EIVEES OF NICAEAGUA. 277 



of Herbias, while the English call itWanks or Yankes, this confusing nomenclature 

 being due partly to the different languages current along its banks, partly to the 

 lack of historic unity of the fluvial basin. While the Spanish colonists were 

 settling in the upper valleys of the Rio Segovia, foreign corsairs of every nation 

 were infesting its lower course. 



Pent in between mountain ranges, the Wanks drains a relatively narrow basin, 

 but, being exposed to the moist east winds, it is a copious stream accessible to small 

 craft for a distance of about 170 miles below the r.ipids. At its mouth it projects 

 its delta far seawards between banks of a reddish alluvium washed down from 

 the upper valleys. The Wanks drains an area of nearly 12,000 square miles, 

 has a course of 400 miles, and a mean discharge of 17,000 cubic feet per 

 second. 



Between this river and the San Juan, the largest watercourse is the E,io 

 Grande, Avhose main branch, the Matagalpa, probably at one time flowed west to 

 Lake Managua. But having been dammed up by the heaps of scoriae ejected 

 from Guisisil, its course was deflected southwards and eastwards to the Atlantic. 

 In one part of its valley it takes the name of Bulbul, while the Sambos of 

 Mosquitia call it Awaltara. At its mouth it communicates through lateral 

 channels with other watercourses, and according to Levy's chart there is a con- 

 tinuous series of backwaters, false rivers, and passages extending for about 250 

 miles from Cape Gracias-à-Dius to the Blewfields lagoon, separated from the sea 

 by a strip of sandy beaches and mangrove thickets. Most of these waters are 

 narrow and obstructed by islands ; but the Pearl Cay and Blewfields lagoons are 

 veritable inland seas, in parts overgrown by mangroves, but still leaving vast 

 spaces open to navigation. The Blewfields basin, said to be so named from a Dutch 

 corsair, Blieveldt, receives a river of like name, called also the Rio Escondido 

 about its middle course. 



From the geological standpoint the present coast between Cape Gracias à-Dios 

 and Monkey Point indicates a state of transition between the old shoreline, that 

 is, the west side of the lagoons, and the great Mosquito Bank, which advances 

 seawards for a variable distance of from 80 to 100 miles and which comprises 

 numerous submerged and upheaved cays. One of these reefs is the JSIosquito Cay, 

 which has given its name to the whole bank, a name afterwards extended to the 

 east coast itself and its inhabitants Some of the islands on or near the outer 

 margin of the banks are large and elevated enough to support a few settlements. 

 Such are Tieja Providencia and San Andres, which belong politically to the 

 Republic of Colombia, the little Corn Islands and Pearl Cays, dependent on 

 Nicaragua. 



South of Monkey Point the Rio Indio reaches the coast just above the delta 

 of the San Juan, which is the most copious of all the Nicaraguan rivers, but which 

 only partly belongs to the republic. Most of its basin is, in fact, comprised 

 within the neighbouring state of Costa Rica, though its farthest headstream rises 

 in the gi-eat lacustrine depression west of the Nicaraguan main range. Although 

 the San Juan at present drains this depression to the Atlantic, there was a time 



