164 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Cli. IX. 



In reply to my assertion that the falls had produced, 

 and were now working back, the chasm, our guide, the 

 lounging man from the house, said the rocks had always 

 been as they were: he had lived there ten years, and 

 there had been no change in them. Perhaps, if the 

 buried Indians could rise from their graves where they 

 were laid to rest more than three hundred years ago, 

 they, too, would testify that there had been no change, 

 and that the rocks and the leaping river were as they had 

 been and would be for ever ; for the untrained mind can- 

 not grasp the idea of the effect of slowly-acting influences 

 extending over vast periods of time. 



AYe asked the guide if there were any cairns near, and 

 he said there was one on the top of a neighbouring hill. 

 Up this we climbed. It was the rounded spur of a range 

 behind, jutting out into the small plain before mentioned, 

 and may be partly artificial. On the summit, which 

 commanded a fine view of the country around, with the 

 white cliffs and dark woods of the Amerrique range in 

 front, was an Indian cairn, elliptical in shape, about 

 thirty feet long and twenty broad. Several small trees 

 had sprung up amongst the stones. Near the centre two 

 holes had been dug down about four feet deep. Our 

 guide told us that he and his brother had made them, to 

 hide themselves in from the soldiers during the last 

 revolutionary outbreak. Not a very likely story, that 

 they should have chosen the top of a bare hill for a 

 hiding-place, when all around in the valleys there were 

 thickets of brushwood. He said they had found nothing 

 in the holes ; but we soon found fragments of two broken 

 cinerary urns, one of fine clay, painted with red and 

 black, the other much coarser and stronger, without 



