Natural history -- Nicaragua; Nicaragua -- Description and travel
I thought that some of the earlier flights in April
might be caused by the vegetation of the Pacific side of the
continent being still parched up, whilst on the Atlantic slope the
forests were green and moist. But in June there had been abundant
rains on the Pacific side, and vegetation was everywhere growing
luxuriantly. Neither would their direction from the north-west
bring them from the Pacific, but from the interior of Honduras and
Guatemala. The difficulty is that there are no return swarms. If
they travelled in one direction at one season of the year, and in
an opposite at another, we might suppose that the vegetation on
which the caterpillars feed was at one time more abundant in the
north-west, at another in the south-east; but during the five years
I was in Central America, I was always on the look-out for them,
and never saw any return swarms of butterflies. Their migration
every year in one definite direction is quite unintelligible to me.
We gradually ascended the range that separates the watershed of the
Lake of Nicaragua from that of the Blewfields river, passing over
grassy savannahs. About two leagues from Libertad there are many
old Indian graves, covered with mounds of earth and stones. A
well-educated Englishman, Mr. Fairbairn, has taken up his abode at
this place, and is growing maize and rearing cattle. There are many
evidences of a large Indian population having lived at this spot,
and their pottery and fragments of their stones for bruising maize
have been found in some graves that have been opened. Mr. Fairbairn
got me several of these curiosities, amongst them are imitations of
the heads of armadillos, and other animals. Some of these had
formed the feet of urns, others were rattles, containing small
balls of baked clay. The old Indians used these rattles in their
solemn religious dances, and the custom is probably not yet quite
obsolete, for as late as 1823 Mr. W. Bullock saw, in Mexico, Indian
women dancing in a masque representing the court of Montezuma, and
holding rattles in their right hands, to the noise of which they
accompanied their motions. Several stone axes have been found,
which are called "thunderbolts" by the natives, who have no idea
that they are artificial, although it is less than four hundred
years ago since their forefathers used them. Like most of the sites
of the ancient Indian towns, the place is a very picturesque one.
At a short distance to the west rise the precipitous rocks of the
Amerrique range, with great perpendicular cliffs, and huge isolated
rocks and pinnacles. The name of this range gives us a clue to the
race of the ancient inhabitants. In the highlands of Honduras, as
has been noted by Squiers, the termination of tique or rique is of
frequent occurrence in the names of places, as Chaparriistique,
Lepaterique, Llotique, Ajuterique, and others. The race that
inhabited this region were the Lenca Indians, often mentioned in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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