8 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



he shut his mouth and opened his eyes, and gave me a 

 cordial welcome. Don Sabino was a Colombian, who 

 had been banished for ten years, as he said, for services 

 rendered his country ; and having found his way to 

 Masaya, had married the pretty young half-breed, and 

 set up as a doctor. Inside the door, behind a little stock 

 of sugar, rice, sausages, and chocolate, was a formidable 

 array of jars and bottles, exhibiting as many colours and 

 as puzzling labels as an apothecary's shop at home. 



I had time to take a short walk around the town, and 

 turning down the road, at the distance of half a mile 

 came to the brink of a precipice, more than a hundred 

 feet high, at the foot of which, and a short distance be- 

 yond, was the Lake of Masaya. The descent was al- 

 most perpendicular, in one place by a rough ladder, and 

 then by steps cut in the rock. I was obliged to stop 

 while fifteen or twenty women, most of them young girls, 

 passed. Their water -jars were made of the shell of a 

 large gourd, round, with fanciful figures scratched on 

 them, and painted or glazed, supported on the back by 

 a strap across the forehead, and secured by fine net- 

 work. Below they were chattering gayly, but by the 

 time they reached the place where I stood they were 

 silent, their movements very slow, their breathing hard, 

 and faces covered with profuse perspiration. This was 

 a great part of the daily labour of the women of the 

 place, and in this way they procured enough for domes- 

 tic use ; but every horse, mule, or cow was obliged to go 

 by a circuitous road of more than a league for water. 

 Why a large town has grown up and been continued so 

 far from this element of life, I do not know. The Span- 

 iards found it a large Indian village, and as they immedi- 

 ately made the owners of the soil their drawers of water, 

 they did not feel the burden ; nor do their descendants 



now. 



