At that time [1850] steamboats were not yet plying on the San Juan River and the Lake of Nicaragua, and I had to content myself with the accommodations of one of the large canoes of the natives called _bongos_, which were then the principal means of transport between the coast and the interior, for passengers as well as for merchandise. In company with two Americans, who, like myself, were anxious to proceed to Granada, I hired one of the largest of these clumsy little crafts, manned with ten boatmen or _marineros_, together with their captain or _patron_, all of them colored people from the interior. We laid in provisions for a fortnight, such being the full time of a passage which is now performed by steamers in two days. We left San Juan on the 23d of November, and arrived at Granada on the 5th of the following month. In reference to the beauties of nature the trip is one of the most interesting that can be made, though the state of my health prevented my enjoying it.... An open shed, furnished with a hammock and surrounded by a plantain garden of half an acre, was the only improvement in an extent of more than a hundred miles. With this single exception, and with that of the site of the old castle of San Juan, more generally known by the popular name of _Castillo Viejo_, the banks were covered with trees to the water's edge, their branches often bearing a vegetation of vines, climbers, and parasites, so densely interwoven that the whole appeared like a solid wall of leaves and flowers. I shall never forget the impressions of one night and morning on this river. Our boat had anchored in the midst of the stream. Strange forms of trees, spectre-like in the dark, stood before us, and seemed to move as the eye strove in vain to make out their real shape. From time to time a splash in the water, caused by the movement of an alligator, the bellowing of a manatee, the screeching of a night-bird, or the roar of some beast of the forest, broke the silence, and mingled at last with my feverish dream.