There was no American minister or consul at Managua at the time of our visit, but the English consul took very good care of us, and acted as our interpreter when we called upon the president. Relations between the consul and President Zelaya were somewhat strained at that time, and though we knew this we told the consul to tell the president how much he was admired by the American people for having taken the stand he did against the English on the Mosquito Coast question, and that we hoped he would see that the British obtained no foothold near our canal. At which the English consul would hesitate and grin unhappily, and remark, in a hurried aside, “I’ll be hanged if I’ll translate that.” So we continued inventing other pleasant speeches derogatory to Britons and British influence in Nicaragua until Somerset and his consul protested vigorously, and the president saw what we were doing and began to enjoy the consul’s embarrassment and laughed, and the consul laughed with him, and they made up their quarrel--for the time being, at least. Zelaya said, among other things, that if there were no other argument in favor of the Nicaragua Canal than that it would enable the United States to move her ships of war quickly from ocean to ocean, instead of being forced as she is now to make them take the long journey around Cape Horn, it would be of inestimable benefit. He also said that the only real objection that had been made in the United States to the canal came from those interested in the transcontinental railroads, who saw in its completion the destruction of their freight traffic. He seemed to be a very able man, and more a man of the world than Bonilla, the President of Honduras, and much older in many ways. He was apparently somewhat of a philosopher, and believed, or said he did, in the survival of the fittest as applied to the occupation of his country. He welcomed the gringos, he said, and if they were better able to rule Nicaragua than her own people, he would accept that fact as inevitable and make way before them. [Illustration: PRESIDENT ZELAYA OF NICARAGUA] We returned to Corinto after wallowing in the dust-bins of Managua as joyfully as though it were a home, and we were so anxious to reach the ocean again that we left Granada and Leon, which are, so we are told, much more attractive than the capital, out of our route. Corinto was bright and green and sunny, and the waters of the big harbor before it danced and flashed by day and radiated with phosphorescent fire by night. It was distinctly a place where it would occur to one to write up the back pages of his diary, but it was interesting at least in showing us the life of the exiles in these hot, far-away seaports among a strange people.