106 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. VII. 



my readers some of the pleasure that they afforded me. 

 They gave the relief that enabled me to carry on for years 

 an incessant struggle, under great difficulties, to bring the 

 mines into a paying state, continually hampered for want 

 of sufficient capital, with most inadequate machinery, and 

 all the annoyances, delays, and disappointments inevi- 

 table in carrying on such a precarious enterprise as gold- 

 mining far in the interior of a half- civilised country. 



The brook that ran at the foot of the bank below my 

 house, and there called the " Quebrada de Santo Do- 

 mingo," is dignified half a mile lower down, after pass- 

 ing the mines of the Javali Company and receiving the 

 waters of another brook coming down from the westward, 

 by the name of the Javali river. The Indians, however, 

 both at the Indian village of Carca, seven miles back in 

 the mountains, and those even lower down the river itself, 

 call it " Artigua." The preservation of these old Indian 

 names is important, as they might sometime or other throw 

 considerable light on the early inhabitants of the country. 

 In all parts of the world the names of mountains, valleys, 

 lakes, and rivers are among the most certain memorials 

 of the ancient inhabitants. The reason the names of the 







natural features of a country remain unchanged under 

 the sway of successive nations, speaking totally different 

 languages, appears to be this. The successful invaders of 

 a country, even in the most cruel times, never extermi- 

 nated the people they conquered ; at the least, the young 

 women were spared. The conquerors established their 

 otvn language, and to everything they had known in their 

 own land they gave their own names ; but for those quite, 

 new to them, which nearly always included the moun- 

 tains, valleys, lakes, and rivers, and often the towns and 



