GUAYAVA. 
83 
Chap. YI.—B. S.] 
earlier days, the ore was now too poor to make the 
working, on a small scale, profitable, and the assay of 
specimens we took away fully bore out this view. 
ISTor did the place seem healthy, owing probably to 
the occasional overflowing of the river. Two young 
Americans, in charge of the mine and mill, looked 
like men already in their graves, thin, weak, and 
worn down by fever. I advised them to try at once 
change of climate. Unfortunately they did not take 
the advice,-—who ever does take sound and timely 
advice ?—and both of them have since died. It was 
evident, from all we saw, that in this instance the 
steam-engine would not get the better of the virgin 
forest, that the white man’s energy had here been mis¬ 
directed, and that the rank tropical vegetation would 
shortly once more assume its full sway.* 
The result of our journey through Hew Segovia and 
Matagalpa in search of good gold and silver mines 
having thus been unsuccessful, it only remained for us 
to try Chontales, a region on the Atlantic side of Lake 
Nicaragua, which had been brought to the notice of 
European capitalists by Captain Bedford Pirn, B.N. 
Prom a paper submitted by him to the British Associa- 
* £e The Pillar Mines are about seventy miles north-east of Leon, 
and near the river Santa Eosa. A great quantity of work has been done 
on the lode by sinking shafts and driving levels. The direction 
of the lode is north and south, within a few degrees, the width about 
six feet, composed chiefly of quartz. We took several samples from 
this lode at the bottom level, and washed them carefully, but could 
not see any traces of gold in any one of them. There are two steam- 
engines, one a 25 -horse-power, driving a ten-head stamp-crushing rock; 
the second 15 -horse-power, driving two arrastras.”—J. TIolman. 
G 2 
