Journey to Juigalpa.
Description of Libertad.
The priest and the bell.
Migratory butterflies and moths.
Indian graves.
Ancient names.
Dry river-beds.
Monkeys and wasps.
Reach Juigalpa.
Ride in neighbourhood.
Abundance of small birds.
A poor cripple.
The "Toledo."
Trogons.
Waterfall.
Sepulchral mounds.
Broken statues.
The sign of the cross.
Contrast between the ancient and the present inhabitants.
Night life.
TOWARDS the end of June, in 1872, I had to go to Juigalpa, one of
the principal towns of the province of Chontales, on business
connected with a lawsuit brought against the mining company by a
litigious native. I started early in the morning, taking with me my
native boy, Rito, who carried on his mule behind him my blankets
and a change of clothes. I carried in my hand a light
fowling-piece. The roads through the forest were excessively muddy,
and it took us four hours to get over the seven miles to Pital; the
poor mules struggling all the way through mud nearly three feet
deep. Shortly after leaving Pital, we passed the river Mico; and
two miles further on, across some grassy hills, reached the small
town of Libertad. It is the principal mining centre of Chontales.
There are a great number of gold mines in its vicinity, several of
which are worked by intelligent Frenchmen. The gold and silver
mines of Libertad are richer than those of Santo Domingo, and many
of the owners of them have extracted great quantities of the
precious metals.
The town is situated near to the edge of the forest, being
separated by the Rio Mico, across which it is proposed to build a
wooden bridge, as during floods the river is impassable. Whether
the bridge will ever be built or not I cannot tell. Several times
rates have been levied, and money collected to build it, but the
funds have always melted away in the hands of the officials. There
is an alcalde and a judge at Libertad. Every one worth two hundred
dollars is liable to be elected to the latter office. Only
unimportant cases are tried by him, and his decisions depend
generally on the private influence that is brought to bear upon
him. He is often a tool in the hands of some unprincipled lawyer.
The church at Libertad is a great barn-like edifice, with tiled
roof. At one side is a detached small bell-tower, in which hang two
bells, one sound and whole, the other cracked and patched. The
latter was a present from one of the mining companies, and had
excited a great scandal. The mining company had a fine large bell,
with which they called together their workmen. The priest of
Libertad, thinking it might be much better employed in the service
of the church, made an application for it. The superintendent of
the mine could not part with it, but having an old broken bell, he
had it patched up, and sent it out with a letter, explaining that
he could not let them have the other, but that if this one was of
any use, they were welcome to it. The priest heard that the bell
was on the road, and thinking it was the one he had coveted, got up
a procession to go and meet it, to take it to its place with
befitting ceremony. But when he saw the old battered and broken
article that had been sent, his satisfaction was changed to rage,
instead of blessing he cursed it, threw it to the ground, and even
kicked and spat upon it. His rage for a time knew no bounds, as he
thought that he had been mocked by the heretical foreigners, and
his indignation was at first shared by some of the principal
inhabitants of the town, but when the explanatory letter had been
interpreted to them, their feelings changed, and the poor bell was
put up to do what duty it could. There are some good stores in
Libertad, the best being branches of Granada houses that buy the
produce of the country--hides, india-rubber, and gold--for export,
and import European manufactured goods.
Captain Velasquez joined me at Libertad, and, after getting
breakfast, we started. The road passes over grassy hills, on which
cattle and mules were feeding. The edge of the forest is not far
distant to the right, and all the way along it there have been
clearings made and maize planted. As we rode along, great numbers
of a brown, tailed butterfly (Timetes chiron) were flying over to
the south-east. They occurred, as it were, in columns. The air
would be comparatively clear of them for a few hundred yards, then
we would pass through a band perhaps fifty yards in width, where
hundreds were always in sight, and all travelling one way. I took
the direction several times with a pocket compass, and it was
always south-east. Amongst them were a few yellow butterflies, but
these were not so numerous as in former years. In some seasons
these migratory swarms of butterflies continue passing over to the
south-east for three to five weeks, and must consist of millions
upon millions of individuals, comprising many different species and
genera. The beautiful tailed green and gilded day-flying moth
(Urania leilus) also joins in this annual movement. When in Brazil,
I observed similar flights of butterflies at Pernambuco and
Maranham, all travelling south-east. Mr. R. Spruce describes a
migration which he witnessed on the Amazon, in November 1849, of
the common white and yellow butterflies. They were all passing to
the south-south-east.* (* "Journal of the Linnean Society" volume
9.) Darwin mentions that several times when off the shores of
Northern Patagonia, and at other times when some miles off the
mouth of the Plata, the ship was surrounded by butterflies; so
numerous were they on one occasion, that it was not possible to see
a space free from them, and the seamen cried out that it was
"snowing butterflies."* (* "Naturalist's Voyage" page 158.) These
butterflies must also come from the westward. I know of no
satisfactory explanation of these immense migrations. They occurred
every year whilst I was in Chontales, and always in the same
direction. I thought that some of the earlier flights in April
might be caused by the vegetation of the Pacific side of the
continent being still parched up, whilst on the Atlantic slope the
forests were green and moist. But in June there had been abundant
rains on the Pacific side, and vegetation was everywhere growing
luxuriantly. Neither would their direction from the north-west
bring them from the Pacific, but from the interior of Honduras and
Guatemala. The difficulty is that there are no return swarms. If
they travelled in one direction at one season of the year, and in
an opposite at another, we might suppose that the vegetation on
which the caterpillars feed was at one time more abundant in the
north-west, at another in the south-east; but during the five years
I was in Central America, I was always on the look-out for them,
and never saw any return swarms of butterflies. Their migration
every year in one definite direction is quite unintelligible to me.
We gradually ascended the range that separates the watershed of the
Lake of Nicaragua from that of the Blewfields river, passing over
grassy savannahs. About two leagues from Libertad there are many
old Indian graves, covered with mounds of earth and stones. A
well-educated Englishman, Mr. Fairbairn, has taken up his abode at
this place, and is growing maize and rearing cattle. There are many
evidences of a large Indian population having lived at this spot,
and their pottery and fragments of their stones for bruising maize
have been found in some graves that have been opened. Mr. Fairbairn
got me several of these curiosities, amongst them are imitations of
the heads of armadillos, and other animals. Some of these had
formed the feet of urns, others were rattles, containing small
balls of baked clay. The old Indians used these rattles in their
solemn religious dances, and the custom is probably not yet quite
obsolete, for as late as 1823 Mr. W. Bullock saw, in Mexico, Indian
women dancing in a masque representing the court of Montezuma, and
holding rattles in their right hands, to the noise of which they
accompanied their motions. Several stone axes have been found,
which are called "thunderbolts" by the natives, who have no idea
that they are artificial, although it is less than four hundred
years ago since their forefathers used them. Like most of the sites
of the ancient Indian towns, the place is a very picturesque one.
At a short distance to the west rise the precipitous rocks of the
Amerrique range, with great perpendicular cliffs, and huge isolated
rocks and pinnacles. The name of this range gives us a clue to the
race of the ancient inhabitants. In the highlands of Honduras, as
has been noted by Squiers, the termination of tique or rique is of
frequent occurrence in the names of places, as Chaparriistique,
Lepaterique, Llotique, Ajuterique, and others. The race that
inhabited this region were the Lenca Indians, often mentioned in
the accounts given by the missionaries of their early expeditions
into Honduras. I think that the Lenca Indians were the ancient
inhabitants of Chontales, that they were the "Chontals" of the
Nahuatls or Aztecs of the Pacific side of the country, and that
they were partly conquered, and their territories encroached upon
by the latter before the arrival of the Spaniards, as some of the
Aztec names of places in Nicaragua do not appear to be such as
could be given originally by the first inhabitants; thus Juigalpa,
pronounced Hueygalpa, is southern Aztec for "Big Town." No town
could be called the big town at first by those who saw it grow up
gradually from small beginnings, but it is a likely enough name to
be given by a conquering invader. Again Ometepec is nearly pure
Aztec for Two Peaks, but the island itself only contains one, and
the name was probably given by an invader who saw the two peaks of
Ometepec and Madera from the shore of the lake, and thought they
belonged to one island. The Lenca Indians nowhere appear to have
built stone buildings, like the Quiches, and Lacandones of
Guatemala, and the Mayas of Yucatan, who were probably much more
nearly affiliated to the Nahuatls of Mexico than the Lencas.
We reached the top of the dividing range, and now left the main
road, taking a path to the left, that is very rocky and narrow. We
began rapidly to descend, and found an entire change of climate on
this side of the range. It had been raining for weeks at Libertad,
and everywhere the ground was wet and swampy, but two miles on the
other side of the range the ground was quite dry, and so it
continued to Juigalpa. Dry gravelly hills, covered with low scrubby
bushes and trees, succeeded the damp grassy slopes we had been for
hours travelling over. Prickly acacias, nancitos, guayavas,
jicaras, were the principal trees, with here and there the one
whose thick coriaceous leaves are used by the natives instead of
sandpaper. The beds of the rivers were dry, or at the most
contained only stagnant pools of water, until we reached the
Juigalpa river, which rises far to the eastward; the north-east
trade wind in crossing the great forest that clothes the Atlantic
slope of the continent, gives up most of its moisture; and this
range, rising about three thousand feet above the sea, intercepts
nearly all that remains, so that only occasional showers reach
Juigalpa.
On one of the low gravelly hills that we passed, not far from the
path, we saw a troop of the white-faced monkey (Cebus albifrons) on
the ground, amongst low scattered trees. Their attitudes, some
standing up on their hind legs to get a better look at us, others
with their backs arched like cats, were amusing. Though quite ready
to run away, they stood all quite still, watching us, and looked as
if they had been grouped for a photograph. A few steps towards them
sent them scampering off, barking as they went.
Soon after this, I got severely stung by a number of small wasps,
whose nest I had disturbed in passing under some bushes. About
thirty were upon me, but I got off with about half-a-dozen stings,
as I managed to kill the rest as they made their way through the
hair of my head and beard, for these wasps, having generally to do
with animals covered with hair, do not fly at the open face, but at
the hair of the head, and push down through it to the skin before
they sting. On this and on another occasion on which I was attacked
by them, I had not a single sting on the exposed portions of my
face, although my hands were stung in killing them in my hair. It
is curious to note that the large black wasp that makes its nest
under the verandahs of houses and eaves of huts, and has had to
deal with man as his principal foe, flies directly at the face when
molested.
Without further adventure we reached Juigalpa at dusk, and took up
our quarters not far from the plaza, in a house where one large
room was set apart for the accommodation of travellers. We found we
should have to stay for a couple of days before our business was
concluded; and whilst waiting for some law papers to be made out, I
determined to try to see some of the Indian antiquities in the
neighbourhood. We had hard leather stretchers to sleep on, the use
of mattresses being almost unknown.
Next morning I was up at daylight, and, after getting a cup of
coffee and milk, started off on horseback on the lower road towards
Acoyapo. This led over undulating savannahs, with grass and jicara
trees, and small clumps of low trees and shrubs on stony hillocks.
Wild pigeons were very numerous, and their cooings were incessant.
On the rocky spots grew spiny cactuses, with flattened pear-shaped
joints and scarlet fruit. I reached the Juigalpa river about two
miles below the town. Near the crossing it ran between shelving
rocky banks, with here and there still reaches and pebbly shores.
Shady trees overhung the clear water; and behind were myrtle-leaved
shrubs and grassy openings. The morning was yet young, and the
banks were vocal with the noises of birds, that chattered,
whistled, chirruped, croaked, cooed, warbled, or made discordant
cries. I doubt if any other part of the earth's surface could show
a greater variety of the feathered tribe. A large brown bittern
stood motionless amongst the stones of a rapid portion of the
stream, crouching down with his neck and head drawn back close to
his body, so that he looked like a brown rock himself. Kingfishers
flitted up and down, or dashed into the water with a splashing
thud. At a sedgy spot were some jacanas stalking about. When
disturbed, these birds rise chattering their displeasure, and
showing the lemon yellow of the underside of their wings, which
contrasts with the deep chocolate brown of the rest of their
plumage. Parrots flew past in screaming flocks, or alighted on the
trees and nestled together in loving couples, changing their
screaming to tender chirrupings. Numerous brown and yellow
fly-catchers sat on small dead branches, and darted off every now
and then after passing insects. A couple of beautiful mot-mots
(Eumomota superciliaris) made short flights after the larger
insects, or sat on the low branches by the river-bank, jerking
their curious tails from side to side. Swallows skimmed past in
their circling flights, whilst in the bushes were warbling
orange-and-black Sisitotis and many another bird of beautiful
feather. One class of birds, and that the most characteristic of
tropical America, was decidedly scarce. I did not see a single
humming-bird by the river-side. On the savannahs they are much less
frequent than in the forest region. Insects were not so numerous as
they had been in preceding years. Over sandy spots two speckled
species of tiger-beetles ran and flew with great swiftness. I saw
one rise from the ground and take an insect on the wing that was
flying slowly over. On one myrtle-like bush, with small white
flowers, there were dozens of a small Longicorn new to me, which,
when flying, looked like black wasps.
It was very pleasant to sit in the cool shade, and listen to, and
watch, the birds. There was here no fear of dangerous animals, the
only annoyance being stinging ants or biting sand-flies, neither of
which were at this place very numerous. Snakes also were scarce. I
saw but one, a harmless green one, that glided away with wavy folds
amongst the brushwood. The natives say that alligators are
plentiful in the river, but that they are harmless. I saw one small
one, about five feet long, floating with his eyes, nostrils, and
the serratures of his back only above water. Every one bathes in
the river without fear, which would not be the case if there had
been any one seized by them during the last fifty years; for no
traditions are more persistent than tales of the attacks of wild
beasts. Anxious parents pass on from generation to generation the
stories they themselves were told when children.
As I sat upon the rocks in the cool shade, enjoying the scene,
there came hobbling along, with painful steps, on the other side of
the river, a poor cripple, afflicted with that horrible disease,
elephantiasis. He crossed the river with great difficulty, as his
feet were swollen to six times their natural size, with great horny
callosities. One of his hands was also disabled; and altogether he
was a most pitiable object. Such a sight seemed a blot upon the
fair face of nature; but it is our sympathy for our kind that makes
us think so. If the trees were sympathetic beings, not a poor
crippled specimen of humanity would have their pity, but the
gnarled and half-rotten giants of the forest, threatening to topple
down with every breeze; whilst to our eyes the dying tree, covered
with moss and ferns, and, maybe, clasped by climbing vines, is a
picturesque and pleasing sight. So, the fishes would pity their
comrades caught by the kingfisher, the birds those in the claws of
the hawk--every creature considering the fate that overtook its
fellows, and which might befall itself--the great blot in nature's
plan.
The poor cripple told me he was going into Juigalpa. He had,
doubtless, heard that a stranger had arrived in the town; for every
time I had been there he had turned up. His best friends are the
foreigners, who look with greater pity on his misfortune than his
neighbours, who have grown accustomed to it.
The blind, the lame, and the sick are the only beggars I ever saw
in Nicaragua. The necessaries of life are easily procured. Very
little clothing is required. Any one may plant maize or bananas;
and there is plenty of work for all who are willing or obliged to
labour; so the healthy and strong amongst the poorer classes lead
an easy and pleasant life, but the sick and incapacitated amongst
them are really badly off. There is a great indifference amongst
the natives to the wants of their comrades struck down by sickness
or accident, and hospitals and asylums are unknown.
I was told that the cripple, lame as he was, often took long
journeys, and had even gone as far as Granada. He had been a
soldier in one of the revolutions, when John Chamorro was
President, and ascribed the commencement of the disease to getting
a chill by bathing when he was heated.
After he had hobbled off, I bathed in the cool river, and then
rambled about on the other side, where I found some large mango
trees full of delicious ripe fruit. It was getting on towards noon:
the sun was high and hot, and the birds had mostly retired into the
deepest shades for their mid-day sleep. I could have lingered all
day, but it was time for me to return, as I had arranged with
Velasquez to accompany him in search of some Indian graves he had
heard of about three miles away.
As I left the river, I heard the whistle of the beautiful "toledo,"
so called because its note resembles these syllables, clearly and
slowly whistled, with the emphasis on the last two. Following the
sound, it led me to a deep, thickly-timbered gully, at the bottom
of which was the bed of a brook, consisting now only of detached
pools, over one of which, on the limb of a tree, sat a large
dark-coloured hawk, with white-banded tail, watching for
fresh-water and land crabs, on which it feeds. I had a long chase
after the toledo. As soon as I got within sight of it, sometimes
before, it would dart away through the brushwood, generally across
the brook, and in a few minutes I would hear its deep-toned whistle
again as if in mockery of my pursuit. I had to climb and reclimb
the steep banks of the gully: but at last, creeping cautiously, and
just getting my head above the bank, I got a shot. There were two
of them sitting close together. I brought both down, and they
proved to be in fine plumage. The toledo (Chirosciphia lineata) is
about the size of a linnet, of a general velvety black colour. The
crown of the head is covered with a flat scarlet crest, and the
back with what looks like a shawl of sky-blue. From the tail spring
two long ribbon-like feathers. Its curious note is often heard on
the savannahs, in the thick timber that skirts the small brooks;
but it is not often seen, as it is a shy bird and frequents the
deepest shades.
There were several of the yellow-breasted trogon (T.
melanocephalus) sitting amongst the branches, and now and then
darting off after insects. This species often breaks into the nest
of the termites, and feeds on the soft-bodied workers. Another
trogon about here, with red breast (T. elegans), has a peculiarly
harsh, croaking voice, very different from the other species, and
more resembling the cry of a mot-mot.
As I rode back over the savannahs to Juigalpa, the nearly vertical
rays of the sun were reflected from the dry, hot, sandy soil. Not a
sound was now heard from the numerous birds. The shrill cicada
still piped its never-ending treble. No wind was stirring, and the
air over the parched soil quivered with heat.
I was glad to get back to my "hotel," and have breakfast, with
chocolate served up in jicaras. After an hour's rest, I started
with Velasquez in search of the Indian antiquities. We rode up the
right side of the river, high up above the stream, as the banks are
rocky and precipitous; then down a shelving road to a lower level,
and across undulating savannahs thinly timbered. After about three
miles, we came out on a small flat plain, probably alluvial, about
twenty acres in extent, mostly covered with grass, with a few
scattered jicara trees. On the further end of this plain was a
mud-walled, thatched hut, called "El Salto," from a fall of the
river close by. A man was lounging about, and a woman bruising
maize for tortillas. The man told us that the "worked stones," as
he called them, were on the side of the plain we had crossed.
Before going to look at them, we went down to the river to see the
waterfall. Just opposite the house the Juigalpa river, which comes
flowing down over a flat bed of trachyte, leaps down a deep narrow
chasm that it has cut in the hard rock. This chasm is about fifty
feet deep, and only twenty wide. The river was low, and poured all
its water in at the end of the deep notch; but when flooded, it
must rush in over the sides also, and make a magnificent turmoil of
waters. Even when I saw it, the water, as it rushed along at the
bottom of the narrow chasm, boiling and surging amongst great
masses of fallen rock with a steady roar, looked as if it would
carry all before it. Deep pot-holes, some of them ten feet deep,
were worn into the trachyte rock, and sections of several were
shown in the sides of the chasm, which could only have been formed
when the falls were many yards lower down. The trachyte is very
hard and tough. The sections of the pot-holes are as fresh as if
they had been made but yesterday.
In reply to my assertion that the falls had produced, and were now
working back the chasm, our guide, the lounging man from the house,
said the rocks had always been as they were: he had lived there ten
years, and there had been no change in them. Perhaps, if the buried
Indians could rise from their graves where they were laid to rest
more than three hundred years ago, they, too, would testify that
there had been no change, that the rocks and the leaping river were
as they had been and would be for ever. The untrained mind cannot
grasp the idea of the effect of slowly-acting influences extending
over vast periods of time.
(PLATE 15. INDIAN STATUES.)
We asked the guide if there were any cairns near, and he said there
was one on the top of a neighbouring hill. Up this we climbed. It
was the rounded spur of a range behind, jutting out into the small
plain before mentioned, and might be partly artificial. On the
summit, which commanded a fine view of the country around, with the
white cliffs and dark woods of the Amerrique range in front, was an
Indian cairn, elliptical in shape, about thirty feet long and
twenty broad. Several small trees had sprung up amongst the stones.
Near the centre two holes had been dug down about four feet deep.
Our guide told us that he and his brother had made them, to hide
themselves in from the soldiers during the last revolutionary
outbreak. Not a very likely story, that they should have chosen the
top of a bare hill for a hiding-place, when all around in the
valleys there were thickets of brushwood. He said they had found
nothing in the holes. We, however, soon found fragments of two
broken cinerary urns, one of fine clay, painted with red and black,
the other much coarser and stronger, without ornament. The custom
of the Chontales Indians appears to have been to burn their dead,
and place the ashes in a thin painted urn, inclosed within a
stronger one. This was buried, along with the stone for grinding
maize, and a cairn of stones built over the grave, in the centre of
which was sometimes set up the statue of the deceased.
It was evident that the tomb had been ransacked in search of
treasure; but our guide was very reticent about it. He admitted,
however, on further questioning, that he had found a broken
"metlate," or maize-grinder, in the grave. Velasquez got down into
the deepest hole, and unearthed some more fragments of pottery, but
nothing more.
We then descended the steep face of the hill again, and crossed the
plain to where the "worked stones" were lying. We found them to be
broken fragments of statues, one larger, better worked, and in much
fairer preservation than the others. They had all been much
battered and broken. The greater size and solidity of this one had
made it more difficult to deface. It was in two parts, the head
being severed from the body. The total length of the two fragments
was about five feet. The face had been much shattered. The nose was
gone and the mouth defaced, but enough was left to show that the
latter had been protruding. The eyes were in good preservation,
prominent, and with the eyeballs projecting. Around the head was an
ornamented circlet, like a crown. The arms were laid over the
breast, and were continued upwards over the shoulder, and partly
down the back, as if it had been intended to indicate the
shoulder-blades. The legs were doubled up, and continued round to
the back, in the same way as the arms.
The back of the figure was elaborately carved, the most noticeable
features being a wide ornamented belt around the waist, and two
well-carved crosses, one on each shoulder.
The other stones lying about were broken portions of other smaller
figures and of pedestals. All were made out of very hard, tough
trachyte; and the labour required to make the principal one out of
such difficult material without tools of iron must have been
immense.
The fragments were all lying out on the bare plain. I thought they
must have been brought from some burial-place of the ancient
Indians. Our guide, on being asked, said he had seen other cairns
of stones besides these on the hill-top, but could not recollect
where. He was very uneasy when questioned; and at last said he had
business to attend to, and left us abruptly. In his absence we
examined all around for traces of graves. Between the plain and the
river was a thicket of low trees and undergrowth. Peering into
this, we saw some heaps of stones; and, pushing in amongst the
bushes, found it was full of old Indian graves, marked by heaps of
stones, in the centres of some of which still stood the pedestals
on which the statues had been placed. Most of the heaps were about
twenty feet in diameter, and composed of stones of the average size
of a man's head; but one, from the centre of which grew an immense
cotton-wood tree, was made of about a dozen very large stones, some
about five feet long, three broad, and one thick. Here we got a
clue to the behaviour of our guide. When he told us that he knew
not where there were any more cairns, he was standing within thirty
feet of one hidden by the thicket, which bore evident marks of
having been recently disturbed. It was the cairn of big stones. One
of these had been overturned, and some fresh-cut poles, that had
been used as levers, were lying alongside, with the green bark
broken and bruised. A hole had been dug underneath it, and filled
up with stones again. Our lounging friend had been doing a little
exploring on his own account. Many of the natives believe that
treasure is buried under these heaps of stones; and the interest
that foreigners take in them they ascribe to their wish to obtain
these treasures. Our guide, wishing to get these himself, had taken
us to the single grave on the top of the hill, which he had already
ransacked, and professed ignorance of the others. I only hope that
he did not compound with his conscience for the lies he had told us
by coming back after we left, and trying to break off the nose of
another idol, as the natives call the images. They think they show
their zeal for Christianity by defacing them. This is why scarcely
any of the noses of the images are left. They form the most salient
points for attack. And that the images have not been utterly
destroyed by the ill-usage they have had for three hundred years is
due to the hard, tough rock of which they are made. It is probable
that the statues at El Salto were brought out from the cairns into
the plain, and publicly thrown down, defaced, and broken, when the
Spaniards first took possession of the Juigalpa district, and
forced Christianity upon the Indians; for the conquerors everywhere
overthrew and mutilated the "idols" of the Indians, set up the
cross and their own images, and forced the people to be baptised.
The change was not a great one. Already the cross was an emblem
amongst them and baptism a rite; and the images they were called
upon to adore did not differ so greatly from those they had
worshipped before. They easily conformed to the new faith. D'Avila
is said to have overthrown the idols at Rivas, and to have baptised
nine thousand Indians. Then the Spaniards, having Christianised the
Indians, made slaves of them, and ground them to the dust with
merciless cruelties and overwork, which quickly depopulated whole
towns and districts.
The presence of the cross in Central America greatly astonished the
Spanish discoverers. In Yucatan and throughout the Aztec Empire it
was the emblem of the "god of rain." There has been much
speculation by various authors respecting its origin, as a
religious emblem, in Mexico and Central America. It has even been
supposed that some of the early Icelandic Christians of the ninth
century may have reached the coast of Mexico, and introduced some
knowledge of the Christian religion. But the cross was a religious
emblem of the greatest antiquity, both in Syria and Egypt, and
baptism was a pre-Christian rite. This and other observances, such
as auricular confession and monastic institutions, were so mixed up
with the worship of a great number of gods, at the head of which
was the worship of the sun, and were associated with such horrid
human sacrifices and pagan ceremonials, that it is more likely that
they acquired the cross, with other pagan traditions handed down to
them from a remote antiquity, from the common stock from whence
both the inhabitants of the Eastern and Western hemispheres were
descended. There is good evidence for supposing that young children
were offered up in sacrifice to Thaloc, the god of rain, the very
god whose emblem was the cross--a contrast too great to the "Suffer
little children to come unto me" of the loving Saviour, not to make
the mind revolt against the idea that the cross of the god of rain
was derived from the cross of the Christian.
I see no reason for supposing that the images of El Salto were
idols, as supposed by the early Spaniards, and still by the
degenerate half-breeds. They are more likely portrait-statues of
famous chieftains who led the tribe to many a victory. When they
died, a loving people, with wailings and lamentations, celebrated
their obsequies. The funeral pyre was built, the body burnt, and
the ashes carefully gathered together, and placed in the
finely-wrought urn and painted cinerary, and this in one larger and
coarser. These were buried with the stone maize-grinder, and
sometimes weapons and earthen dishes and food. Over the grave a
pile of stones was raised, and skilful artificers were set to work
on the hardest and toughest stone they could find to make a statue
of the chief whose memory they reverenced. It must have taken
months, if not years, to have fashioned the statue I have figured
out of the trachyte without tools of iron, and it strikes one with
wonder to think of the patience and perseverance with which the
details were worked out. No eye-servers were these Indians; before
and behind they bestowed equal pains and labour on their work,
undeterred by the hardness of the materials or the rudeness of
their tools.
When we turn from these works and remains of a great and united
tribe to the miserable huts of the present natives, we feel how
great a curse the Spanish invasion has in some respects been to
Central America. The half-breed, wrapped up in himself, lives from
year to year in his thatched hut, looking after a few cows, and
making cheese from their milk. He perhaps plants a small patch of
maize once a year, and grows a few plantains, content to live on
the plainest fare, and in the rudest style, so that he may indulge
in indolence and sloth. So he vegetates and drops into his grave,
and in a year or two no mark or sign tells where he was laid. The
graves of the old Indians are still to be found, but no mounds mark
the spots where the inhabitants of the valley since the conquest
have been laid to rest. They have passed away, as they lived,
without a record or memorial.
The builders of these cairns and the fashioners of these statues
were a different and a better race. They stood by each other, and
reverenced and obeyed their chiefs. They tilled the ground and
lived on the fruits of it. From the accounts of all the historians
of the Spanish conquest, the Pacific side of Nicaragua was so
densely populated when the Spaniards first arrived that the greater
part of it must have been cultivated like a garden; and it is
probable that the population was ten times greater than it is now.
Another point that strikes the observer is, that not only the
descendants of the Spaniards and the Mestizos are sunk far below
the level of the old Indians, but that the nearly pure Indians, of
whom there are many large communities, have so degenerated that it
is hard to believe that they are the very same people that, four
hundred years ago, had advanced so far in their peculiar
civilisation. They are not so sunk in sloth as the half-breeds.
They still till the ground, grow maize, cacao, and many fruits;
they still make the earthenware dishes of the country, though far
inferior to those of their ancestors; but they have lost their
tribal instincts, they do not support each other; they acknowledge
no chiefs; each one is absorbed in his own affairs, and they are
only a little less slothful than the half-breeds. Will these
Indians ever again attain to that pitch of civilisation at which
they had arrived before the conquest?--I fear not. The whip that
kept them to the mark in the old days was the continual warfare
between the different tribes, and this has ceased for ever. War is
not always a curse. "There is some soul of goodness in things
evil." Before the Spanish conquest no small isolated communities
could exist. Those in which the tribal instinct was strongest, who
stood shoulder to shoulder with their fellows, reverenced and
obeyed their chiefs, and excelled in feats of strength and agility,
would annihilate or subjugate the weaker and less warlike races. It
was this constant struggle between the different tribes that weeded
out the weak and indolent, and preserved the strong and
enterprising; just as amongst many of the lower animals the
stronger kill off the weaker, and the result is the improvement of
the race, or at any rate the maintenance of the point of excellence
at which it had arrived in former times.
Since the Spanish conquest there has been no such process of
selection in operation amongst the Indians. The most indolent can
obtain enough food, whilst the climate makes clothing almost a
superfluity. The idle and improvident live their natural terms of
years, and increase their kind even faster than the provident and
industrious. The tribal feeling is destroyed; the selfish and
sensual instincts are developed, and year by year the Indian
degenerates.
Mr. Bates, at the end of his admirable work on the natural history
of the Amazon, speculates on the future of the human race, and
thinks that under the equator alone will it attain the highest form
of perfection. I have had similar thoughts when riding over
hundreds of miles of fertile savannahs in Central America, where an
everlasting summer and fertile land yield a harvest of fruits and
grain all the year round where it is not even necessary "to tickle
the ground with a hoe to make it laugh with a harvest." But
thinking over the cause of the degeneracy of the Spaniards and
Indians, I am led to believe that in climes where man has to battle
with nature for his food, not to receive it from her hands as a
gift; where he is a worker, and not an idler; where hard winters
kill off the weak and brace up the strong; there only is that
selection at work that keeps the human race advancing, and prevents
it retrograding, now that Mars has been dethroned and Vulcan set on
high.
In destroying the ancient monarchies of Mexico and Central America,
the Spaniards inflicted an irreparable injury on the Indian race;
for whether or not a republic is the highest ideal form of
government (and doubtless it would be if man were perfect), it is
not adapted for savage or half-civilised communities, and I
cordially agree with the truth enunciated by Darwin when, writing
of the natives of Tierra del Fuego, he says, "Perfect equality
among the individuals composing the Fuegian tribes must for a long
time retard their civilisation. As we see those animals whose
instinct compels them to live in society, and obey a chief, are
most capable of improvement, so is it with the races of mankind.
Whether we look at it as a cause or a consequence, the most
civilised always have the most artificial governments. For
instance, the inhabitants of Otaheite, who, when first discovered,
were governed by hereditary kings, had arrived at a far higher
grade than another branch of the same people, the New Zealanders,
who, although benefited by being compelled to turn their attention
to agriculture, were republicans in the most absolute sense."* (*
"Naturalist's Voyage" page 229.)
Dusk was coming on before we left the small plain, with its broken
statues, and the steep hill overlooking it, on which probably
religious rites had been celebrated and human sacrifices offered
up. This people have entirely passed away, and the sparse
inhabitants of the once thickly-populated province have not even a
tradition about them. In Europe and North America more is known
about them, and more interest taken in gleaning what little
vestiges of their history can be recovered from the dim past, than
among their own degenerate descendants.
Half way to Juigalpa was an Indian hut and a small clearing made
for growing maize. The fallen trunks of trees were a likely place
for beetles, and as I had brought a lantern with me, I stayed to
examine them whilst Velasquez rode on to get some food ready. At
night many species of beetles, especially longicorns, are to be
found running over the trunks, that lie closely hidden in the
day-time. The night-world is very different from that of the day.
Things that blink and hide from the light are all awake and astir
when the sun goes down. Great spiders and scorpions prowl about, or
take up advantageous positions where they expect their prey to
pass. Cockroaches of all sizes, from that of one's finger to that
of one's finger-nail, stand with long quivering antennae, pictures
of alert outlook, watching for their numerous foes, or scurry away
as fast as their long legs can carry them; but if they come within
reach of the great spider they are pounced upon in an instant, and
with one convulsive kick give up the hopeless struggle. Centipedes,
wood-lice, and all kinds of creeping things come out of cracks and
crevices; even the pools are alive with water-beetles that have
been hiding in the ooze all day, excepting when they come up with a
dash to the surface for a bubble of fresh air. Owls and night-jars
make strange unearthly cries. The timid deer comes out of its close
covert to feed in the grassy clearings. Jaguars, ocelots, and
opossums slink about in the gloom. The skunk goes leisurely along,
holding up his white tail as a danger-flag for none to come within
range of his nauseous artillery. Bats and large moths flitter
around, whilst all the day-world is at rest and asleep. The night
speeds on; the stars that rose in the east are sinking behind the
western hills; a faint tinge of dawn lights the eastern sky; loud
and shrill rings out the awakening shout of chanticleer; the grey
dawn comes on apace; a hundred birds salute the cheerful morn, and
the night-world hurries to its gloomy dens and hiding-places, like
the sprites and fairy elves of our nursery days.
It was very dark when I started to return, excepting that flashes
of lightning now and then illumined the path, but I left my mule to
herself, and she carried me safely into Juigalpa, where I found
dinner awaiting me. It took me until midnight to skin the birds I
had shot during the day; and as I had been up since six in the
morning, I was quite ready for, and took kindly to, my hard
leathern couch.