342 THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA. [Ch. XIX. 





 other, and there are many large churches, some of them 



. in ruins. In one of the latter a company of mounte- 

 banks performed every evening, but the circumstance 

 did not seem to excite surprise or comment. 



The streets are built in terraces, quite level for about 

 fifty yards, then with a steep-paved declivity leading to 

 another level portion. One has to be careful in riding 

 down from one level to another, as horses and mules are 

 very liable to slip on the smooth pavement. The houses 

 are built of " adobes ' or sun-dried bricks. The walls 

 are plastered and whitewashed, and the roofs and floors 

 tiled. They are mostly of one storey, and the rooms 

 surrounding the court-yards have doors opening both to 

 the inside and to the street. 



There are no manufactories in Granada, but many 

 wholesale stores, kept by merchants, who import goods 

 from England and the United States, and export the 

 produce of the country indigo, hides, coffee, cacao, 

 sugar, Indian rubber, &c. Many of these merchants 

 are very wealthy ; but all deal retail as well as whole- 

 sale ; and the reputed wealthiest man -of the town asked 

 me if I did not want to buy a few boxes of candles. 

 The highest ambition of every one seems to be to keep a 

 shop, excepting when the revolutionary fever breaks out 

 about every seven or eight years, when, for a few months, 

 business is at a stand- still, and the population is divided 

 into two parties, alternately pursuing and being pursued, 

 but seldom engaging in a real battle. 



There was one of these outbreaks whilst I was in 

 Nicaragua, and the whole country was in a state of civil 

 war for more than four months, nearly all the able- 

 bodied men being drafted into the armies that were 



