A stranger landing at the port of Corinto, Nicaragua, asked the men who were taking him ashore in a _bongoe_ the name of the capital of the republic. There were three of them. The quickest of wit answered promptly, “Grenada;” both the others disputed it, one of them contending for the city of Managua, and the other for Leon. So animated did the controversy become that all three dropped their oars, and nearly upset the boat by their gesticulations. This question is, and always has been, a dangerous one, and thousands of lives and hundreds of thousands of money have been wasted in repeated attempts to determine it. If it were the only excuse for the blood that has been shed in the little republic during the last sixty-five years, its history would be a nobler and a prouder one; for bitter wars have been waged for less, and brother has fought brother to settle questions not only involving a preference for cities but for men. There is no spot of equal area upon the globe in which so much human blood has been wasted in civil war, or so much wanton destruction committed. Nature has blessed it with wonderful resources, and a few years of peace and industry would make the country prosperous beyond comparison; but so much attention has been paid to politics that little is left for anything else. Scarcely a year has passed without a revolution, and during its sixty-five years of independence the republic has known more than five times as many rulers as it had during the three centuries it was under the dominion of Spain. It was seldom a question of principle or policy that brought the inhabitants to war, but usually the intrigue of some ambitious man. It is a land of volcanic disturbance, physical, moral, and political, and the mountains and men have between them contrived to almost compass its destruction. [Illustration: VIEW OF LAKE FROM BEACH AT MANAGUA.] For sixty years the country has been going backward. Its population is less than when independence was declared, and its wealth has decreased even more rapidly. Its cities are heaps of ruins, and its commerce is not so great as it was at the beginning of the century. There is, however, a commercial elasticity, owing to the extreme productiveness of the fields and the ease with which wealth is acquired, that has kept the little republic from bankruptcy, and promises great prosperity if political order can be preserved. Most of the people live in towns, and waste much time in going and coming between their homes and the plantations upon which they labor. This is owing to the frequency of revolutions and the milder forms of destruction and murder that are practised by highwaymen and other robbers. None but the very poor live along the roadside, and they have nothing to tempt assault. [Illustration: CORINTO.]