At five o’clock we embarked, for the first time, on Lake Nicaragua. The people all came to bid us good-bye; and one old man insisted upon a parting embrace. Like the prophet of old, he said he was now ready to die, for he knew that his country was safe beneath the guardianship of the Republic of the North. We pushed off under a torrent of _vivas_, and a _feu de joie_ was fired by the little garrison, which Ben efficiently returned with his double-barrelled gun, while Pedro blew another nerve-cracking blast on his conch—that awful conch! The view of San Carlos, from the lake, was picturesque in the extreme, and the accompanying sketch of it will be sufficiently curious twenty years hence, when it shall have become, as it inevitably will, a large and important town. Already a steamer plies regularly between San Carlos and Granada; and the alligators, disturbed in their slumbers on the sand-bar, by its plashing wheels and noisy engine, are meditating a grand migration into the country of the Guatosos. The faintest of all zephyrs was dying away on the lake when we started, yet we had not gone half a mile before the oars were drawn aboard, and a huge triangular sail spread from the newly-rigged mast. The breeze was hardly strong enough to fill it; and the boat dawdled, rather than moved, through the water. We expostulated with Pedro; but it was useless; the marineros never did row while there was the least apology for a wind abroad, and the “demonio” himself couldn’t make them. So Pedro lit his cigar, while the men produced a pack of cards, and commenced a game, novel enough to us, in which it was the privilege of the winner to pinch, beat, and otherwise maltreat the loser, who was obliged to submit without resistance, until the spectators pronounced “bastante,” enough. One fellow, who was a little rebellious, was incontinently thrust overboard, to the great damage of a gaudy bandana handkerchief which he wore about his head, and to the manifest delectation of the crew, who jibed him unmercifully as a “ladron,” and “picaro,” “a rascal” and “a loafer.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: SAN CARLOS—OUTLET OF LAKE NICARAGUA.—1849.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------