Ch. III.] BOAT JOURXEY COXTIXUED. 31 



large boats called lungos, that carry down to Greytown 

 the produce of the country and take up merchandise and 

 flour. This one was laden with cattle and india-rubber. 

 The bungos are flat-bottomed boats, about forty feet long 

 and nine feet wide. There is generally a little cabin, 

 roofed over at the stern, in which the wife of the captain 

 lives. The bungo is poled along by twelve bungo-men, 

 who have usually only one suit of clothes, which they do 

 not wear during the day but keep stowed away under the 

 cargo that they may be dry to put on at night ; their 

 bronzed, glistening, naked bodies, as they ply their long- 

 poles all together in unison, and chant some Spanish 

 boat-song, is one of the sights that lingers in the memory 

 of the traveller up the San Juan. Our boatmen paddled 

 and poled until eleven at night, when we reached Ma- 

 chuca, a settlement consisting of a single house, just 

 below the rapids of the same name, seventy- seven miles 

 above Greytown. 



We breakfasted at Machuca before starting next 

 morning, and I walked up round the rapids and met 

 the canoe above them. About five o'clock, after pad- 

 dling all day, we came in sight of Castillo, where there 

 is an old ruined Spanish fort perched on the top of a 

 hill overlooking the little town, which lies along the foot 

 of the steep hill hemmed in between it and the river, so 

 that there is only room for one narrow street. It was 

 near Castillo that kelson lost his eye. He took the fort 

 by landing about half a mile lower down the river, and 

 dragging his guns round to a hill behind it by which it 

 was commanded. This hill is now cleared of timber and 

 covered with grass, supporting a few cows and a great 

 many goats. In front of the town run the rapids of Cas- 



