234 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. XIV.—B. R. 
The town itself is simply a collection of wooden 
houses, those of the better sort imported from the 
United States, while the habitations of the poorer 
classes are mere huts. They are all raised two or 
three feet from the ground, either upon brick pillars 
placed at regular intervals along each side and down 
the middle, or upon wooden piles distributed under the 
bottom in the same manner; the ground is a very 
porous sand, covered with a short coarse grass, upon 
which, however, cattle and horses seem to thrive. A 
few feet below the surface, at any part of the flat upon 
which the houses are built, water is found, but the 
site is by no means swampy; for the great pools every¬ 
where visible after a heavy fall of rain disappear al¬ 
most as soon as deposited. There are no made roads 
or side walks, and the traffic is not so great as ever to 
give the grass a downtrodden appearance; in fact the 
place gives the impression of a number of white¬ 
washed houses, with red roofs, planted in a grass field. 
There is no church with the exception of the Roman 
Catholic one, built since the place was given up to 
the Nicaraguans, but of Stores there are any quantity, 
in each of which you may either 11 liquor-up ” or invest 
in india-rubber, sarsaparilla, tortoise-shell, logwood, or 
in short any of the multifarious products of Central 
America. 
A few days after our arrival, my customary weekly 
dinner to the officers of the ship took place, and I 
seized the opportunity to glean their various impres¬ 
sions of the country and people of which they were 
destined to see so much. 
