Our passage up the river had taken us nine days, making an average progress of about twelve miles per day. Three days more were spent in crossing the lake. With the native boatmen it seems to be a rule to abstain from using oars even when they are becalmed. Before we left the _aguas muertas_ a small tree had been cut. This was now erected as a mast, a sail was spread, and slowly we began to move in the direction of Granada. Our navigation was of a very primitive kind. At night, while every soul on board slept soundly, our bongo was left to find its own way, which, however, it refused to do; for when we awoke at dawn I saw we were heading to the place we had come from. By and by, nevertheless, we drew nearer to our point of destination. When we had left the two peaks of Ometepe on one side, the summit of Mombacho, designating the site of Granada, gradually rose from the water. We passed the island of Zapotera, celebrated for its idols, which have been discovered and described by my friend Mr. Squier. It is uninhabited, and may be said to be a mountain covered with a forest, here and there interrupted by a savanna. Like other islands in this lake, it contains numerous wild animals, such as deer, peccaries, monkeys, and panthers.... On the evening of the 5th of December we doubled the outermost rock of the _Corrales_ or _Isletas_, a cluster of more than a hundred diminutive islands at the foot of the Mombacho, and a few hours after dark landed on the _playa_, or beach, of Granada. THE DESTRUCTION OF SAN SALVADOR. CARL SCHERZER. [Dr. Carl Scherzer, in his "Travels in the Free States of Central America," gives a graphic picture of the destruction, in 1854, of the city of San Salvador by an earthquake, as witnessed by his friend Dr. Wagner, whose description of the event is well worth repeating. This city, which stands on a plateau about two thousand feet above the Pacific, was built by the Spaniards in 1528, and, with the exception of Guatemala, was the neatest and handsomest of Central American cities, possessing several handsome churches, a new university, and numerous attractive residences.] On the 12th and 13th of April, 1854, there was heard in the upper part of the city, towards the southwest, a hollow, subterranean, rumbling noise, which recurred at short intervals and continued for several minutes, appearing to come from the mountains which form a kind of large semi-circle at the foot of the volcano, but there was no shock whatever. On the Good Friday, at half-past seven in the morning, two slight shocks, quickly succeeding each other, were felt, and about ten minutes afterwards a rather stronger one. The roof and walls of my cottage shook, without my at first perceiving the cause; but a young Spaniard, who waited on me, said, quietly, "_Es un temblor_." Being a native of the country, he was accustomed to the phenomenon, and thought little of it.