# National Geographic Magazine/Volume 1/Number 4/Across Nicaragua with Transit and Machéte

Julius Bien & Co.
ENTRANCE TO HIGHLANDS_RIVER SAN JUAN
THE NICARAGUA CANAL
ACROSS NICARAGUA WITH TRANSIT AND MACHÉTE.
By R. E. Peary.
The action of this National Society, with its array of distinguished members, in turning its attention for an hour to a region which has interested the thinking world for more than three centuries gives me peculiar pleasure and satisfaction.
I propose this evening to touch lightly and briefly upon the natural features of Nicaragua, to note the reasons for the interest which has always centered upon her, to trace the growth of the great project with which her name is inseparably linked; to show you somewhat in detail, the life, work, and surroundings of an engineer within her borders; and finally to show you the result that is to crown the engineer's work in her wide spreading forests and fertile valleys.
That portion of Central America now included within the boundaries of our sister republic Nicaragua, has almost from the moment that European eyes looked upon it attracted and charmed the attention of explorers, geographers, great rulers, students, and men of sagacious and far reaching intellect.
From Gomara the long list of famous names which have linked themselves with Nicaragua reaches down through Humboldt, Napoleon III, Ammen, Lull, Menocal and Taylor.
The shores were first seen by Europeans in 1502, when Columbus in his fourth voyage rounded the cape which forms the northeast angle of the state, and called it "Gracias á Dios," which name it bears to-day. Columbus then coasted southward along the eastern shore.
In 1522, Avila, penetrated from the Pacific coast of the country to the lakes and the cities of the Indian inhabitants. Previous to this the country was occupied by a numerous population of Aztecs, or nearly allied people, as the quantities of specimens of pottery, gold images, and other articles found upon the islands and along the shores of the lakes, prove conclusively.
​In 1529 the connection of the lakes with the Caribbean sea was discovered, and during the last half of the eighteenth century a considerable commerce was carried on by this route between Granada on Lake Nicaragua and the cities of Nombre de Dios, Cartagena, Havana and Cadiz.
In 1821 Nicaragua threw off the rule of the mother country and in 1823 formed with her sister Spanish colonies, a confederation. This confederation was dissolved in 1838, and since then Nicaragua has conducted her own affairs. In point of advancement, financial solidity and stability of government she stands today nearly, if not quite, at the head of the Central American republics.
Nicaragua extends over a little more than four degrees each of latitude and longitude, from about N. 11° to N. 15° and from 83° 20' W. to 87° 40′ W.
Its longest, side is the northern border from the Gulf of Fonseca northeasterly to Cape Gracias á Dios, two hundred and ninety miles. From that cape south to the mouth of the Rio San Juan, the Caribbean coast line, is two hundred and fifty miles. Nearly due west across the Isthmus to Salinas Bay on the Pacific, is one hundred and twenty miles. The Pacific coast line extends thence northwest one hundred and sixty miles.
In point of size Nicaragua stands first among the Central American republics having an area of 51,600 square miles. It is larger than either the State of New York or Pennsylvania, about the size of Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined, and is one-fourth as large as France or Germany. Its population numbers about 300,000.
The Gulf of Fonseca, at the northern, and Salinas Bay at the southern extremity of the coast line are two of the finest and largest harbors on the Pacific coast of Central America. About midway between them is the fine harbor of Corinto, and there are also several other ports along the coast, at San Juan del Sur, Brito and Tamarindito. On the Caribbean coast no harbors suitable for large vessels exist, but numerous lagoons and bights afford the best of shelter for coasting vessels.
The central portion of Nicaragua is traversed, from north to south, by the main cordillera of the isthmus, which, here greatly reduced in altitude, consists merely of a confused mass of peaks and ridges with an average elevation scarcely exceeding 1,000 feet.
​Between this mountainous region and the Caribbean shore stretches a low level country, covered with a dense forest, rich in rubber, cedar, mahogany and dye woods. It is drained by several large rivers whose fertile intervales will yield almost incredible harvests of plantains, bananas, oranges, limes, and other tropical fruits.
West of the mountain zone is a broad valley, about one hundred and twenty-five feet above the level of the sea, extending from the Gulf of Fonseca, southeasterly to the frontier of Costa Rica. The greater portion of this valley is occupied by two lakes, Managua and Nicaragua. The latter one hundred and ten miles long by fifty or sixty miles wide is really an inland sea, being one-half as large as Lake Ontario and twice as large as Long Island Sound. These lakes, with the rainfall of the adjacent valleys, drain through the noble San Juan river, which discharges into the Caribbean at Greytown, at the southeast angle of the country.
Between the Pacific and these lakes is a narrow strip of land, from twelve to thirty miles in width, stretching from the magnificent plain of Leon with its cathedral city, in the north, to the rolling indigo fields and the cacao plantations which surround the garden city of Rivas, in the south.
The lowest pass across the backbone of the New World, from Behring's Strait to the Straits of Magellan, extends along the San Juan valley and across the Lajas—Rio Grande "divide," between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific; the summit of this divide is only one hundred and fifty-two feet above the sea and forty-two feet above the lake.
Nicaragua presents yet another unique physical feature. Lying between the elevated mountain masses of Costa Rica on the south and Honduras on the north, the average elevation of its own mountain backbone hardly one thousand feet, it is the natural thoroughfare of the beneficent northeast Trades. These winds sweep in from the Caribbean across the Atlantic slopes, break the surface of the lakes into sparkling waves, and then disappear over the Pacific, aerating, cooling and purifying the country, destroying the germs of disease and making Nicaragua the healthiest region in Central America.
The scenery of the eastern portion of the country is of the luxuriant sameness peculiar to all tropical countries.
​In the vicinity of the lakes and between them and the Pacific, the isolated mountain peaks which bound the plain of Leon on the northeast; the mountain islands of Madera and Ometepe; the towering turquoise masses of the Costa Rican volcanoes; and the distant blue mountains of Segovia and Matagalpa, visible beyond the sparkling waters of the lakes, feast the eye with scenic beauties, unsurpassed elsewhere in grandeur, variety and richness of coloring.
The products of the country are numerous despite the fact that its resources are as yet almost entirely undeveloped.
Maize, plantains, bananas, oranges, limes, and indeed every tropical fruit, thrive in abundance. Coffee is grown in large quantities in the hilly region in the northwest; sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo and cacao plantations abound between the lakes and the Pacific; potatoes and wheat thrive in the uplands of Segovia; the Chontales region east of Lake Nicaragua, a great grazing section, supports thousands of head of cattle; and back of this are the gold and silver districts of La Libertad, Javali and others.
Numerous trees and plants of medicinal and commercial value are found in the forests. Game is plentiful and of numerous varieties; deer, wild hog, wild turkey, manatee and tapir; and fish abound in the streams and rivers. The temperature of Nicaragua is equable. The extreme variation, recorded by Childs, was 23° observed near the head of the San Juan in May, 1851.
The southeast wind predominates during the rainy season. Occasionally, in June or October as a rule, the wind hauls round to southwest and a temporal results, heavy rain sometimes falling for a week or ten days.
The equatorial cloud-belt, following the sun north in the spring, is late reaching Nicaragua, and the wet season is shorter than in regions farther south. The average rainfall, based on the records. of nine years, is 64.42 inches. The "trades" blow almost throughout the year. Strong during the dry season and freshening during the day; the wind comes from the east-northeast, and blows usually for four to five days, when, hauling to the east or southeast for a day or two, it calms down, then goes back to northeast and rises again.
Julius Bien & Co.
LEON CATHEDRAL
​by the action of the wind upon its broad surface, mistook these fluctuations for tides and felt assured that some broad strait connected it with the North Sea. Later, when Machuca had discovered the grand river outlet of the lake, and the restless searching of other explorers in every bay and inlet along both sides of the American isthmus had extinguished forever the ignis fatuus "Secret of the Strait," Gomara pointed this out as one of the most favorable localities for an artificial communication between the North and South Seas.
It was not until 1851, however, that an accurate and scientific survey of a ship canal route was made by Col. O. W. Childs.
This survey which showed the lake of Nicaragua to be only one hundred and seven feet above the sea, and the maximum elevation between the lake and the Pacific to be only forty-one feet, exhibited the advantages of this route so clearly and in such an unanswerable manner that it has never since been possible to ignore it.
In 1870, under the administration of General Grant and largely through the unceasing efforts of Admiral Ammen, the United States began a series of systematic surveys of all the routes across the American isthmus from Tehuantepec to the head waters of the Rio Atrato; and six years later, with the plans and results of all these surveys before it, a commission composed of General Humphreys, Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army; Hon. Carlile Patterson, Superintendent U. S. Coast Survey; and Rear-Admiral Daniel Ammen, Chief of Bureau of Navigation, U. S. Navy; gave its verdict in favor of the Nicaragua route.
The International Canal Congress at Paris, in 1879, had such convincing information placed before it that it was forced, in spite of its prejudices, to admit that in the advantages it offered for the construction of a lock canal, the Nicaragua route was superior to any other across the American isthmus.
In 1876, and again in 1880 Civil Engineer A. G. Menocal, U. S. N., the chief engineer of previous governmental surveys, resurveyed and revised portions of the route, and in 1885 the same engineer, assisted by myself, surveyed an entirely new line on the Caribbean side, from Greytown to the San Juan river, near the mouth of the San Carlos.
On the eastern side of Nicaragua, all these surveys (except the last), were confined almost entirely to the San Juan river, and its immediate banks; and the country on either side beyond these ​narrow limits was, up to 1885, almost entirely unknown. Between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific, however, every pass from the Bay of Salinas to the Gulf of Fonseca had been examined.
In 1885 the party of which I was a member pushed a nearly direct line across the country from a point on the San Juan, about three miles below the mouth of the Rio San Carlos, to Greytown, a distance of thirty one miles by our line, as compared with fifty six miles by the river and forty-two miles by the former proposed canal route.
In December, 1887, I went out in charge of a final surveying expedition, consisting of some forty engineers and assistants and one hundred and fifty laborers, to resurvey and stake out the line of the canal preparatory to the work of construction.
The information and personal experience gained in previous surveys made it possible, without loss of time, to locate the various sections of the expedition in the most advantageous manner, and push the work with the greatest speed consistent with accuracy.
The location lines of the previous surveys were taken as a preliminary line and carefully re-measured and re-levelled. Preliminary offsets were run; the location made, and staked off upon the ground; offsets run in from three hundred to one hundred feet apart, extending beyond the slope limits of the canal; borings made at frequent intervals; and all streams gauged. The result of this work was a series of detail charts and profiles, based upon rigidly checked instrumental data, and covering the entire line from Greytown to Brito, from which to estimate quantities and cost.
As may be imagined by those familiar with tropical countries, the prosecution of a survey in these regions is an arduous and difficult work, and one demanding special qualifications in the engineer. His days are filled with a succession of surprises, usually disagreeable, and constant happenings of the unexpected. Probably in no other country will the traveler, explorer, or engineer, find such an endless variety of obstacles to his progress.
Every topographical feature of the country is shrouded and hidden under a tropical growth of huge trees and tangled underbrush, so dense that it is impossible for even a strong, active man, burdened with nothing but a rifle, to force himself through it without a short, heavy sword or machéte, with which to cut his way.
​Under these circumstances the most observant engineer and expert woodsman may pass within a hundred feet of the base of a considerable hill and not have a suspicion of its existence, or he may be entirely unaware of the proximity of a stream until he is on the point of stepping over the edge of its precipitous banks.
The topography of the country has to be laboriously felt out, much as a blind man familiarizes himself with his surroundings. In doing this work the indispensable instrument, without which the transit, the level, and indeed the engineer himself is of no use, is the national weapon of Nicaragua, the machéte, a short, heavy sword.
As soon as he is able to walk, the son of the Nicaraguan mozo or huléro takes as a plaything a piece of iron hoop or an old knife, and imitates his father with his machéte. As he gets older a broken or worn-down weapon is given him, and when he is able to handle it, a full size machéte is entrusted to him and he then considers himself a man. From that day on, waking or sleeping, our Nicaraguan's machéte is always at his side. With it he cuts his way through the woods; with it he builds his camp and his bed; with it he kills his game and fish; with it at a pinch he shaves himself, or extracts the thorns from his feet; with it he fights his duels, and with it, when he dies, his comrades dig his grave.
When in the field the chief of a party, equipped with a pocket compass and an aneroid barometer, is always skirmishing ahead of the line with a machétero, or axeman, to cut a path for him. A pushing chief, however, speedily dispenses with the machétero and slashes a way for himself much more rapidly.
As soon as he decides where the line is to go the engineer calls to the machéteros and the two best ones immediately begin cut- ting toward the sound of his voice. They soon slash a narrow path to him, drive a stake where he was standing and then turn back toward the other machéteros, who have been following them, cutting a wider path and clearing away all trees, vines and branches, so that the transit man can see the flag at the stake. The moment the leading machéteros reach him the chief starts off again and by the time the main body of axemen have reached his former position the head machéteros are cutting toward the sound of his voice in a new position.
As soon as the line is cleared the transit man takes his sight and moves ahead to the stake, the chainmen follow and drive ​stakes every hundred feet, and the leveller follows putting in elevations and cross sections. In this way the work goes on from early morning until nearly dark, stopping about an hour for lunch.
After the day's work comes the dinner, the table graced with wild hog, or turkey, or venison, or all. After dinner the smoke, then the day's notes are worked up and duplicated and all hands get into their nets. For a moment the countless nocturnal noises of the great forest, enlivened perhaps by the scream of a tiger, or the deep, muffled roar of a puma, fall upon drowsy ears, then follows the sleep that always accompanies hard work and good health, till the bull-voiced howling monkeys set the forest echoing with their announcement of the breaking dawn.
In reconnoissance and preliminary work the experienced engineer, is able, in many cases, to avoid obstacles without vitiating the results of his work, but in the final location, in staking out absolute curves and driving tangents thousands of feet long across country, no dodging is possible.
On the hills and elevated ground the engineer can, comparatively speaking, get along quite comfortably, his principal annoyances being the uneven character of the ground, which compels him to set his instrument very frequently, and the necessity of felling some gigantic tree every now and then.
In the valleys and lowlands there is an unceasing round of obstacles. The line may run for some distance over level ground covered with a comparatively open growth, then without warning it encounters the wreck of a fallen tree, and hours are consumed hewing a passage through the mass of broken limbs and shattered trunk, all matted and bound together with vines and shrubbery. A little farther on a stream is crossed, and the line may cross and recross four or five times in the next thousand feet. The engineer must either climb down the steep banks, for the streams burrow deep in the stiff clay of these valleys, ford the stream and climb the opposite bank, or he must fall a tree from bank to bank and cross on its slippery trunk twenty or twenty-five feet above the water.
Either on the immediate bank or in its vicinity is almost certain to be encountered a "saccate" clearing. This may be only one or two hundred feet across or it may be a half a mile. In the former case the "saccate" grass will be ten or fifteen feet in height and so matted and interwoven with vines and briars ​that a tunnel may be cut through it as through a hedge. If the clearing be large, the tough, wiry grass is no higher than a man's head, and a path has to be mowed through it, while the sun beats down into the furnace-like enclosure till the blade of the machéte becomes almost too hot to touch.
But worse than anything thus far mentioned are the Silico or black palm swamps. Some of these in the larger valleys and near the coast are miles in extent.
Occupied exclusively by the low, thick Silico palms, these swamps are in the wet season absolutely impassable except for monkeys and alligators, and even at the end of the dry season the engineer enters upon one with sinking heart as well as feet, and emerges from it tired and used up in every portion of his anatomy. It is with the utmost difficulty that he finds a practicable place to locate his instrument, generally utilizing the little hummocks formed by the trunks of the clusters of palms, and in moving from point to point he is compelled to wade from knee to shoulder deep in the black mud and water.
General reconnaissances from high trees in elevated localities, simple enough in theory, are by no means easy in a country so miserly with its secrets as this, nor are their results reliable without a great expenditure of time, labor, and patience.
On level, undulating and moderately broken ground, the tops of the trees, though they may be one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, are level as the top of a hedge. Even an isolated hill if it be rounded in shape presents hardly better facilities, the trees at the base and on the sides, in their effort to reach the sunlight grow taller than those on the summit, and there is no one tree that commands all the others.
If however an isolated hill of several hundred feet in height be found, its steep sides culminating in a sharp peak, one day's work by three or four good axmen, in cutting neighboring trees, will prepare the way for a study of the general relief and topography of the adjacent country. If after these preliminaries have been completed the engineer imagines that he has only to climb the tree and sketch what he sees, to obtain reliable knowledge of the country, he is doomed to serious surprises in the future. If he makes the ascent during the middle of the day, he will, after he has cooled off and rested from his exhausting efforts, see spread out before him a shimmering landscape in which the uniform green carpet and the vertical sun combined, have obliterated ​all outlines except the more prominent irregularities of the terrene, and have blended different mountain ranges, one of which may be several miles beyond the other, into one, of which only the sky profile is distinct. Naturally under these conditions estimates of distance may be half or double the truth.
There are two ways of extracting reliable information from these tree-top reconnaissances. If it be in the rainy season the observer must be prepared to make a day of it, and when he ascends the tree in the morning he takes with him a long light line with which to pull up his coffee and lunch.
Then aided by the successive showers which sweep across the landscape, leaving fragments of mists in the ravines, and hanging grey screens between the different ranges and mountains, bringing out the relief first of this and then of that section, an accurate sketch may gradually be made. The time of passage of a shower from one peak to another, or to the observer, may also be utilized as a by no means to be despised check upon distance estimates.
If it be the dry season, the observer may take his choice between remaining on his perch in the tree from before sunrise to after sunset, or making two ascents, one early in the morning and the other late in the afternoon. In this case the slowly dispersing clouds of morning, and the gradually gathering mists at sunset, together with the reversed lights and shadows at dawn and sunset, bring out very clearly the relief of the terrene, the overlapping of distant ranges, and the course of the larger streams.
This kind of work cannot be delegated to anyone, and besides the arduous labor involved in climbing the huge trees, there are other serious annoyances connected with it. The climber is almost certain to disturb some venomous insect which revenges itself by a savage sting which has to be endured; or he may rend clothes and skin also, on some thorny vine, or another, crushed by his efforts, may exude a juice which will leave him tattooed for days; then, though there may not be a mosquito or fly at the base of the tree, the top will be infested with myriads of minute black flies, which cover hands and face, and with extremely annoying results. On the other hand the explorer may as a compensation have his nostrils filled with the perfume of some brilliant orchid on a neighboring branch; and there is a breezy enjoyment in watching the showers as they rush across the green carpet, and in listening to the roar with which the big drops beat upon the tree tops.
​The special phase of field work which fell to my personal lot was entirely reconnaissance, consisting of canoe examinations of all streams in the vicinity of the line of the canal, to determine their sources, character of valley, and approximate water shed; of rapid air-line compass and aneroid trails, to connect one stream, or valley head with another, or furnish a base line for a general sketch plan of a valley; and of studies of the larger features of the terrene, from elevated tree tops.
The last has been already described; in the second the experience was very similar to that of the parties in running main lines. On these occasions three or at most four hardy huléros (rubber hunters) comprised the party, two carrying the blankets, mosquito bars and provisions for several days, and one or two cutting the lightest possible practicable trail and marking prominent trees.
In a day's march of from five to eight miles, and this was the utmost that even such a light, active and experienced party could cover in one day, every possible and some almost impossible kinds of traveling was encountered, and thoroughly exhausted men crept into their bars every night.
The canoe reconnaissances were more agreeable, though some most unpleasant as well as most enjoyable memories are connected with them.
The innumerable large fallen trees which obstruct the streams and over or through which the canoe must be hauled bodily, the almost inevitable capsizing of the canoe, the monotonous red clay banks on either side and the frequent necessity of lying down at night in a bed of mud into which the droves of wild pigs which inhabit these valleys have trampled the clayey soil, are among the disagreeable incidents.
From the head of canoe navigation to their sources the character of these streams is entirely different, and both in 1888 and in 1885 I have followed them far up into mountain gorges, the beauty of which is as fresh in my memory as if I had been there but yesterday.
The crew of the canoe on these reconnaissances usually consisted of three picked men, and when the canoe had been pushed as far up stream as it was possible for it to go, two of the men were left with it while the third and best, slinging the blankets, bars, and a little coffee, sugar, and milk, upon his back pushed on with me. Wading through the shallow water up the bed of the stream, taking bearings and estimating distances, while my huléro ​followed, ever alert to strike some drowsy beauty of a fish in the clear water; the source of the stream was generally reached in a day, and never did we make preparations to sleep on some bed of clean, yellow sand washed down by the stream in flood times, but what I had a plump turkey hanging from my belt, and my huléro several fine fish.
Much has been written about the climate of Nicaragua and its effect upon the inhabitants of more northerly countries when exposed to it.
It would seem that the experience of the numerous expeditions sent out by the United States, and the reports of the surgeons attached to those expeditions would have long since settled the matter. To those who cannot understand how there can be such a difference in climate between two localities so slightly removed as Panama and Nicaragua, and the former possessing a notoriously deadly climate, the experience of the recent surveying expedition must be conclusive.
Only five members of that expedition had ever been in tropical climates before, and the rodmen and chainmen of the party were young men just out of college who had never done a day's manual labor, nor slept on the ground a night in their lives. Arriving at Greytown during the rainy season, the first work that they encountered was the transporting of their supplies and camp equipage to the sites of the various camps. This had to be done by means of canoes along streams obstructed with logs and fallen trees. Some parties were a week in reaching their destination, wading and swimming by day, lifting and pushing their canoes along, and at night lying down on the ground to sleep.
One party worked for six months in the swamps and lagoon region directly back of Greytown, and several other parties worked for an equal length of time in the equally disagreeable swamps of the valley of the San Francisco. Several of these officers are down there yet, as fresh as ever. In making tours of inspection of the different sections I have repeatedly, for several days and nights in succession, passed the days traveling in the woods through swamps and rain, and the nights sleeping as best I could, curled up under a blanket in a small canoe, while my men paddled from one camp to the next.
In spite of all this exposure not only were there no deaths in the expedition but there was not a single case of serious illness, and the officers who have returned up to this time, were in better health and weight than when they went away.
Julius Bien & Co.
UPPER CASTILLO—RIVER SAN JUAN
​Of course the men had the best of food that money could obtain and previous experience suggest, and the chiefs of all parties were required to strictly enforce certain sanitary regulations in regard to coffee in the morning, a thorough bath and dose of spirits on returning from work, and mosquito bars and dry sleeping suits at night; yet the climate must be held principally responsible for a sanitary result which I believe could not be excelled in any temperate zone city, with the same number of men, doing the same arduous work under conditions of equal exposure.
The forests everywhere abound in game and every party which included in its personnel a good rifle-shot was sure of a constant supply of wild pig, turkey, quail and grouse, varied by an occasional deer, all obtained in the ordinary work of reconnoissance and surveying. For the men's table there was abundance of monkey, iguana and macaw.
Parties in the lower valleys of the various streams had no trouble in adding two or three varieties of very toothsome fish to their bill of fare, though these fish were rarely caught with the hook, but usually shot, or knifed by an alert native, as they basked in the shallows. These parties also obtained occasionally a danta (tapir) or a manatee.
On the river it was possible to obtain a fine string of fish with hook and line, then there was the huge tarpon to be had for the spearing, and fish pots sunk in suitable places were sure to yield a mess of fresh water lobsters. Ducks were also occasionally shot.
The forms of life are even more numerous in the vegetable than in the animal kingdom. The effect of these wonderful forests is indescribable, and though many writers have essayed a description, I have yet to see one that does the subject justice. Only a simple enumeration of component parts will be attempted here. First comes the grand body of the forest, huge almendro, havilan, guachipilin, cortez, cedar, cottonwood, palo de leche trees, and others rising one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet into the scintillant sunshine. The entire foliage of these trees is at the top and their great trunks reaching up for a hundred feet or more without a branch offer a wonderful variety of studies in types of column. Some rise straight and smooth, and true, others sen d out thin deep buttresses, and others look like the muscle-knotted fore-arm of a Titan, with gnarled fingers griping the ground in their wide grasp.
​But whatever the form of the tree trunks may be, the shallow soil upon the hills and the marshy soil in the lowlands, has taught them that there is greater safety and stability in a broad foundation than in a deeply penetrating one, and so almost without exception the tree roots spread out widely, on, or near, the surface. Beneath the protecting shelter of these patriarchs, as completely protected from scorching sun and rushing wind as if in a conservatory, grow innumerable varieties of palms, young trees destined some day to be giants themselves, and others which never attain great size. Still lower down, Juxuriate smaller palms, tree ferns, and dense underbrush, and countless vines. These latter, however, are by no means confined to the underbrush, many of them climb to the very tops of the tallest trees, cling about their trunks and bind them to other trees and to the ground with the toughest of ropes. With one or two exceptions these vines are an unmitigated nuisance. To them more than to anything else is due the impenetrableness of the tropical thicket. Of all sizes and all as tough as hemp lines, they creep along the ground, catching the traveler's feet in a mesh from which release is possible only by cutting. They bind the underbrush together in a tough, elastic mat, which catches and holds on to every projection about the clothes, jerking revolvers from belts, and wrenching the rifle from the hand, or, hanging in traplike loops from the trees, catch one about the neck, or constantly drag one's hat from the head. The one exception noted above is the bejuco de agua or water vine. This vine, which looks like an old worn manilla rope, is to be found hanging from or twined about almost every large tree upon elevated ground, and to the hot and thirsty explorer it furnishes a most deliciously cool and clear draught.
Seizing the vine in the left hand, a stroke of the machéte severs it a foot or two below the hand, and another quick stroke severs it again above the hand; immediately a stream of clear, tasteless water issues from the lower end and may be caught in a dipper or á la native directly in the mouth. A three-foot length of vine two inches in diameter will furnish at least a pint of water. The order of cutting mentioned above must invariably be adhered to, otherwise, if the upper cut be made first, the thirsty novice will find he has in his hand only a piece of dry cork-like rope.
It is practically impossible to judge of the age of the huge trees in these forests. Mighty with inherent strength, stayed to the ​ground and to their fellows by the numerous vines, sheltered and protected also by their fellows from the shock of storms, their huge trunks have little to do except support the direct weight of the tops, and they rarely fall until they have reached the last stages of decay. Then some day the sudden impact of a ton or two of water dropped from some furious tropical shower, or the vibrations from a hurrying troop of monkeys, or the spring of a tiger, is too much for one of the giant branches heavy with its load of vines and parasites, and it gives way, breaking the vines in every direction and splitting a huge strip from the main trunk. With its supports thus broken and the whole weight of the remaining branches on one side, the weakened trunk sways for a moment then bows to its fate. The remaining vines break with the resistless strain, and the old giant gathering velocity as he falls and dragging with him everything in his reach, crashes to the earth with a roar which elicits cries of terror from bird and beast, and goes booming through the quivering forest like the report of a heavy cannon. A patch of blue sky overhead and a pile of impenetrable debris below, mark for years the grave of the old hero.
As regards the insect and reptile pests of the country it has been my experience that both their numbers and capacity for torment have been greatly exaggerated. Mosquitoes, flies of various sizes, wasps and stinging ants exist, and the first in some places in large numbers; yet to a person who has any of the woodsman's craft of taking care of himself, and whose blood is not abnormally sensitive to insect poisons, they present no terrors and but slight annoyances. At our headquarters camp on San Francisco island, we had no mosquitoes from sunrise to sunset, and even after sunset they were not especially numerous. At another camp only a few miles away there were black flies only and no mosquitoes, at another both, while at the camps up in the hills there were neither. It was only at camps in the wet lowlands and near swamps, that they became an almost unendurable annoyance. Even here it was those who remained in camp that suffered most. Men out in the thick brush were but little annoyed by them, and when on their return to camp they had finished their dinner and gotten into their mosquito bars they were out of their reach. As to snakes, the danger from them even to a European, is practically nothing. Not a man of the several hundred that have been engaged in the ​various expeditions in that country has ever been bitten, and in hundreds of miles of tramping through the worst forests of the country, either entirely alone or if accompanied by natives, with them some distance in the rear, I have never fancied myself in danger. The poisonous snakes are invariably sluggish, and unless actually struck or stepped upon are apt to try to get out of the way, if they make any move. The only snake that is at all aggressive, as far as my observations go, is a long, black, non-poisonous snake. This will sometimes advance upon the intruder with head raised a couple of feet from the ground, or if coiled about a tree will lash at him with its tail.
The floral exhibit of these forests is apt to be disappointing to one whose ideas have been formed by a perusal of books. An occasional scarlet passion flower; now and then the fragrant cluster of the flor del toro; a few insignificant though fragrant flowering shrubs; and in muddy sloughs near the streams, patches of wild callas; are about all that meet the eye of the non-botanical wanderer in the deep forest.
There is not light enough for flowers beneath the dense canopy of trees, and they, like the smaller birds, seek the tree tops and the banks of the river where sunlight and air are abundant. In the tree tops the orchids and other flowering parasites run riot. Many of the trees are themselves flowering, and if one can look down upon the tree tops of a valley in March or April, he sees the green expanse enlivened by blazing patches of crimson, yellow, purple, pink, and white.
The river banks are the favorite home of the flowering vines, and there they form great curtains swaying from the trees in bright patterns of yellow, pink, red and white. The grassy banks and islands, and the shallow sand spits also bring forth innumerable varieties of aquatic plants.
So much for the Atlantic slope of the country.
On the west side between the Lake and the Pacific the work is very different. There it is possible to ride mule back to the top of a commanding hill, sit down and make the reconnaissance sketch at leisure. The secondary reconnaissances may also be made mule-back, and everywhere the rolling country and the cleared and cultivated fields, permit the engineer to see where he is going and how he is going.
His surroundings are also different. He moves camp in an ox-cart instead of a canoe. His eyes instead of being confined by ​the impenetrable veil of the tropical thicket, feast upon views of the distant mountains, the crisp waves of the Lake, and the blue expanse of the Pacific. During the day he meets black-eyed and brown-limbed señoritas, instead of wild hogs and turkeys, and at night as he turns in, he hears, not the scream of tigers, but the songs of the lavandera's ecru daughters floating across the stream which supplies their wash-tubs and his camp.
The first grand natural feature which arrests attention in the most cursory examination of the map of Nicaragua is the Great Lake. This lake with an area of some three thousand square miles and a water-shed of about eight thousand square miles, is unique in the large proportion of its own area to that of its water- shed. A result of this large proportion of water surface to drainage area, at once evident, is the very gradual changes of level of the lake and their confinement within very narrow limits. The difference between the level of the lake at the close of an abnormally dry season and its level at the close of an abnormally wet season is not more than ten feet, and the usual annual fluctuation is about five feet.
The next features that arrest attention are, first, the very narrow ribbon of land intervening between the western shore of the Lake and the Pacific, and second, the entire absence of lateral tributaries of any size to the upper half of the San Juan River. The river is in fact, as it was originally most aptly named, simply the "Desaguadero" or drain of the Lake.
The length of this river is one hundred and twenty miles, from the Lake to the Caribbean Sea, and its total fall from one hundred to one hundred and ten feet. Nature has separated the river into two nearly equal divisions, presenting distinct and opposite characteristics.
From Lake Nicaragua to the mouth of the Rio San Carlos, a distance of sixty-one miles, in which occur several rapids, the total descent is fifty feet, quite irregularly distributed however. The surface slopes of the river vary from as much as 83.38 inches per mile for a short distance at Castillo rapids, to only .90 inch per mile through the Agua Muerte, the dead water below the Machuca rapids.
The average width of the river through this upper section is seven hundred feet, the minimum four hundred and twenty. In some parts of the Agua Muerte the depth varies from fifty to seventy-five feet.
​There are very few islands in this section of the river, the banks are covered with huge trees matted with vines, and throughout the lower half of the division, from Toro rapids to the mouth of the San Carlos, the river is confined between steep hills and mountains.
As a result of the absence of considerable tributaries already noted, the fluctuations of this portion of the river conform closely to those of the Lake, and consequently take place gradually and are limited in range.
Below the Rio San Carlos the San Juan changes its character entirely. Its average width is twelve hundred and fifty feet, its bottom is sandy, there are numerous islands, and the slope of the river is almost uniformly one foot per mile.
The discharge into this section of two large tributaries, the San Carlos and the Sarapiqui, descending from the steep slopes of the Costa Rican volcanoes, causes much more sudden and considerable fluctuations of level than in the upper river.
While the lower portion of the river and especially the delta section presents very interesting features, yet the peculiar charm of the river is in the upper section, and the exceptional advantages it offers for obtaining miles of slack water navigation. This portion of the river with the lake and the narrow isthmus between it and the Pacific forms a trio of natural advantages for the construction of a canal, the importance of which it would be difficult to over estimate.
About three miles below the mouth of the San Carlos, the Caño Machado enters the San Juan on the north bank. This stream, about one hundred feet wide and from eight to ten feet deep, is the last of the mountain or torrential tributaries of the San Juan. It can scarcely be said to have a valley, but occupies the bed of a rugged ravine extending for several miles northerly and northwesterly up into the easterly flank of the cordillera. Every variety of igneous rock, from light porous pumice to dense metallic green-black hypersthene andesite, may be picked up in the bed of this stream. Agates also are common and there are occasional masses of jasper. Farther up, frequent outcrops of trap in situ occur, interspersed in some localities with numerous veins of agate.
Twelve miles below the Machado the San Francisco enters the San Juan. This stream, with its several tributaries, drains a large swampy valley sprinkled with irregular hummocks and hills. For ​several miles from the San Juan it is a sluggish, muddy stream between steep slippery banks; higher up, flowing over a gravelly and then a rocky bed, it finally disappears in steep ravines filled with huge bowlders. The main San Francisco comes from the northwest, but a large tributary has its source to the eastward in a range of hills which separates the San Francisco basin from the immediate Caribbean water-shed. This range, unlike the ones already noted, is at heart an uninterrupted mass of homogeneous hypersthene andesite, and with one exception nothing but fragments of trap or trap in situ, is to be found in any of the streams descending from either its western or eastern slopes. The one exception is the Cañito Maria, a tributary of the San Francisco, entering it but little more than a mile from the San Juan. In the bed of this stream were abundant specimens of agates, jasper, and petrified woods of several varieties in a wonderfully good state of preservation.
This range of hills ends at the Tamborcito bend of the San Juan, four miles below the mouth of the San Francisco, and is the last easterly projecting spur from the mountain backbone of the interior. Between it and the coast there are, however, mountain masses of equal or greater elevation, notably "El Gigante" and the Silico hills, the former some fifteen hundred feet high, but these are simply isolated mountain ganglia, their innumerable radiating spurs speedily giving way to swamps or river valleys.
The streams that flow down the eastern slope of the Silico hills are, from their sources to the lowlands, of almost idyllic beauty. Beginning as noisy little brooks tumbling over black rocks in a V-shaped ravine near the summit of the hills, they rapidly gather volume and slide along in a polished channel of trap, tumbling every now and then as sheets of white spray over vertical ledges forming here and there deep green pools, and then after they have passed down among the foot-hills, rippling in broad shallow reaches over sunlit beds of bright yellow gravel. The water of these streams is clear and sparkling as that of an Alpine stream and apparently almost as cool. The insect pests of the tropics are unknown in the elevated portions of their valleys, and I have slept more than once beside one of these streams, several hundred feet above sea level, without a mosquito bar, while the delightful trades," rustling through the trees above me, brought the murmur of the Caribbean surf miles away, to mingle with that of the stream.
​The soil of this range consists, to a depth of ten to forty feet, of clay of various grades and colors, red prevailing. In the valleys this clay is almost invariably of a very dense consistency, and deep, dark red in color.
From the foot-hills of the range to the coast, is a low level stretch of country, a dozen miles wide, interspersed with lagoons and swamps. Near the hills, where the elevation of the ground will average about fifteen feet above sea level, the soil is composed almost entirely of the before mentioned red clay, which occasionally assumes the form of hummocks. Within about six miles of the coast this stratum of clay gradually disappears under a layer of sand, which is in turn covered, by a vegetable mould, to a depth of a few feet. From this point to the sea the average elevation is barely five feet above the sea level, and the sand and mould above mentioned are the only materials met. A short distance from the ocean the vegetable earth-covering disappears and only the sand is left, extending to an unknown depth and reaching out into the sea.
West of Lake Nicaragua, from the Rio Lajas to Brito, as we leave the lake shore, the ground rises almost imperceptibly to the "Divide" among cleared and gently undulating fields. Then we drop into the sinuous gorge of the Rio Grande only to emerge, a few miles farther on, into the upper end of the Rio Grande and Tola basin.
To the right the Tola valley stretches to the northward, and all around high and wooded hills encircle the valleys except directly in front where a narrow gateway in the coast hills opens to the Pacific. In the bottom of this valley are a few farms and through it wander devious roads. Beyond the narrow gateway in the hills, less than three miles of level swampy salinas reach to the surf of the Pacific.
The views from the hills which flank the gateway of the Rio Grande, at La Flor, are wonderfully attractive. I well remember one camp on the hillside, from which in one direction the eye takes in the fertile valley of the Tola and Rio Grande, backed by the rolling hills of the "Divide" and over them the symmetrical peak of Ometepe, its base washed by the waves of the great lake. In the other direction the Pacific lies apparently but a stone's throw below, the little port of Brito at one's very feet.
This same camp inspired one young engineer and enthusiast to express himself something as follows:
​"What if, in this camp, we should, like Rip Van Winkle, sleep for ten years, and then awakening look about us? We are still at Brito, but instead of being in the wilderness, we look down upon a thriving city. In the harbor are ships from all ports of the world. Ships from San Francisco, bound for New York, about to pass through the canal and shorten their journey by 10,000 miles. Ships from Valparaiso, headed for New York, which will take the short cut and save 5000 miles and the dread storms of Cape Horn. At many a masthead floats the British flag, and vessels from Liverpool, with their bows turned towards San Francisco, have shortened their journey by 7000 miles."
"We go aboard one of the many steamers flying the "stars and stripes" and start eastward. All along the line the face of the country has changed; the fertile shores of the Tola basin are occupied by cacao plantations, fields have replaced forests, villages have grown to towns, and factories driven by the exhaustless water power furnished by the canal have sprung up on every available site."
"Along the shore of the lake are immense dry docks, and vessels are resting in this huge fresh water harbor before setting out again on their long voyages. The broad bosom of the noble San Juan is quivering with the strokes of tireless propellors. The roar of the great dam at Ochoa is heard for a moment and then the eastern section of the canal is entered. Here the country is scarcely recognizable so greatly has it changed. Wilderness and marsh have disappeared, and only great fields of plantains and bananas and dark green orange groves are to be seen. A day from Brito and the steamer's bow is rising to the long blue swell of the Caribbean at Greytown."
Well is this picture calculated to excite enthusiam, for it means the dream of centuries realized, the cry of commerce answered, and our imperial Orient and Occident-facing Republic resting content with coasts united from Eastport to the Strait of Fuca.