30 GEAKADA — CHAEACTER OF THE SOIL. Book I. 
and you cannot finish one page of a letter without feeling 
the accumulating grains under your fingers. Glass windows 
being unknown in Nicaragua, no protection is possible 
against this annoying effect of a climate which in other 
respects is a most delightful one. I may state in connexion 
with this subject, that mosquitos are scarcely seen at Gra- 
nada, and that in general I do not remember having been 
troubled by them anywhere in the interior of Nicaragua. 
The sand I am speaking of contains such a number of 
grains of titanic iron, already mentioned in reference to the 
soil of San Juan del Norte, that you may collect this 
substance anywhere in your room — from its floor, from the 
material of its walls, from the surface of the furniture — by 
a magnet. During the rainy season, when heavy showers 
are of frequent occurrence, torrents are often rushing 
through the streets, but as they have a sufficient slope to 
let the water flow off without delay, while the sand washed 
out of the loamy soil remains covering the surface, the 
streets of Granada may be called very clean even after a 
rain. 
These showers are sometimes exceedingly violent. I 
have known an instance when, at the beginning of a rain- 
fall at Granada,, a little parrot, whose wings had been 
clipped to prevent it from flying away, was drowned in our 
court before it had had time to take refuge under a shelter 
not distant beyond twelve or fifteen paces, and after the 
rain had continued for an hour, the court was laid com- 
pletely under water to a considerable depth, though it had 
a drain of not less than one foot in diameter. 
The soil in the neighbourhood of Granada is intersected 
by deep ravines, which have been enlarged and otherwise 
modified in their character by the recurring effect of such 
violent and copious rains ; but which, without any doubt, 
