The Upland Indians 189 
The only ingenious thing about the place was a sort of stove, 
dome-shaped, made of clay, with two holes through the top 
like a cooking-stove, on which they put their earthenware 
cooking vessels. I turned into my hammock early, with all 
my clothes and my boots on, and my coat buttoned tightly 
round me, as the bleak wind found many a crevice to whistle 
through, and the open network of the hammock, agreeable 
enough in the warm lowlands, was too slight a protection 
against the cold of the mountains. A few poles placed across 
the doorway partially closed it, but some of the smallest 
pigs got through, and were rooting and grunting amongst 
our baggage all night. 
As soon as daylight broke next morning we were up, stiff, 
chilled, and cramped, and got some hot coffee made, which 
warmed us a little. We then had a better look round than 
we had had the night before. It was a most desolate spot, 
with scarcely any grass; and a poor half-starved horse came 
up to get a small feed of maize. 
The people of the mountain regions of Europe cannot, if 
they would, take up land in the fertile lowlands, as they are 
already occupied, but in the central provinces of Nicaragua 
the greater part of the land is unappropriated, and these 
people might, if they liked, make their homesteads where, 
with one-half the labour they spend on their barren moun- 
tain ridge, they might live in abundance. But they have 
been born and bred where they live, and knowing how strong 
is the force of custom and how attached the Indians are to 
their homes, I do not wonder that they stay from generation 
to generation on this bleak range. I can imagine that if 
removed to the lowlands they would sigh for their mountain 
home, to smell the fragrance of the pine trees, and to hear 
once more the wind whistling through their branches. I 
have already noticed how the Indians cling generation after 
generation to the same spot, even when a short removal 
would be manifestly to their advantage. I fear there is a 
more ignoble reason that has as much to do with this as their 
love of home, their confirmed and innate laziness. They 
shrink from any labour that they are not forced to undertake. 
As an instance, no one during at least two generations that 
the house had been occupied had brought in even a log of 
wood for a seat, and a table would, I fancy, be beyond their 
