NICARAGUA. 



235 



and the Spaniards were most likely to be 

 well-informed on the subject ; but whether 

 these lakes are connected by a river or not 

 — and one traveller^ Orlando Roberts^ con- 

 fidently asserts that they are not — it is agreed 

 that the distance between the lake of Leon^ and 

 the lake of Nicaragua^ is but short and not 

 impracticable for a canal.^ 



The lake of Nicaragua is 123 miles in length, 

 and forty in breadth in most places. The depth 

 is sufficient already for brigs of fourteen guns. 

 The Spaniards had one of these and several 

 gun-boats upon it, and an English merchant has 



* It is singular that no very authentic information has 

 been published on the geography of this interior part of 

 Central America. A Costa Rica merchant informed the 

 captain of the Ariadne in 1833, that the two lakes are 

 joined by a river, but not a navigable one, as there is a fall 

 quite across it at one point. This river of course flows 

 into the Nicaragua, which empties its waters by the St. 

 Juan into the Atlantic. The Geographical Society will, I 

 trust, soon clear up all uncertainty on these points. The 

 whole distance from sea to sea, from Realejo to St. Juan de 

 Nicaragua, is 240 geographical miles. 



