CHAPTER V 
Geographical position of Santo Domingo—Physical geography—The 
inhabitants—Mixed races—Negroes and Indians compared— 
Women—Establishment of the Chontales Gold-Mining Company ° 
—My house and garden—Fruits—Plantains and bananas—Prob- 
ably not indigenous to America—Propagated from shoots—Do 
not generally mature their seeds—Fig-trees—Granadillos and 
Papaws—Vegetables—Dependence of flowers on insects for their 
fertilisation—Insect plagues—Leaf-cutting ants—Their method 
of defoliating trees—Their nests—Some trees are not touched by 
the ants—Foreign trees are very subject to their attack—Method 
of destroying the ants—Migration of the ants from a nest attacked 
—cCorrosive sublimate causes a sort of madness amongst them— 
Indian plan of preventing their ascending young trees—Leaf- 
cutting ants are fungus growers and eaters—The sagacity of the 
ants. 
THE gold-mining village of Santo Domingo is situated in the 
province of Chontales, Nicaragua, in lat. 12° 16’ N. and 
long. 84° 59’ W., nearly midway between the Atlantic and 
the Pacific, where Central America begins to widen out 
northward of the narrow isthmus of Panama and Costa Rica. 
It is in the midst of the great forest that covers most of the 
Atlantic slope of Central America, and which continues 
unbroken from where we had entered it, at Pital, eastward 
to the Atlantic; westward it terminates in a sinuous margin 
about seven miles from the village, and there commence the 
lightly timbered and grassy plains and savannahs stretching 
to the Lake of Nicaragua. The surface of the land in the 
forest region forms a succession of ranges and steep valleys, 
covered with magnificent timber and much undergrowth. 
Santo Domingo lies about 2000 feet above the level of the 
sea, and the hills around it rise from 500 to 1000 feet higher. 
It is built in the bend of a small stream, the head waters of a 
branch of the Blewfields river, on a level, low piece of ground, 
with the brook winding almost round it, and, beyond that, 
encircled by an amphitheatre of low hills in the hollow. of 
which it lies. The road to the mines runs through it, and 
forms the main street, having on each side thatched stores 
and irregularly built houses. The inhabitants, about three 
50 
