252 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I02 



fully decorated, and they have many trained singers with all the 

 musical instruments for the services and for singing Mass. 



725. The Indian village of El A'iejo is one of the largest in the 

 Province of Nicaragua; it is divided up into 11 clans, parties, or 

 wards. Each ward has its shrine, for them to celebrate there the 

 feast day of the saint for whom their ward is named. This village 

 has a Franciscan convent with a Superior and three or four friars, 

 who instruct the Indians and administer the Holy Sacraments. Al- 

 though the village has a hot climate, like all the province, it has bright 

 skies and health-giving breezes ; it is abundantly supplied with poultry, 

 beef, veal, and many kinds of delicious native fruit. 



726. This village has active trade and commerce ; there are Span- 

 iards and traders living among the Indians — in that country they 

 call them quebrantahuesos (nuisances) — who trade and deal with 

 the Indians and other Spanish residents of the country. They have 

 inns, hostelries, or taverns, which serve as a refuge for poor Span- 

 iards — the chapetones, as they call newcomers ; these inns are full 

 of these transients who ordinarily stay in them while awaiting passage 

 to Peru whenever ships leave the port of Realejo. And since this 

 country is so prolific and cheap and well administered, the Governor 

 or principal cacique and the Alcaldes keep service Indians with con- 

 stables at these inns, to be at the service of poor Spaniards stopping 

 there, and go and get their supplies, and Indian women who wait 

 upon them for weeks and do their cooking, preparing the corn tor- 

 tillas, which is the ordinary bread of that province; and so they 

 support themselves at small expense, for with i real they can buy 

 2 arrobas (50 pounds) of beef, dripping fat, and with another real, 

 2 celemines (pecks) of corn, which will furnish them with bread 

 for several days, and as for fruit, of which there is great abundance — • 

 aguacates, bananas, sapotes, guavas, sapodillas, oranges, limes — they 

 can buy them with 8 or 10 cacao beans; and for their cooking the 

 Indians bring them wood, of which there are quantities in every 

 direction. 



727. All the Indians in this village and province are ladinos (i.e., 

 civilized) and dress after the Spanish fashion, with cotton trousers 

 and jacket, dyed black in this village ; in all this province they still 

 cut up great numbers of deerskins, out of which they make boots 

 and shoes for their footwear. They have artisans of every handicraft 

 in this village. The whole produces the effect of a bit of Paradise on 

 earth, situated as it is among groves composed entirely of fruit trees. 

 They have planted royal tamarinds in this village ; these are trees of 

 medium height with many small leaves of about the color of a friar's 



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