122 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
that they were partly conquered, and their territories en- 
croached upon by the latter before the arrival of the Spaniards, 
as some of the Aztec names of places in Nicaragua do not 
appear to be such as could be given originally by the first 
inhabitants; thus Juigalpa, pronounced Hueygalpa, is 
southern Aztec for “ Big Town.” No town could be called 
the big town at first by those who saw it grow up gradually 
from small beginnings, but it is a likely enough name to be 
given by a conquering invader. Again Ometépec is nearly 
pure Aztec for Two Peaks, but the island itself only contains 
one, and the name was probably given by an invader who 
saw the two peaks of Ometépec and Madera from the shore 
of the lake, and thought they belonged to one island. The 
Lenca Indians nowhere appear to have built stone buildings, 
like the Quiches, and Lacandones of Guatemala, and the 
Mayas of Yucatan, who were probably much more nearly 
affiliated to the Nahuatls of Mexico than the Lencas. 
We reached the top of the dividing range, and now left the 
main road, taking a path to the left, that is very rocky and 
narrow. We began rapidly to descend, and found an entire 
change of climate on this side of the range. It had been 
raining for weeks at Libertad, and everywhere the ground 
was wet and swampy, but two miles on the other side of the 
range the ground was quite dry, and so it continued to 
Juigalpa. Dry gravelly hills, cover 1 with low scrubby 
bushes and trees, succeeded the damp grassy slopes we had 
been for hours travelling over. Prickly acacias, nancitos, 
guayavas, jicaras, were the principal trees, with here and 
there the one whose thick coriaceous leaves are used by the 
natives instead of sandpaper. The beds of the rivers were 
dry, or at the most contained only stagnant pools of water, 
until we reached the Juigalpa river, which rises far to the 
eastward; the north-east trade wind in crossing the great 
forest that clothes the Atlantic slope of the continent, gives 
up most of its moisture; and this range, rising about three 
thousand feet above the sea, intercepts nearly all that 
remains, so that only occasional showers reach Juigalpa. 
On one of the low gravelly hills that we passed, not far 
from the path, we saw a troop of the white-faced monkey 
(Cebus albifrons) on the ground, amongst low scattered trees. 
Their attitudes, some standing-up on their hind legs to get a 
