With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 2

by Unknown

At that time [1850] steamboats were not yet plying on the San Juan River and the Lake of Nicaragua, and I had to content myself with the accommodations of one of the large canoes of the natives called bongos, which were then the principal means of transport between the coast and the interior, for passengers as well as for merchandise. In company with two Americans, who, like myself, were anxious to proceed to Granada, I hired one of the largest of these clumsy little crafts, manned with ten boatmen or marineros, together with their captain or patron, all of them colored people from the interior. We laid in provisions for a fortnight, such being the full time of a passage which is now performed by steamers in two days.

We left San Juan on the 23d of November, and arrived at Granada on the 5th of the following month. In reference to the beauties of nature the trip is one of the most interesting that can be made, though the state of my health prevented my enjoying it.... An open shed, furnished with a hammock and surrounded by a plantain garden of half an acre, was the only improvement in an extent of more than a hundred miles. With this single exception, and with that of the site of the old castle of San Juan, more generally known by the popular name of Castillo Vièjo, the banks were covered with trees to the water’s edge, their branches often bearing a vegetation of vines, climbers, and parasites, so densely interwoven that the whole appeared like a solid wall of leaves and flowers.

I shall never forget the impressions of one night and morning on this river. Our boat had anchored in the midst of the stream. Strange forms of trees, spectre-like in the dark, stood before us, and seemed to move as the eye strove in vain to make out their real shape. From time to time a splash in the water, caused by the movement of an alligator, the bellowing of a manatee, the screeching of a night-bird, or the roar of some beast of the forest, broke the silence, and mingled at last with my feverish dream.

In the morning a song our boatmen addressed to the Virgin roused me from my sleep. It was a strain of plaintive notes in a few simple but most expressive modulations. Several years later I heard them again, sung by the Mexican miners in the subterraneous chapel of the quicksilver mine of New Almaden in California, and I never shall forget the deep emotion felt on both occasions, so widely different in every other respect. In the latter the scene passed in a narrow excavation before a little altar cut out of the natural rock, on which, before a gilded image of the Virgin, two thin tallow candles were casting their scanty light over the forms of fifteen or twenty men calling down the blessing of Heaven on their day of work in the interior of the mountain. In the former, it was in the brightness and splendor of a morning of which no description can convey a full idea to one who has had no experience in the most favored regions of a tropical climate. The sun was just rising, and as the first rays, gilding the glassy leaves of the forest, fell upon the bronze-colored bodies of our men, letting the naked forms of their athletic frames appear in all the contrast of light and shade, while accents plaintive and imploring strained forth from their lips, I thought to hear the sacred spell by which, unconscious of its power, these men were subduing their own half-savage natures.

At once the same song was repeated from behind a projecting corner of the bank, and other voices joined those of our crew in the sacred notes. Two canoes, covered from our view, had anchored near us during the night. The song at last died away in the wilderness. A silent prayer—our anchor was raised, and, with a wild shout of the crew, twelve oars simultaneously struck the water. The sun was glittering in the river. The tops of the trees were steeped in light, monkeys were swinging in the branches, splendid macaws flew in pairs from bank to bank; all around exhibited the glory and brightness of superabundant nature.

Near the mouth of the river, as far up as the higher end of its delta, the banks are almost on the water’s level, overgrown with reeds, mangroves, and a low species of palm-tree, the latter forming extensive thickets in the swamps. After a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles the land gradually becomes a little higher, and steep embankments of a brown or reddish clay rise to some ten or twenty feet above the water. The low palm thickets of the swampy region disappear, and a vegetation of splendid trees, mostly exogenous, overhung with blooming vines, takes their place. Flowery garlands, swung from branch to branch, hang over the stream, while now and then the slender shaft of one of the tallest species of the palm tribe wafts its little crown of feathery leaves high over the gorgeous masses of the heavier foliage.

Eight or ten miles higher up the region of the randales, or rapids, begins. Here the river, locked in between wooded hills, presents a new character of scenery. The trees, covering the hill-sides with an almost impenetrable forest, exhibit an extraordinary variety of forms in striking contrast. The most interesting situation in this region is that of the Castillo Vièjo. Here, where the river foams over a bed of rocks, stands the old Spanish castle of Don Juan. Since 1780 it has remained a ruin, though Nicaragua has always kept a few soldiers here, occupying a shed at the foot of the hill on which the remains of the fort are seen. In the civil wars of the last years this place has repeatedly been occupied and evacuated by the contending powers.

Among the rapids, that of the Castillo Vièjo is the only one that forms a real impediment in the navigation of the river. With the necessary caution canoes may descend, and I myself have passed over it on my way back to the coast in a bongo carrying forty passengers; upward, however, all boats must be towed, after having been unloaded....

Above the region of the rapids the river is almost stagnant, and the designation of the aguas muertas, or dead waters, is not inappropriately applied to it. It is a deep and still water, full of fish, with low and swampy banks, on which the palm thickets of the delta reappear.

Beyond this latter portion of the river the Lake of Nicaragua opens to the view. On the little promontory formed by the lake and the inlet of the river the custom-house of Nicaragua, designated by the high-sounding name of the “fort of San Carlos,” has been established. There are a few houses at this place, and a small military force is kept up to protect the establishment and, in case of necessity, enforce the payment of the dues. The ruins of an old Spanish castle still exist here, but they are hidden among the trees and shrubs with which they are overgrown.