Across Nicaragua with Transit and Machete. 331 



the impenetrable veil of the tropical thicket, feast upon views of 

 the distant mountains, the crisp waves of the Lal<e, and the blue 

 expanse of the Pacific. During the day he meets black-eyed and 

 brown-limbed senoritas, instead of wild hogs and turkeys, and at 

 night as he turns in, he hears, not the scream of tigers, but the 

 songs of the lavandera^s ecru daughters floating across the stream 

 which supplies their wash-tubs and his camp. 



The first grand natural feature which arrests attention in the 

 most cursory examination of the map of Nicaragua is the Great 

 Lake. This lake with an area of some three thousand square 

 miles and a water-shed of about eight thousand square miles, is 

 unique in the large proportion of its own area to that of its water- 

 shed. A result of this large proportion of water surface to 

 drainage area, at once evident, is the very gradual changes of 

 level of the lake and their confinement within very narrow limits. 

 The difference between the level of the lake at the close of an 

 abnormally dry season and its level at the close of an abnormally 

 wet season is not more than ten feet, and the usual annual fluctu- 

 ation is about five feet. 



The next features that arrest attention are, first, the very 

 narrow ribbon of land intervening between the western shore of 

 the Lake and the Pacific, and second, the entire absence of lateral 

 tributaries of any size to the upjjer half of the San Juan River. 

 The river is in fact, as it was originally most aptly named, simply 

 the " Desaguadero " or drain of the Lake. 



The length of this river is one hundred and twenty miles, from 

 the Lake to the Caribbean Sea, and its total fall from one hundred 

 to one hundred and ten feet. Nature has separated the river 

 into two nearly equal divisions, presenting distinct and opposite 

 characteristics. 



From Lake Nicaragua to the mouth of the Rio San Carlos, a 

 distance of sixty-one miles, in which occur several rapids, the 

 total descent is fifty feet, quite irregularly distributed however. 

 The surface slopes of the river vary from as much as 83.38 inches 

 per mile for a short distance at Castillo rapids, to only .90 inch 

 per mile through the Agua Muerte, the dead water below the 

 Machuca rapids. . 



The average width of the river through this upper section is 

 seven hundred feet, the minimum four hundx'ed and twenty. Li 

 some parts of the Agua Muerte the depth varies from fifty to 

 seventy-five feet. 



