Pine Forests 183 
offered us mules to take us as far as Jinotega, charging us 
three times as much as was usual; and we determined to go 
on there, and seek animals to continue our journey. We 
got our own mules put into a good portrero of Para grass 
just below the town, resisting our host’s invitation to leave 
them with him, fearing he might use them instead of feeding 
them. He had to send out to his hacienda for the fresh 
ones; and although he promised them at seven, it was ten 
o’clock the next day before they arrived; and the delay in 
waiting for them quickened my appreciation of the laziness 
and want of punctuality of the people of Matagalpa. 
On leaving the town, we crossed the river, and ascended 
a range on the other side. Here, for the first time, I got 
amongst pine trees in the tropics; and they gave a very 
different aspect to the country from what I had before seen. 
No brushwood grows under them, and they stand apart at 
regular intervals, not shouldering each other, as in the 
Atlantic forest, where the trees crowd together, each trying 
to overtop its neighbour. No lianas hang from the trees, 
and, excepting a few narrow-leaved Tillandsias, no epiphytes 
nestle on the branches and trunks. Below, instead of 
shrubby palms, large-leaved heliconias, and curious melas- 
tome, the ground was bare and brown from the fallen leaves 
of the pines, excepting that in some places light grass had 
sprung up; in others the common bracken-fern of Europe. 
All that I thought characteristic of a tropical forest had 
disappeared; and the whistling of the wind through the 
pine-tops, which I had not heard for years, carried me back 
in imagination amongst the Canadian forests. The road 
was rocky, and to the left rose mountains of nearly bare 
cliffs, up which clung straggling pines, reaching to the 
summits, relieving, but not concealing, their nakedness. 
Clumps of evergreen oaks were the only other trees; and 
these, like the pines, grew in social groups on the hills. In 
the valleys, the oaks and pines gave place to a variety of 
trees and brushwood, different species of acacia being the 
most abundant. Occasionally a tree-cactus appeared, its 
curious flattened, kite-shaped joints, covered with prickles, 
looking like great leaves, and its stem, formed of the same, 
thickened at the bottom into a round filiform trunk, not 
differing much from the trees around, but in the branches 
