We slept on board one of the steamers of the American Transit Company. It was too dark when we arrived at San Carlos to see anything that night of the great lake, but we heard the waves breaking on the beach as on a sea-shore, and from further away came that moaning sound that has from the earliest ages of history connected the idea of the sea with sorrow and sadness.* (* "There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet" Jeremiah 49:23.) The steamer we stayed in was one of four river-boats belonging to the Transit Company, which was at this time in difficulties, and ultimately the boats were sold; part of them being bought by Mr. Hollenbeck, and used by the navigation company which he established. These steamers are built expressly for shallow rivers, and are very different structures from anything we see in England. The bottom is made quite flat, and divided into compartments; the first deck being only about eighteen inches above the water, from which it is divided by no bulwarks or other protection. Upon this deck are placed the cargo and the driving machinery. A vertical boiler is fixed at the bow, and two horizontal engines, driving a large paddle-wheel, at the stern. The second deck is for passengers, and is raised on light wooden pillars braced with iron rods about seven feet above the first. Above this is another deck, on which are the cabins of the officers and the steering apparatus. The appearance of such a structure is more like that of a house than a boat. The one we were in, the "Panaloya," drew only three feet of water when laden with 400 passengers and twenty tons of cargo.

CHAPTER 4.

The lake of Nicaragua. Ometepec. Becalmed on the lake. White egrets. Reach San Ubaldo. Ride across the plains. Vegetation of the plains. Armadillo. Savannahs. Jicara trees. Jicara bowls. Origin of gourd-shaped pottery. Coyotes. Mule-breeding. Reach Acoyapo. Festa. Cross high range. Esquipula. The Rio Mico. Supposed statues on its banks. Pital. Cultivation of maize. Its use from the earliest times in America. Separation of the maize-eating from the mandioca-eating indigenes of America. Tortillas. Sugar-making. Enter the forest of the Atlantic slope. Vegetation of the forest. Muddy roads. Arrive at Santo Domingo.

As daylight broke next morning, I was up, anxious to see the great lake about which I had heard so much. To the north-west a great sheet of quiet water extended as far as the eye could reach, with islands here and there, and--the central figure in every view of the lake--the great conical peak of Ometepec towered up, 5050 feet above the sea, and 4922 feet above the surface of the lake. To the left, in the dim distance, were the cloud-capped mountains of Costa Rica; to the right, nearer at hand, low hills and ranges covered with dark forests. The lake is too large to be called beautiful, and its vast extent and the mere glimpses of its limits and cloud-capped peaks appeal to the imagination rather than to the eye. At this end of the lake the water is shallow, probably filled up by the mud brought down by the Rio Frio.