Crawford. J 
248 
[Feb. 18 
pach containing gold in sufficient quantities to give profits to the 
mine and mill owners now operating there. The general surface 
of the District is hilly and well watered, the isogeothermal plane 
of invariable annual temperature is 18 to 20 feet below the sur- 
face, it dips down several feet below the depth in the adjoining 
sections of this country. Each cerro bears evidences of great 
erosion, and indicates the fact — now confirmed by practical min- 
ing there — that meteoric and other oxidizing influences have ex- 
tended deep into the body of the cerros, therefore, the gold near 
the surface is easily obtained even by crude Indian modes. A 
few melted masses of gold, weighing from one-half of one ounce 
to two ounces each, pierced with holes and in form supposed to 
have been made and used as ornaments anterior to Spanish oc- 
cupation times, have been discovered in that District, one piece 
near Cerro Amerrique. The fair inference is that the Amerrique 
Indians who occupied that part of Nicaragua at the time of its 
discovery by C. Columbo, September 1502, did pick up and occa- 
sionally mine, melt and use gold for sacred or ornamental pur- 
poses. 
The few small bodies, remnants of the once large tribe of 
Amerrique Indians, now existing in the pathless or dim “pica- 
doed” forests among the cerros, between La Libertad and Rama, 
about Lat. 12 deg. 10 min. N. and Long. 84 deg. 15 min. W. 
and Pearl Lagoon, about Lat. 12 deg. 32 min. N. and Long. 83 
deg. 45 min. W., and the mouth of Rio Matagalpa (Awaltara) 
about Lat. 12 deg. 47 min. W. and Long. 83 deg. 33 min. W., 
are now usually called “Huleros” (or “Hule” — India Rubber — 
collectors) , their occupation being to find in the forests species of 
Siplionia , Castilloa etc. trees and deeply scarify them and collect 
the exuding emulsion and separate the contained elastic (“India”) 
Rubber; this “India” Rubber they carry for over 100 miles on 
their backs to sell to merchants in Rama or at the mouth of Rio 
Matagalpa. These Indians have now scarified to death nearly all 
the Elastic Rubber producing trees to be found in their wilder- 
ness : consequently a few, from necessity, work for several weeks 
each year in the mines in the District of La Libertad ; but recent 
railroad surveys in that district have influenced the Indians to 
move north, deeper into the uninhabited forests; on the Rio 
Seguio (a confluent with the Rio Mico of the Rio Escandido) 
where they have cleared, on the sides or tops of a few cerros, 
