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—Comparison between Greytown, Pernambuco, 
and Maceio—Wild fruits—Plants—Parrots, toucans, and tanagers 
— Butterflies and beetles—Mimetic forms — Alligators — Boy 
drowned at Blewfields by an alligator—Their method of catching 
wild pigs. 
AT noon on the 15th February 1868, the R.M.S.S. Solent, in 
which I was a passenger, anchored off Greytown, 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 watershed 
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 
Juan is a noble river, and even in the dry months, from 
March to June, there is sufficient water coming down from 
the lake to keep open a fine harbour, if it were not that about 
twenty miles above its mouth it begins to dissipate its force 
by sending off a large branch called the Colorado river, and 
lower down parts with more of its waters by side channels. 
Twenty years ago the main body of water ran past Grey- 
town; there was then a magnificent port, and large ships 
sailed up to the town, but for several years past the Colorado 
branch has been taking away more and more of its waters, 
3 A 
