68 SILVER ORE AND LIGNITE. Book L 
as they were of opinion that I was a native of the United 
States, they spoke in terms of admiration of that people ; 
but when they learned that I was born in Germany, one of 
them asked me, quite in a confidential manner, whether I did 
not think "que los Americanos son bestias." Upon my 
objecting to this expression it was revoked ; but the man, 
having once given vent to his feelings, could not abstain 
from expressing them in a milder form, by adding that, 
at least, the Americans were devils. " Pe o son demo- 
nios !" he exclaimed ; " demonios son estos hombres !" 
At Mateares I had a conversation with a young man of 
one of the more distinguished families of the country living 
at Managua. He stated that on the hacienda of San Lo- 
renzo, thirty miles from Mateares, on the coast of the 
Pacific, he had discovered a quicksilver mine. But the 
specimen he communicated to me, instead of being cinna- 
bar, proved to be red silver ore. This metallic vein must 
be in the vicinity of that which I intended to examine when 
I went to Jinotepet, and the ore is probably of the same 
nature as that of the latter. In the region between Ma- 
teares and the Pacific strata of lignite are found, and the 
young Nicaraguan said that he could show me the locality 
of a coal mine. This, however, is a more general feature 
in the geology of the Pacific side of Central America, and 
even of other Pacific regions of the continent ; as, for 
instance, of California, where small layers of tertiary coal 
are very general in the coast-range. In Central America, 
lignite, including amber, occasionally occurs from Costa- 
rica to Salvador, and, in all probability, farther south as 
well as farther north. Pieces of amber, some with insects 
in them, derived from the tertiary coal formation of the 
Bay of Tamarinda, I saw at Leon in possession of Dr. 
