Cli. XIII.] DESCENDANTS OF THE BUCCANEEES. 241 



tega during the civil war in the States, but afterwards 

 abandoned the place. I found, however, some elderly 

 people with the same distinctive marks of ancestry other 

 than the Spaniards, Indians, or Negroes, and I am in- 

 clined to believe that on the breaking up of the bands of 

 buccaneers by Morgan, at the end of the seventeenth 

 century, many of them found a refuge up the Ptio Grande 

 and Rio Wanks. They were well acquainted with these 

 rivers and made many forays up them to harry the 

 Spanish settlements on the Pacific slope. In 1688 a 

 body of about three hundred French and English pirates 

 abandoned their ships in the Gulf of Fonseca, forced their 

 way across the country, and descended the Bio Wanks to 

 the Atlantic. The fair-haired and blue-eyed natives of 



/ 



Matagalpa and Segovia are doubtless the descendants of 

 the outlaws who made these provinces their highways 

 from one ocean to the other. 



Jinotega is pleasantly situated, and has many advan- 

 tages over other Nicarao-uan towns. The climate is 



o o 



temperate and moderately dry, the land very fertile. 

 Pine trees on the surrounding ranges furnish fuel and 

 light. Pasture is abundant ; for two miles below the 

 town the valley opens out into wide " campos ' covered 

 with grass, on which a large number of horses, cattle, 

 and mules are reared. 



Our road lay down the valley. On the sides of the 

 enclosing ranges there were many cultivated patches, and 

 we saw whole families, men, women, and children, weed- 

 ing amongst the maize. A few showers had fallen during 

 the night and given them some hopes of saving their 

 crops. We passed a village called Apanas and then 

 struck across the plains and on the other side reached 



R 



