the milk as it flows from the wound, and conducts it into a bucket on the ground below. This is done with great speed and skill by an expert; and necessarily so, to prevent waste, as the sap springs out instantly, and by the time the spout is driven into the tree is flowing at the rate of four gallons an hour. A large tree will produce twenty gallons of sap, and will run dry in a single day. The _ulero_ having tapped a dozen or eighteen trees has all the work he can attend to emptying the buckets into the ten-gallon cans that are provided for the purpose. In the evening the cans are carried to the camp, and the sap strained through sieves into barrels. In Brazil it is boiled, but in Nicaragua the natives have a peculiar system of reducing it. There is a plant or vine called the Achuna, whose sap when mixed with that of the rubber-tree has the singular property of coagulating it in a few minutes. By whom, or how, or where this process was discovered no one can tell. Undoubtedly it was an accident, for the vine hangs from all the trees in the _ule_ forest, and probably a cutting dropped into a bucket of sap some time or another produced the result for which it is now used. Having their barrels full, the _uleros_ cut short [Illustration: A MAHOGANY SWAMP.] pieces of this vine, soak it in water, and small bunches are thrown into pans upon which the sap is poured. In the morning the rubber has turned to gum--about two pounds to every gallon of sap. At the top of the pan is a quantity of dark brown liquid, like a weak solution of licorice. This is poured off, and then the gum is rolled under heavy weights of wood into long flat strips called tortillas, which are hung over poles under the shed to drip and dry. At first they are white, like the vulcanized rubber, but with exposure they turn black and become hard after a few days. Then the tortillas are stacked up under cover until the end of the season, and shipped to market. [Illustration: INTERNAL COMMERCE.] The cocoa or chocolate tree grows wild in the forests of Nicaragua, and when cultivated yields the most profitable crop that can be produced; but the republic furnishes but little, comparatively, for export, although its possibilities in this direction are almost unlimited. The most of the world’s supply of cocoa comes from Ecuador and Venezuela. There always has been a prejudice in Nicaragua against foreign immigration, inspired and stimulated by the priests, who inveterately oppose all progress and every innovation. A number of German families are settled throughout the country, engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most of the large commission houses and exporters are English, while the hotel or posada keepers are Frenchmen. England furnishes most of the money to move the crops, as the natives are impoverished by wars or their own extravagance. The country will never be prosperous until its peace is assured and its population increased by the introduction of foreign labor and capital.