26 ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL 



was handed me had the smell and taste of water in which cows had been standing ; 

 and on the hacienda San Jeronimo I had to pay half a real for a drink for my horse 

 of water drawn from a well. 



Before the establishment of the Transit through Nicaragua the daily wages of a 

 laborer were one real. For half a real he could buy from forty to sixty plantains, 

 or a fowl, and other things in proportion. With the establishment of the Transit 

 the wages rose to double that amount, and were still so at my visit to the country; 

 but one gets now only six or eight plantains for half a real ; and a fowl costs two, 

 and two and a half reals. This disproportionate rising of wages and of the price 

 of food would show that the mere advance of wages does not alleviate the condition 

 of the laboring class. 



THIRD EXCURSION FROM SAN SALVADOR. 



My third excursion from San Salvador was with the intention of going to Costa 

 Rica, and of passing from there by land through the province of Chiriqui to 

 Panama. In this way I intended to come in contact with several aboriginal tribes, 

 which liave still pretty much preserved their independence. For this purpose I 

 went first to Panama to ascertain if I could start from there to reach Costa Rica, 

 by land. But all the information I got was such as to force me to abandon that 

 idea. I went therefore in a steamer to Puntarenas, the port of Costa Rica on 

 the Pacific. From there I went first to San Jose, the capital of the Republic, to 

 arrange the preliminaries for my excursions. The first of these was directed to 

 the active volcano Rincon de la Vieja, near the frontier of Nicaragua, thus uniting 

 my researches in this state with those made in Nicaragua. To avoid the necessity 

 of re-passing the same road which I travelled when coming from Puntarenas, I 

 went to Alejuela, the capital of the province of the same name, in the hope of 

 reaching the volcano by crossing the mountains. No such roads existing, I had to 

 proceed on that commonly used. 



In Liberia, the capital of the province of Guanacaste, I was informed of the 

 existence of many ancient graves in the Sardiiml district. Near the hacienda 

 Guachipilin, from which I ascended the volcano, I visited the ground on which 

 are many tumuli, said to be the burial places of the ancient inhabitants. These 

 tumuli are simply heaps of stones several feet in diameter, devoid of any uni- 

 formity of structure, very much like those which farmers in this country construct 

 from the stones collected in the fields. The only peculiarity about them was that 

 the base was formed of small stones, the size of the fist, on which rested the larger 

 stones forming the top of the tumulus. Some of them have been searched, with- 

 out finding anything except some pottery in fragments. Such fragments were 

 found in a larger tumulus about six feet wide and eighteen feet long. In this 

 and in some others I observed pieces of flag-stones two inches thick. About two 

 hundred mounds exist on the place. 



After my return from this excursion to San Jose, I started again to Cartago, the 

 second city of importance in the state, with the intention of reaching the Atlantic 



