horses of Nicaragua resemble those of Arabia, being small but fleet,
spirited, and capable of much endurance. Great care is taken in training
them, and they are taught an easy gait, half trotting and half pacing,
called the _paso-trote_. A well-broken animal will take this as soon as
the reins are loosened, and continue it all day without fatigue to
himself or his rider, making five or six miles an hour. The motion is so
gentle that an experienced rider can carry a cup of water for miles in
his hand without spilling a drop.
There is only one road in the country suitable for carriages, and that
is seldom used except by carts. It runs from Grenada, the easternmost
city of importance on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, to Realjo, or
Corinto, the principal seaport; and over this road, which was built
three hundred years ago by the Spaniards, all the commerce of the
country passes. There is now a railroad along this highway; the
Government has several times made loans to construct it, but the money
was wasted in revolutions, and the track was not completed till
recently. The road belongs to the Government, and is managed by a
citizen of the United States. The cart road passes through Managua, and
thus unites the three principal cities of the land. Over it have passed
hundreds of armies and no end of insurgent forces, and the whole
distance has been washed with blood, shed in public and private
quarrels. Wherever a man has been slain a rude cross is usually erected,
and it is common to see wreaths of flowers hanging upon it, placed there
by some interested or, mayhap, loving hand. At these places pious
passengers breathe a prayer for the soul that has been released, and
they are so numerous that it keeps them praying from one end of a
journey to the other.
[Illustration: HIDE-COVERED CART.]
The carts which furnish transportation are rude contrivances of native
manufacture, and the design has not been improved upon since the
conquest. The body consists of a very heavy framework of wood, and the
wheels are solid sections cut from some large tree, usually of mahogany.
They are not sawed, but chopped into shape, and are generally about
eight or ten inches thick and five feet in diameter, and weigh several
hundred pounds. The oxen do not wear yokes, but the pole of the cart is
fastened to a bar of tough wood, usually lignum vitæ, which is lashed by
cowhide thongs to the horns. There are always two pair of oxen--one to
haul the cart and the other to haul the load, for the vehicle is twice
the weight of its cargo. Two men are required to navigate the craft; one
goes ahead armed with a gun or a machete, which is a long knife, and
answers for many purposes--a weapon as well as an agricultural
implement--and the oxen are supposed to follow him, while the other sits
on the load and yells as he prods the animals with an iron-pointed goad
long enough to reach the leaders. The man ahead assists his colleague by
uttering constant admonitions to the oxen without turning his face, and
between the two, and the squeaking of the cart-wheels, which are never
greased, there is noise enough to deafen the whole neighborhood. The
approach of one of these vehicles can be anticipated half an hour.
Each cart contains five or six days’ forage for the animals, as well as
rations for the _carreteros_. They camp whenever night overtakes them,
even if it is only a mile from the end of their journey. The oxen are
fastened to the cart and given their fodder, while the men light a fire,
make their coffee, and either lie under the cart or upon it to sleep.
Most of the carts have covers or awnings of cured hides, which are
lashed over boughs to protect the loads in the rainy season. The average
rate of speed is about a mile an hour over a good road, but ten miles a
day is fast travelling, owing to the amount of time wasted by the
roadside.
The cartmen are invariably honest in dealing with their employers, and
always render a strict account of their cargoes, whether they are
composed of silver or coffee, but
[Illustration: AN INTERIOR TOWN.]
consider it a privilege, which they have inherited from their ancestors,
to plunder along the road. Nothing is too hot or too heavy for them to
carry away, and accordingly precautions are taken for the protection of
whatever is likely to tempt them. They have an unorganized union to
protect themselves, and permit no impositions to be practised upon any
of their number, or underbidding or other irregularities among
themselves. They charge so much a journey, no matter what their load is,
and persons having small parcels to be carried have to club together to
make up a cargo, or pay a high rate for transportation. Many of the
carts and oxen are owned by those who drive them, but others are leased
to the carreteros by capitalists who possess a large number. The cattle
come from the savannas in the south-western portion of the republic,
where there are immense and nutritious pastures extending over the line
into Costa Rica.
[Illustration: THE INDIGO PLANT.]
[Illustration: THE KING OF THE MOSQUITOES.]
Although the mineral resources of the country are undoubtedly rich, its
future wealth will come, if peace can ever be made permanent, from the
development of the agricultural and timber lands. Beyond the mining
district down to the Mosquito coast there extends a forest of immense
area, filled with the finest woods, and it has scarcely been touched.
The most useful timber is the mahogany, although there are kindred
varieties quite as good, but not so popular or well known. It is more
easily obtained too, as it grows upon the ridges and keeps out of the
swamps, which are full of miasma and mosquitoes. The tree is one of the
most beautiful, as well as one of the largest, that are found in
tropical lands, commonly reaching a height of sixty or seventy feet, and
being from twenty-five to forty feet in circumference. Timbers forty
feet long and eight feet square are frequent, although so heavy that
they are difficult to handle; and the only way fine timber can be
obtained is by taking saw-mills into the forest and cutting up the
timber into sizes suitable for transportation. This is difficult,
however, owing to the lack of roads. Logs five and six feet in diameter
are common, and it is said that the largest trees have the finest color
and grain.
The mahogany is one of the few trees in the tropical forests whose
leaves change color with the season, and the Carrib Indians, who are
employed to cut them, discover their presence by this peculiarity. They
climb the highest tree they can find, sight the mahoganies, locate their
position with great skill, and lead the choppers to them with unerring
accuracy. When the tree is found, the underbrush around it and the lower
limbs are first cleared away before the trunk is attacked. When it
falls, the branches are chopped off; then the log is hewn into shape,
after which it is dragged by oxen--sometimes a hundred yoke being
employed--to the nearest water-course, the choppers going ahead and
clearing away with their machetes the underbrush and small trees to make
a road. When the timber is rolled into the river, it is branded and
allowed to lie there until the rainy season, when the waters rise and
carry it down to the sea.
There are other trees of great value in the forests, and not for timber
alone. The caoutchouc, or rubber-tree--a name which when properly
pronounced sounds like the plunge of a frog into the water--kachunk--is
very plentiful in the Nicaragua forests, although this resource, like
most of the others, is comparatively idle. The Mosquito Indians gather
some, however, which is shipped from Blewfields and Greytown in small
quantities. The quality is not so good as that which comes from Brazil,
as the sap is not reduced with any skill or care.
The average North American supposes that the rubber is obtained like
pitch, and comes from the exuded gums of the tree, but the process is
altogether different, resembling our method of making maple sugar. When
the sap begins to rise from the roots to the branches of the tree,
expeditions of thirty or forty men are organized, who are furnished by
the exporting merchants with an outfit of buckets, axes, machetes, pans,
and provisions, and start into the woods. The _uleros_, as the
rubbermen are called, from the term _ule_, which is the native name for
the tree, are always paid a small sum in advance, ostensibly for the
support of their families during their absence, but which is always
exhausted in debauchery before they start. When they reach the forest of
the ule-trees they build a shanty of palms and brush, if there is not
one already standing, on the bank of some stream, as a great deal of
water is required for the manufacture of the gum. There they distribute
their large cans and buckets through the forest at convenient intervals
and proceed to business. When the _ulero_ selects his tree, he clears
the trunk of vines and creepers and climbs it to the branches. Then he
descends, cutting diagonal channels through the bark with a single blow
of his machete, or knife, left and right, left and right, all meeting at
the angle. At the bottom of the lowest cut an iron trough about six
inches long and four inches wide is driven into the tree, which catches
the milk as it flows from the wound, and conducts it into a bucket on
the ground below. This is done with great speed and skill by an expert;
and necessarily so, to prevent waste, as the sap springs out instantly,
and by the time the spout is driven into the tree is flowing at the rate
of four gallons an hour. A large tree will produce twenty gallons of
sap, and will run dry in a single day. The _ulero_ having tapped a dozen
or eighteen trees has all the work he can attend to emptying the buckets
into the ten-gallon cans that are provided for the purpose. In the
evening the cans are carried to the camp, and the sap strained through
sieves into barrels. In Brazil it is boiled, but in Nicaragua the
natives have a peculiar system of reducing it. There is a plant or vine
called the Achuna, whose sap when mixed with that of the rubber-tree has
the singular property of coagulating it in a few minutes. By whom, or
how, or where this process was discovered no one can tell. Undoubtedly
it was an accident, for the vine hangs from all the trees in the _ule_
forest, and probably a cutting dropped into a bucket of sap some time or
another produced the result for which it is now used. Having their
barrels full, the _uleros_ cut short
[Illustration: A MAHOGANY SWAMP.]
pieces of this vine, soak it in water, and small bunches are thrown into
pans upon which the sap is poured. In the morning the rubber has turned
to gum--about two pounds to every gallon of sap. At the top of the pan
is a quantity of dark brown liquid, like a weak solution of licorice.
This is poured off, and then the gum is rolled under heavy weights of
wood into long flat strips called tortillas, which are hung over poles
under the shed to drip and dry. At first they are white, like the
vulcanized rubber, but with exposure they turn black and become hard
after a few days. Then the tortillas are stacked up under cover until
the end of the season, and shipped to market.
[Illustration: INTERNAL COMMERCE.]
The cocoa or chocolate tree grows wild in the forests of Nicaragua, and
when cultivated yields the most profitable crop that can be produced;
but the republic furnishes but little, comparatively, for export,
although its possibilities in this direction are almost unlimited. The
most of the world’s supply of cocoa comes from Ecuador and Venezuela.
There always has been a prejudice in Nicaragua against foreign
immigration, inspired and stimulated by the priests, who inveterately
oppose all progress and every innovation. A number of German families
are settled throughout the country, engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most
of the large commission houses and exporters are English, while the
hotel or posada keepers are Frenchmen. England furnishes most of the
money to move the crops, as the natives are impoverished by wars or
their own extravagance. The country will never be prosperous until its
peace is assured and its population increased by the introduction of
foreign labor and capital.
[Illustration: HOW THE PEONS LIVE.]
Like other Spanish-American countries, the national vices are indolence
and extravagance. The common people never get ahead, and have no need of
purses, much less of savings-banks. They might make good wages, as they
are naturally good producers, but they always spend their earnings
before they receive them, and are encouraged to keep in debt to those
who employ them, as, under the law, no laborer can leave a job upon
which he is employed as long as he owes his employer a penny. This
system of credit, although it amounts to only a few dollars in each
case, is equivalent to slavery, a peonage which is permanent; for if
the laborer really aspires to be a free man, he is persuaded or
threatened or swindled into renewing the obligation under which his life
is spent.
The aristocracy are equally extravagant. It is a part of their religion,
apparently, to spend their incomes, even if they do not anticipate them;
and the latter is generally the case. Nearly every crop is mortgaged to
the commission man before it is harvested, and the planter is compelled
to take the price that is offered. The peon is in debt to the planter,
the planter to the merchant, the merchant to the commission-house, and
the latter conducts his business on borrowed money; and so it goes on,
year after year, without cessation, each person involved spending as
much or more than he makes, and conducting his business on paper, like
speculators in the stock market, the country growing poorer each year,
with no possible hope of redemption except by an influx of fresh blood
and capital. The climate is delightful, the land is wonderfully
productive, and the products always in active demand in the markets of
the world.
The chief cities are pictures of desolation, and along the roads in the
country are the ruins of _estancias_ that were the abode of wealthy
planters years ago. Much of the destruction was caused by earthquakes,
but more by civil war. The population in 1846 was 257,000; in 1870 it
had been reduced to less than 200,000, and since then there have been
disturbances in which thousands of men were slaughtered or driven into
exile by fear or force. The whites, or those of pure Spanish blood,
number about 30,000; the negroes about half as many; the mixed races,
Mestizos and Ladinos--the former of Spanish and Indian and the latter
Negro and Indian blood--are probably 8,000; and there are supposed to be
about as many pure-blooded Indians upon the Atlantic coast and scattered
throughout the republic. The education of the common people is neglected
and left to the priests, who teach them nothing but superstition and
their obligations to the Church. In 1868 a decree was passed making
education compulsory and free, and providing for the diversion of a
liberal amount of the public revenue each year for the support of the
schools; but the law is a dead letter, and in no year has the amount
assigned to the Department of Education been appropriated. At present
there are but sixty schools, with a normal attendance of twenty-five
hundred, or an average of forty pupils to thirty thousand inhabitants.
There is a university at Leon, with an average of fifty students, and
another at Grenada, with a few more, at which law, medicine, and
theology are taught, under the direction of the bishop; but most of the
sons of wealthy families are sent to Europe to be educated.
[Illustration: A FAMILIAR SCENE.]
The city of Leon is the commercial metropolis, and was the ancient
capital. In 1854 the seat of government was removed to Grenada, during
the great revolution, which lasted for five years, and in which our
famous filibuster, Walker, figured; and the people of the latter city
would not permit its return to the capital of the viceroys. After
fighting over the question for several years, shedding much blood and
destroying much property, a compromise was effected by locating the
headquarters temporarily at Managua, a smaller place half way between
the two, where, since 1863, the President has resided, and the Congress
has assembled every year. The public buildings in Leon remain as they
were at the time of the removal of the capital, and most of the archives
are there, the expectations of the citizens being that they will be
needed for the Government again in the near future; but Grenada keeps a
threatening look in that direction, and any attempt to disturb the
present situation would result in another war, so bitter is the rivalry.
[Illustration: A COUNTRY CHAPEL.]
Leon is one of the oldest cities in America, having been founded in
1523 by Fernandez Cordova. Two years before, Pedrarias Divilla, who was
Governor at Panama, sent to Leon, on a tour of exploration, a lusty old
buccaneer, named Gil Gonzalez, with a few hundred men. He landed at
about the centre of the Pacific coast, and marched across to the present
city of Rivas. Here he found on the borders of the lake a vast
population of Indians under a cacique named Nicaro, and called the
country in his reports _Nicaro’s Agua_, or waters; hence the name. The
Indians regarded the Spaniards with awe and amazement. They had heard of
their appearance at Panama and on the Atlantic coast, but believed that
the stories of their presence, which came from their ancient enemies,
the Carribs, were false and intended to frighten them. Seeing the chief
surrounded by such a multitude of savages, Gonzalez approached with
great caution, and having captured a native, sent him to Nicaro with
this bombastic message:
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES CONSULATE.]
“Tell your chief,” said Gonzalez, “that a valiant captain cometh,
commissioned to these parts by the greatest king on earth, to inform all
the lords of these lands that there is in the heavens, higher than the
sun, one Lord, Maker of all
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETER, LEON.]
things, and that those believing on Him shall at death ascend to that
loftiness, while disbelievers shall descend into the everlasting fire
that burns in the bottomless pit. Tell your chief that I am coming, and
that he must be ready upon my arrival at his camp to accept these truths
and be baptized, or prepare for battle.”
The cacique surrendered, and, with all his warriors and their women, to
the number of nine thousand, was baptized. In his report to the King of
Spain, the pious old Bombastes Furioso claimed the credit of having
converted more heathens than any other man that had ever lived.
In the days of the Spaniards Leon was a splendid city, and there are
still existing numerous monuments of its opulence and grandeur. The
public buildings are constructed upon a magnificent scale and without
regard to cost, and the private dwellings are built in imitation of
them, being of imposing exteriors and luxurious in their equipment and
adornment. There were seventeen fine churches to a population of fifty
thousand, chief of which was the Cathedral of St. Peter, which cost five
millions of dollars, and was over thirty-seven years in course of
erection. It was finished in 1743, and is still in a good state of
preservation, being built of most substantial masonry, with walls of
stone eighteen or twenty feet thick. It is of the Moorish style of
architecture, resembling the great cathedral at Seville, Spain, and is
by far the largest and finest church in Central America. During the
frequent revolutions it has always been used as a fortress, and its
walls, although still firm and enduring, are much battered by the
assaults that have been made upon it.
In 1823, during the first revolution after independence between the
aristocrats and the Indians, there was a fire at Leon which destroyed
more than a thousand of the finest buildings; and the flames were aided
in the work of devastation by thousands of Indian soldiers, who
plundered and murdered the inhabitants. This part of the city has never
been restored, and long streets, whose pavements are overgrown with
weeds and underbrush, are still lined with ruined walls that disclose
rich marble columns and artistic carvings. In mockery of the former
magnificence which their ancestors destroyed, the Indian peons are
living in bamboo huts, enclosed by cactus hedges, on the sites where
once lived the proudest hidalgos in Central America. There is a
tradition that the town was once cursed by the Pope, because of the
murder of an archbishop there, and this accounts for the succession of
calamities from which it has suffered.
[Illustration: THE PACIFIC COAST OF NICARAGUA.]
The ladies of the aristocracy are in youth usually pretty, and at
whatever age are always proud. For some reason or other they consider
their country far above and beyond criticism, and themselves superior to
the rest of Adam’s race. Ancestral pride is so conspicuous as to be
ofttimes offensive, and the fact that a person born out of Nicaragua
seems to them to have been a misfortune for which no other
circumstances can compensate. This is true among both sexes of the
upper caste, but more especially among the ladies, whose exalted opinion
of their own importance in the universe has never been tarnished by
travel. This feeling has gone far to excite the existing prejudice
against foreigners, and while the tourists are always most hospitably
received, the fact that their stay is only temporary adds to the
pleasure of entertaining them. The most rigid restrictions prevent the
social intercourse of the sexes, and nowhere in the world is a woman’s
honor protected with such great precaution; and for excellent reasons.
No lady of caste would think of receiving a call from a gentleman alone,
except a priest; and the clergy make the most of their privileges,
according to common report.
[Illustration: ANTICS ON THE BRIDGE.]
The ladies are always idle. To do any sort of work other than embroidery
is beneath them, and the number of servants they employ is regulated not
by their necessities but by their means. They are all uneducated, the
privilege of a few years in a convent only being allowed them; and
those are spent in learning the lives of the saints, a little
embroidery, to drum on the piano, and to dance. There is no distinctive
national costume. The aristocracy imitate the Parisian fashions, while
the common masses wear whatever they can get. The Nicaraguans are much
more social in disposition than the citizens of the other Central
American countries. They have _tertulias_, which is a near relation of a
“high tea,” and balls more frequently, and are much more given to
dinner-parties, at which one of the greatest of imported luxuries is
codfish.