The pitpan is another variety of canoe, excelling the dory in point of speed. It is of the same material, differing only in being flat-bottomed.
[2] The blue dye, used in coloring by these Indians, is made from the jiquilite, which, as I have said, is indigenous on the coast. The yellow from the anotta, called achiota, the same used to give the color known as nankeen. The tree producing it is abundant throughout all Central America.
[3] The plantain and the banana are varieties of the same plant. They not only constitute marked features in the luxuriant foliage of the tropics, but their fruit supplies the place of bread, and forms the principal part of the food of the people. They thrive best in a rich, moist soil, and are generally grown in regular walks, from shoots or bulbs like those of the air-plant, which continually spring up at the roots of the parent stem. They are very rapid in their growth, producing fruit within a twelvemonth. Moreover, not being dependent upon the seasons, a constant supply is kept up during the year; for, while one stem drops beneath its load of ripe fruit, another throws out its long flower-spike, and a third shows the half-formed cluster. The fruit is very nutritive, and is eaten in a great variety of forms—raw, boiled, roasted, and fried—and in nearly every stage of its growth, as well when green as when yellow and mature. Humboldt tells us, that it affords, in a given extent of ground, forty-four times more nutritive matter than the potato, and one hundred and thirty-three times more than wheat. As it requires little if any care in the cultivation, and produces thus perennially and abundantly, it may be called an “institution for the encouragement of laziness.” On the banks of all the rivers on the Mosquito Shore, it is found growing wild, from shoots brought down from the plantations of the Indians, and which have taken root where they were lodged by the current.
[4] The whole district of country lying on the north flank of the mountains which bound the valley of the Rio Wanks, in the same direction, enjoys a wide celebrity for its rich deposits of gold. There is hardly a stream of which the sands do not yield a liberal proportion of that precious metal. Yet, strange to say, the washing is confined almost exclusively to the Indians, who seek to obtain no more than is just sufficient to supply their limited wants. Among the reduced, or, as they are called, christianized Indians, in the valley of Olancho, the women only wash the gold for a few hours on Sunday morning. With the supply thus obtained, they proceed to the towns, attend mass, and make their petty purchases, devoting the rest of the week to the fullest enjoyment of the dolce far niente.
[5] Baalam, in the language of Yucatan, signifies Tiger, and Votan is understood to denote Heart. The Maya tradition is, that Baalam Votan, the Tiger-Heart, led the fathers of the Mayas to Yucatan, from a distant country. He is conspicuously figured in the ruined temples around the Lake of Itza, as well as at Chichen and Palenque.
APPENDIX.
A.
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE MOSQUITO SHORE.
The general physical characteristics, and the climate and productions of the Mosquito Shore, have probably been sufficiently indicated in the foregoing rapid narrative. Nevertheless, to supply any deficiencies which may exist in these respects, as well as to illustrate the history of this coast, to which recent political events have given some degree of interest, I have here brought together a variety of facts derived from original sources, or such as are not easily accessible to the general reader.
The designation “Mosquito Shore” can only properly be understood in a geographical sense, as applying to that portion of the eastern coast of Central America lying between Cape Gracias à Dios and Bluefields Lagoon, or between the twelfth and fifteenth degrees of north latitude, a distance of about two hundred miles. The attempts which have been made to apply this name to a greater extent of shore, have had their origin in strictly political considerations.