36 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Ciiap. III.—B. S. 
concur. If the Spanish-speaking people were as good 
poets as they are rhymesters, they would not have 
allowed these sounds to exist on their shores without 
haying clothed them in some poetic garb, instead of 
throwing a wet blanket on our nascent fancy by as¬ 
cribing them to a cold, wet, and slippery fish. The 
South Sea Islanders would have had innumerable 
stories about them, the Germans contrived to shape 
them into nursery tales for the rising generations of 
all nations, and the ancient Greeks preserved them in 
those classical, imperishable forms, which will be the 
admiration of mankind as long as its sense of the 
beautiful shall endure. 
Disembarking at Corinto, the principal port of Ni¬ 
caragua on the Pacific, I made inquiries as to the 
best way to Leon, and found that I should have to go 
by boat up an arm of the sea, land at a place called 
Embarquito, and proceed by mule to my destination. 
Corinto figures in most maps and geographical books 
under the name of Kealejo. But Bealejo, like Em¬ 
barquito, is merely an arm of the sea of the Port of 
Corinto. In fact Corinto is the genus, whilst Embar¬ 
quito and Bealejo are the species,—an Act of Congress 
is my authority. Neither of the two last-named places 
can be approached by vessels of any size, as used to be 
the case with Bealejo before it was silted up. At the 
meetings of the Boyal Geographical Society, some slur 
has been attempted to be cast upon this fine natural 
harbour; but I may state in parenthesis, that in 1856 
and 1859 my old friend and shipmate Captain PIull, 
B.N., took H.M.S. Havanah, a sailing frigate of 21 
