312 THE NATURALIST IX NICARAGUA. [Ch. XVII. 



was told that cattle did well browsing on the small 

 brushwood with which the hills were covered. All the 

 forenoon we travelled over stony ranges and dry plains 

 and savannahs. At noon we reached the dry bed of a 

 river and crossed it several times, but could find no 

 water to quench our thirst, whilst the sun shone down on 

 us pitilessly hot. About one o'clock we found some pools 

 where the bed of the river was bare rock with rounded 

 hollows containing water, warm but clean, as the cattle 

 could not walk over the smooth slopes to get at it. 

 Here we halted for an hour and had some tiste and 

 maize cakes, and cut some Guinea grass that grew 

 amongst the rocks for our mules. Over the heated 

 rocks scampered brown lizards, chasing each other 

 and revelling in the sunshine. Butterflies on lazv 



O J 



wings came and settled on damp spots, and the 

 cicada kept up his shrill continuous monotone, but 

 not so loudly as he would later on when it got cooler. 

 The cicada is supposed by some to pipe only during 

 mid-day, but both in Central America and Brazil I 

 found them loudest towards sunset, keeping up their 

 shrill music until it is taken up by night- vocal crickets 

 and locusts. 



We were returning parallel to our course in going to 

 Segovia, but several leagues to the westward, and this had 

 made a wonderful difference in the climate. In the road 

 we went we were wading through muddy swarnps and 

 drenched with continual rains. Here the plains were 

 parched with heat, vegetation was dried up, and there 

 was scarcely any water in the river beds. The north- 

 east trade wind, before it reached this far, had given 

 up its moisture to the forests of the Atlantic slope, and 



