Next morning we started at daylight, and soon found the path the Indians had told us about, which took us to a place called Jamaily (pronounced Hamerlee), where was an extensive indigo plantation. About 100 men were employed weeding and clearing the ground. No fences are required for indigo growing, as neither horses nor cattle will eat the plant. A mile beyond Jamaily we saw, amongst some bushes, a poor-looking, grass-thatched hut, with the sides made of an open work of branches and leaves. We went up to it to try to buy something to eat, but found only three children in it; the oldest, a very dirty little girl of about five years of age, with a piece of cloth worn like a shawl, her only clothing, and the two younger quite naked. A little boy, about three years old, was very talkative, and prattled away all the time we were there. He said that some people living near had four cows, but that they had none; that his father shot deer and sold their skins, and that two days before he fired at a rock, thinking it was a deer. We heated some water and made tea, and with some sweet bread and native cheese managed to allay our hunger, the little boy amusing us all the time with his prattle. Pointing to a mangy dog lying on the floor covered with some old rags, he said it had fever, and that at night it threw off the rags, and the fleas got at it, but that during the day he kept it well covered up. I was amused with the little fellow, who in that squalid hut, without a scrap of clothing, and fed with the coarsest food, was as happy as, if not happier than, any child I had seen. By and by an elder girl came along from some other hut, and told us that the man was away hunting for deer, and that his wife had gone to her mother's, about a mile distant. She also informed us that the hunter had not a gun of his own, but gave half the meat of the deer he killed for the loan of one. He had a trained ox, which, as soon as it saw a deer, commenced eating, and walking gradually towards it; whilst the man followed, concealed, and thus got within distance to shoot it. He generally got two when he went out, and sold the hides for twenty cents per pound, the skins averaging five pounds' weight each. It is astonishing that deer should be so little afraid of man as they are, after having been objects of chase for probably thousands of years. Sometimes when one is encountered in the forest it will stand within twenty yards stupidly gazing at a man, or perhaps striking the ground impatiently with its forefoot, and often waiting long enough for an unloaded gun to be charged. The woman of the house came in before we left and we paid her for the use of her fire. She did not know how old her children were, and Velasquez told me that very few of the lower classes in Nicaragua knew either their own age or that of their children.