NICARAGUA AND THE MOSQUITO COAST. 167 



mahogany. This huge timber is cut by the Indians of the inte- 

 rior, and hauled and shoved toward a river in the immediate 

 vicinity, thence floated in rafts of two or three logs, or often as a 

 single tree, down to the coast. Most of the banana plantations 

 are on the Bluefields or Escondido River. The mouth of the 

 river is about a mile north of Bluefields, and the plantations begin 

 about twenty miles above this point and thence cover its banks in 

 almost unbroken continuity for some distance beyond the city of 

 Rama, sixty miles up stream. To facilitate the handling and 

 shipping of the 'fruit, the plantations are always close to the 

 banks, and vary in depth from fifty to two thousand yards. 



FIG. 4. RAMA. 



The steamer Hendy, an old Mississippi River boat, whose light- 

 ness of draught makes it well adapted for steaming about the 

 shallow lagoons, plies regularly between Bluefields and Rama. 

 Leaving the former place at seven o'clock in the morning, the 

 trip to Rama begins by rounding a point of. land called "Old 

 Bank," a place which for a short time was the home of a small 

 German colony. This settlement was abandoned after repeated 

 trials and disasters ; the unfortunate colonists being finally com- 

 pelled to return to their native land, greatly reduced in number 

 and weakened by disease, and after being harassed by the Span- 

 iards and Indians. At this point the boat enters the Escondido 



