Geographical position of Santo Domingo. Physical geography. The inhabitants. Mixed races. Negroes and Indians compared. Women. Establishment of the Chontales Gold-Mining Company. My house and garden. Fruits. Plantains and bananas; probably not indigenous to America: propagated from shoots: do not generally mature their seeds. Fig-trees. Granadillas and papaws. Vegetables. Dependence of flowers on insects for their fertilisation. Insect plagues. Leaf-cutting ants: their method of defoliating trees: their nests. Some trees are not touched by the ants. Foreign trees are very subject to their attack. Method of destroying the ants. Migration of the ants from a nest attacked. Corrosive sublimate causes a sort of madness amongst them. Indian plan of preventing them ascending young trees. Leaf-cutting ants are fungus-growers and eaters. Sagacity of the ants. The gold-mining village of Santo Domingo is situated in the province of Chontales, Nicaragua, in latitude 12 degrees 16 minutes north and longitude 84 degrees 59 minutes west, nearly midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific, where Central America begins to widen out northward of the narrow isthmus of Panama and Costa Rica. It is in the midst of the great forest that covers most of the Atlantic slope of Central America, and which continues unbroken from where we had entered it, at Pital, eastward to the Atlantic; westward it terminates in a sinuous margin about seven miles from the village, and there commence the lightly timbered and grassy plains and savannahs stretching to the Lake of Nicaragua. The surface of the land in the forest region forms a succession of ranges and steep valleys, covered with magnificent timber and much undergrowth. Santo Domingo lies about 2000 feet above the level of the sea, and the hills around it rise from 500 to 1000 feet higher. It is built in the bend of a small stream, the head waters of a branch of the Blewfields river, on a level, low piece of ground, with the brook winding almost round it, and, beyond that, encircled by an amphitheatre of low hills in the hollow of which it lies. The road to the mines runs through it, and forms the main street, having on each side thatched stores and irregularly built houses. The inhabitants, about three hundred in number, are entirely dependent on the mines around, there being no cultivation or any other employment in the immediate neighbourhood. The people are of a mixed descent, in which Indian blood predominates, then Spanish with a slight admixture of the Negro element, whilst amongst the rising generation many fair-haired children can claim paternity amongst the numerous German and English workmen that have been employed at the mines. The store-keepers form the aristocracy of the village. They are indolent; lounging about, or lying smoking in their hammocks the greater part of the day, but generally civil and polite. They are particular in their dress, and may often be seen