Treatment of Indians | a 
for these speculations, some children, and even adults, have 
been captured and brought down the river by the Ulleros, 
and all these have the usual features and coarse black hair 
of the Indians. One little child that Dr. Seemann and I 
saw at San Carlos, in 1870, had a few brownish hairs amongst 
the great mass of black ones; but this character may be 
found amongst many of the indigenes, and may result from 
a very slight admixture of foreign blood. I have seen 
altogether five children from the Rio Frio, and a boy about 
sixteen years of age, and they had all the common Indian 
features and hair; though it struck me that they appeared 
rather more intelligent than the generality of Indians. 
Besides these, an adult woman was captured by the rubber- 
men and brought down to Castillo, and I was told by several 
who had seen her that she did not differ in any way from 
the usual Indian type. 
The Guatuse (pronounced Watusa) is an animal about the 
size of a hare, very common in Central America, and good 
eating. It has reddish-brown fur, and the usual explanation 
of the Nicaraguans is that the Indians of the Rio Frio were 
called “ Guatuses ”’ because they had red hair. It is very 
common to find the Indian tribes of America called after 
wild animals, and my own opinion is that the origin of the 
fable about the red hair was a theory to explain why they 
were called Guatuses; for the natives of Nicaragua, and of 
parts much nearer home, are fond of giving fanciful explana- 
tions of the names of places and things: thus, I have been 
assured by an intelligent and educated Nicaraguan, that 
Guatemala was so called by the Spaniards because they 
found the guaté (a kind of grass) in that country bad, hence 
“guaté malo,” “bad guaté,’”—whereas every student of 
Mexican history knows that the name was the Spanish 
attempt to pronounce the old Aztec one of Quauhtemallan, 
which meant the Land of the Eagle. I shall have other 
occasions, in the course of my narrative, to show how careful 
a traveller in Central America must be not to accept the 
explanations of the natives of the names of places and things. 
The first people who ascended the Rio Frio were attacked 
by the Indians, who killed several with their arrows. Exag- 
gerated opinions of their ferocity and courage were in conse- 
quence for a long time prevalent, and the river remained 
