38 LA JOYA. Book T. 
with almost impenetrable forests. Connected with it is a 
little group of hills, partly covered with savanas, standing 
in the rear of the city, at a few miles' distance in a south- 
westerly direction. I have been on the summit of one of 
them, and was recompensed for my trouble by a beautiful 
view over the plain and lake. But there is another in- 
terest connected with these hills which causes me to men- 
tion them. It is generally believed, as I have often heard 
at Granada, that they are slowly and continually growing 
higher. Such a fact is by no means impossible in a region 
of powerful volcanic activity such as this ; but I could not 
learn by what means it had been ascertained by the inha- 
bitants. 
On the way to the hills just mentioned, and about a 
mile from the city, a deep circular chasm is seen, sunk 
into the general level of the surrounding country, which, 
at that place, may have reached an elevation of one or 
two hundred feet above the level of the lake. There is 
little doubt that it once must have been a volcanic crater. 
An entrance into this chasm exists on one side, where the 
wall is split and the general level of the land has a depres- 
sion. At the bottom of it is a "platanar" or plantain 
garden, which seemed to be in a most luxuriant condition. 
Trees are growing at the foot of the perpendicular wall of 
rocks by which this locality is surrounded, their tops reach- 
ing up beyond the edge of the circular precipice, so as to 
make it difficult to get a glimpse at the enchanted garden 
below. The place is called La Joya — " the gem." 
A few miles north of Granada a swampy lagoon begins, 
following the shore of the lake in that direction as far as 
the neighbourhood of the Estero de Fanaloya, or Eio de 
Tipitapa, which is the connexion of the lake of Nicaragua 
with that of Managua. During the dry season it is an 
