El Salto Waterfall 127 
but it is not often seen, as it is a shy bird and frequents the 
deepest shades. 
There were several of the yellow-breasted trogon (T. 
melanocephalus) sitting amongst the branches, and now and 
then darting off after insects. This species often breaks into 
the nest of the termites, and feeds on the soft-bodied workers. 
Another trogon about here, with red breast (7. elegans), has 
a peculiarly harsh, croaking voice, very different from 
the other species, and more resembling the cry of a mot- 
mot. 
As I rode back over the savannahs to Juigalpa, the nearly 
vertical rays of the sun were reflected from the dry, hot, 
sandy soil. Not a sound was now heard from the numerous 
birds. The shrill cicada still piped its never-ending treble. 
No wind was stirring, and the air over the parched soil 
quivered with heat. 
I was glad to get back to my “ hotel,” and have breakfast, 
with chocolate served up in jicaras. After an hour’s rest, 
I started with Velasquez in search of the Indian antiquities. 
We rode up the right side of the river, high up above the 
stream, as the banks are rocky and precipitous; then down 
a shelving road to a lower level, and across undulating 
savannahs thinly timbered. After about three miles, we 
came out on a small flat plain, probably alluvial, about twenty 
acres in extent, mostly covered with grass, with a few scattered 
jicara trees. On the further end of this plain was a mud- 
walled, thatched hut, called “ El Salto,” from a fall of the 
river close by. A man was lounging about, and a woman 
bruising maize for tortillas. The man told us that the 
“‘ worked stones,” as he called them, were on the side of the 
plain we had crossed. Before going to look at them, we went 
down to the river to see the waterfall. Just opposite the 
house the Juigalpa river, which comes flowing down over a flat 
bed of trachyte, leaps down a deep narrow chasm that it has 
cut in the hard rock. This chasm is about fifty feet deep, 
and only twenty wide. The river was low, and poured all its 
water in at the end of the deep notch; but when flooded, it 
must rush in over the sides also, and make a magnificent 
turmoil of waters. Even when I saw it, the water, as it 
rushed along at the bottom of the narrow chasm, boiling and 
surging amongst great masses of fallen rock with a steady 
