"The women of pure Spanish stock are very fair, and have the embonpoint which characterizes the sex under the tropics. Their dress, except in a few instances where the stiff costume of our own country had been adopted, was exceedingly loose and flowing, leaving the neck and arms exposed. The entire dress was often pure white, but generally the skirt, or nagua, was of some flowered stuff, in which case the guipil (anglicè, vandyke) was white, heavily trimmed with lace. Satin slippers, a red or purple sash wound loosely round the waist, and a rosary sustaining a little golden cross, with a narrow golden band or a string of pearls extending around the forehead and binding the hair, which often fell in luxuriant waves upon their shoulders, completed a costume as novel as it was graceful and picturesque. To all this, add the superior attractions of an oval face, regular features, large and lustrous black eyes, small mouth, pearly white teeth, and tiny hands and feet, and withal a low but clear voice, and the reader has a picture of a Central American lady of pure stock. Very many of the women have, however, an infusion of other families and races, from the Saracen to the Indian and the Negro, in every degree of intermixture. And as tastes differ, so many opinions as to whether the tinge of brown, through which the blood glows with a peach-like bloom, in the complexion of the girl who may trace her lineage to the caziques upon one side, and the haughty grandees of Andalusia and Seville on the other, superadded, as it usually is, to a greater lightness of figure and animation of face,—whether this is not a more real beauty than that of the fair and more languid señora, whose white and almost transparent skin bespeaks a purer ancestry. Nor is the Indian girl, with her full, little figure, long, glossy hair, quick and mischievous eyes, who walks erect as a grenadier beneath her heavy water-jar, and salutes you in a musical, impudent voice as you pass—nor is the Indian girl to be overlooked in the novel contrasts which the 'bello sexo' affords in this glorious land of the sun."
The Nicaraguan ladies occupy themselves with smoking and displaying little feet in satin slippers when daily they go to church and back. In the early evening they occasionally pay visits, and if a number of both sexes happen to assemble at the same house a dance is improvised, though regular parties or balls are rare and ceremonial.
At festival seasons the Nicaraguans have some curious customs, apparently derived from their ancient heathen worship.
In some of the Nicaraguan towns, especially in Leon, the pernicious practice of burying the dead within the walls of city churches is persisted in, even as in London, and, just as with us, against the opposition of all sensible persons, including the government itself. Fees to the church and attendant officials are at the root of the evil, and give it a vitality that defies all attempts at eradication. The priests of Leon have evaded all edicts about this nuisance, and have improved upon the practice of our metropolitan parishes; for, not content with the revenues they derive from funerals, they charge according to the length of time (from ten to twenty-five years) the dead are to be permitted by them to rest in their graves. When the purchased time is up, the bones and the earth derived from the decomposed corpses are removed and sold to the manufacturers of nitre! The least warlike of citizens may thus in the end become a defender of his country, when converted into a constituent of gunpowder. The most quiet and unambitious of mortals may complete his career by making a noise in the world, when fired off from a mortar. Assuredly this is a very novel and original method of shooting churchyard rubbish, and we recommend a fair consideration of it to our vested parochial authorities.
Mr. Squier claims to be the first person who has described the ancient monuments of Nicaragua, or, indeed, to have indicated their existence. Excellent and numerous plates and cuts of these very interesting though rather frightful relics are given in his work. Hitherto the antiquities of the northern portion of Central America only have been explored, and are familiar to us through the researches of Stephens and of Catherwood. The Indians still reverence the shrines and statues of their ancient gods, and are apt to conceal their knowledge about their localities and existence. Those described by our traveller have mostly suffered dilapidation through the religious zeal of the conquerors. They appear to differ among themselves somewhat in degree of antiquity, but there is no good reason—this is the conclusion to which Mr. Squier comes—for supposing that they were not made by the nations found in possession of the country. The structures in or about which, they were originally placed were probably of wood, and great mounds and earthworks, like the teocallis of Mexico, were associated with them.
A section of Mr. Squier's work is devoted to an elaborate dissertation on the proposed interoceanic canal, illustrated by an excellent map. We recommend these chapters to the consideration of all who are interested upon this important subject. Like most parts of his book it is defaced by not a few sneers at, and misstatements about, the English. About the bad taste of these outbursts we shall not say more. That they should come from a man who is professionally a diplomatist, is evidence of his indiscretion and unfitness for his political calling. As an amusing traveller and diligent antiquarian, however, we can do Mr. Squier full honor, and were glad to see the just compliment lately paid to him in London, when our Antiquarian Society elected him an honorary member.
[This interesting and important work of our countryman is reviewed in a flattering manner in most of the great organs of critical opinion in England, and its sale there, as well as in this country, has been very large for one so costly.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Nicaragua; its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Inter-oceanic Canal. By E. G. Squier. New-York: Appletons.