The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-11-17

end, both numerically and in measur-
ment. The casa itself, like most Costa
Rican farm houses, is built of wild
canes and cedar posts, stuecord out
side with suu-baked mud, aid matched
with plantain leaves and corn-busks.
which furnish excellent breeding
places for scorpions, Lizards, vipers
and other pests, which come spinning
down upon your head, or into your
food, at most inopportune moments
if, indeed any moment may be called
"opportune" for such insect The
view from the house-tOp, however, is
fine enough to reconcile one to living
with snakes and lions for neighbors
the seven bills of Paraiso, covered
with gardens-the three rivers seeking
the seattle sloping forests and ancient
1ndia1 village of Orosi-and just above,
apparently to
ToPPLE DOWN AND BURY Us
without warning, frowns The bleak
ridge of Irazu.
SIX miles from Carriage, we enter the
village of Paraiso-about which Moth
ing bnt its name is suggestive of ex-
treme felicity. A few scattered huts
perched upon as many hills as Rome
occupied, the heights scared with
boisterous streams and knotted with
boulders. q few scant fields of beans
and bananas, and the people apparently
all asleep or gone away-these are the
main features of this miscalled Eden.
But the wise Padre Acuna lives here.
(now a very aged man), and to visit
him is worth coming a long way; for
he Is not only the most enlightened of
priests, but a complete encyclopedia of
Costa Rican affairs. Having been sta
toned many years in the lower coun-
try as q missionary among the Indians,
he is authority on all questions per-
tanning to the aboriginal tribes. One
may sit for hours in his little cob-web-
bed room, seated in an arm chair
scooped out of huge block of mahog-
any, and draped with tiger skins, and
be royalty entertained by his quaint but
fluent discourse.
Not far from Friar Acuna's house
may be seen the remains of
AN ANCIENT cAUsEwAY,
built centuries before the Spanish oc-
cupancy by some long forgotten Indian
tribe, and is supposed to have con-
nected the Csrtago region with the
port of Matina. The road is twelve
feet wide. paved with well-rounded
blocks of laya stone, protected on both
sides by sloping wall of the same
material, three feet high. go far as
traced, it appears to have had no
bridges, and to have taken almost a
straight line. Whenever q river or
ravine intercepts it, the road desceDds
by series of massive, deep-cut steps,
and in the same way mounts the oppo-
site bank or Cliff. There were no horses
here, you know, until the Spaniards
brought them, the Indians being their
own beasts of burden, aud bearing their
kings and mobiles about in filters.
Father Acuna says that this causeWay
is broken link of that great chain of
roads which traversed the country
from Nicaragua to Panama, centuries
before q white man ever saw these
shores. He believes that populous
empire fourished in Costa RIGA in DAYS
so remote that not even tradition OF
them now exists, and that the chief
seat of this empire stood Whe e TODAY
may be found the obscure,
sMALL-PoxED HAMLET OF TURRABA
an opinion which other archaolo-
gists consider to have been substan-
TALLY proved. The immense plain OF
Turraba is thickly dotted with tunauh,
and abounds in strange relics; and the
wise padre asserts that wee the coun-
try but partially exposed, plenty of
memorials would come to light of the
crested and pillared city that once
stood among those lonely mountains.
Green and glorious as is the valley of
Cartigo, that of Orisi surpasses it.
Gazing from the hills of Paraiso. away
down to the white rivers of Ujarras,
(the Oldest footprints of the Spanisrds
in these solitudes, one is awed by the
immensely Of the mountains
and spell-bound, as in dream. Far
below, the hurryIng waters of the three
rivers-Agua Caliente, Naranjo and
Nuvaro-rush into the Rio Grande, the
latter being broad. swift stream,
whose sea-green, feam-hocked tide
divides the valley. Thence, many miles
beyond, the mighty river loses itself in
one of those fierce torrents to which
the volcanic heights have given birth.
While descending to. the lower regions
even the driver 8 whip was unemployed,
duQ Inc horses plCKe0 their way With
care down the steep declivities, it being
serious question which would reach
the bottom nrst-the coach, the ami
mails, or the outside passengers. At
length, peering out from between trees
covered with
GORGEOUS PARASITES,
and festooned with trailing vines, ap-
peared that celebrated but suspicious
looking Hammock Bridge" the
proudest work of the Orosi Indians,
which none can cross except on foot,
for at each end is lofty ladder. -Four
upright posts of the hardest timber,
two on each side of the river, are
placed four feet apart. and these rude
piers are connected by ropes of iron
wire. Durable as are the posts, the
Indians renew them every third year,
because when the river is turbid and
swollen, there is no other way to get
out of the valley than by this veritable
AL Sirat. Fortunately for as, the stream
is fordable at this time of year; but
few weeks later a wide detour must be
made to a less picturesque and mO1e