170 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. IX. 



natives, we feel how great a curse the Spanish invasion 

 has heen to Central America. The half-breed, wrapped 

 up in himself, lives from year to year in his thatched 

 hut, looking after a few cows, and making cheese from 

 their milk. He perhaps plants a small patch of maize 

 once a year, and grows a few plantains, content to live 

 on the plainest fare, and in the rudest style, so that he 

 may indulge in indolence and sloth ; and so he vegetates 

 and drops into his grave ; and in a year or two no mark 

 or sign tells where he was laid. The graves of the old 

 Indians are still to be found ; but no mounds mark the 

 spots where the inhabitants of the valley since the con- 

 quest have been laid to rest. They have passed away as 

 they lived, without a record or memorial. 



The builders of these cairns and the fashioners of these 

 statues were a different and a ibetter race. They stood 

 by each other, and reverenced and obeyed their chiefs. 

 They tilled the ground and lived on the fruits of it. 

 From the accounts of all the historians of the Spanish 

 conquest, the Pacific side of Nicaragua was so densely 

 populated when the Spaniards first arrived, that the greater 

 part of it must have been cultivated like a garden ; and 

 it is probable that the population was ten times greater 

 than it is now. Another point that strikes the observer 

 is, that not only the descendants of the Spaniards and 

 the Mestizos are sunk far below the level of the old 

 Indians, but that the nearly pure Indians, of whom there 

 are many large communities, have so degenerated that it 

 is hard to believe that they are the very same people that, 

 four hundred years ago, had advanced so far in their 

 peculiar civilisation. They are not so sunk in sloth as 

 the half-breeds. They still till the ground, grow maize, 



