THE 



NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA 



CHAPTER I. 



Arrival at Greytown The River San Juan Silting up of the 

 Harbour Crossing the Bar Lives lost on it Sharks 

 Christopher Columbus Appearance of the Town Trade 

 Healthiness of the Town and its probable cause Conirjarison 

 between Greytown, Pernambuco, and Maceio Wild Fruits 

 Plants Parrots, Toucans, and Tanagers Butterflies and 

 Beetles Mimetic Forms Alligators Boy drowned at Blew- 

 fields by an Alligator Their method of catching wild Pigs. 



AT noon on the 15th February, 1868, the R.M.S.S. 



V * 



Solent, in which I was a passenger, anchored off Grey- 

 town, or San Juan del Norte, the Atlantic port of 

 Nicaragua in Central America. We lay about a mile 

 from the shore, and saw a low flat coast stretching before 

 us. It was the delta of the river San Juan, into which 

 flows the drainage of a great part of Nicaragua and Costa 

 Rica, and which is the outlet for the waters of the great 

 lake of Nicaragua. Its water-shed extends to within a 

 few miles of the Pacific, for here the isthmus of Central 

 America, as in the great continents to the north and 

 south of it, sends off by far the largest portion of its 

 drainage to the Atlantic. In the rainy season the San 



