great world without was meditating the Titanic enterprise of laying open their primeval solitudes, grading down their hills, and opening, from one great ocean to the other, a gigantic canal, upon which the navies of the world might pass, laden with the treasures of two hemispheres! CHAPTER II. THE PORT OF SAN JUAN DE NICARAGUA; ITS POSITION; CLIMATE; POPULATION; EDIFICES OF ITS INHABITANTS; ITS INSECTS; THE NIGUA; THE SCORPION, ETC.; ITS EXPORTS AND IMPORTS; POLITICAL CONDITION; IMPORTANCE, PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE; SEIZURE BY THE ENGLISH, ETC.—MOUTH OF THE RIVER SAN JUAN—THE COLORADO MOUTH—THE TAURO—NAVIGATION OF THE RIVER—BONGOS AND PIRAGUAS—LOS MARINEROS—DISCOVERY AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE PORT OF SAN JUAN.