74 FRENCH COLONIZATION PROJECT. Book I. 
they were attacked, and five and twenty of them were 
killed, after which he conquered Realejo and then made 
the map." .... The reader does not expect me to 
explain the dark meaning of this speech, with which I was 
introduced to the good people of Saragosa. 
Amongst the more distinguished men whose acquaintance 
I made at Leon, was the military governor of the city, 
Colonel Don Francisco Diaz Zapata, who formerly had 
been prefect of the department of Nuevo Segovia. The 
colonel, I was informed, was a great musical composer, 
and one of his symphonies was executed at a public concert 
during my stay at Leon. At the colonel's house I saw a 
Frenchman, M. Meyonnet, who had entered into a contract 
with the Nicaraguan government for the establishment of a 
French colony on the Rio Cocos. On the maps which 
had appeared up to that time, this river has been laid 
down as being identical with the Bluefield river. From 
the information, however, which Colonel Zapata gave me, 
and which was corroborated by another gentleman of 
Leon well acquainted with those regions, it results that 
the river of New Segovia, or Ocotal, under the different 
names of Rio Cangrejal, Cocos, Segovia, Oro, Yare, 
Herbias, Wanks, and Cape River, runs to Cape Gracias a 
Dios, where it empties itself into the sea, while the Blue- 
field river, under the names of the Escondido and Boswas, 
has its source in Matagalpa and Upper Mosquitia or 
Chontales, and in this manner the latest maps have placed 
it. Of the French colonization project no farther notice 
has reached me. 
General Munoz introduced me to a distinguished citizen 
of Leon, the owner of extensive lands in the farthest north- 
eastern part of Matagalpa ; but having incurred the ill- 
