CHAPTER V. 



Geographical position of Santo DomingoPhysical Geography The 

 Inhabitants Mixed Races Xegroes and Indians compared 

 Women Establishment of the Chontales Gold Mining Company 

 My House and Garden Fruits Plantains and Bananas 

 Probably not indigenous to America Propagated from Shoots 

 Do not generally mature their Seeds Fig-trees Granadillos 

 and Papaws Vegetables Dependence of Flowers on Insects for 

 their fertilization Insect Plagues Leaf-cutting Ants Their 

 method of defoliating Trees Their Nests Some Trees are not 

 touched by the Ants Foreign Trees are very subject to their 

 attack Method of destroying the Ants Migration of the Ants 

 from a Xest attacked Corrosive Sublimate causes a sort of 

 Madness amongst them Indian plan of preventing their as- 

 cending young Trees Leaf-cutting Ants are fungus growers 

 and eaters The Sagacity of the Ants. 



THE gold-mining village of Santo Domingo is situ- 



o o o o 



ated in the province of Chontales, Nicaragua, in lat. 

 12 16' N. and long. 84 59' "W., nearly midway between 

 the Atlantic and the Pacific, where Central America 

 begins to widen out northward of the narrow isthmus of 

 Panama and Costa Rica. It is in the midst of the great 

 forest that covers most of the Atlantic slope of Central 

 America, and which continues unbroken from where we 

 had entered it, at Pital, eastward to the Atlantic ; west- 

 ward it terminates in a sinuous margin about seven miles 

 from the village, and there commence the lightly tim- 

 bered and grassy plains and savannahs stretching to the 



