96 MUYOGALPA — CUTANEOUS DISEASES. Book I. 
shelter, but at least the good-will and services of its inmates 
and the comforts of the wooden bench before its door; 
advantages not at all to be despised under the circum- 
stances. Cacao and the different fruits of the country are 
the chief productions of the island, the greater part of 
which, however, is a wilderness of forests interrupted by 
savanas and tracts of park-like country. It abounds in 
all sorts of game, — as deer, different kinds of fowl of the 
family of the curassows common throughout Nicaragua, 
monkeys, panthers, &c. 
I went to the village of Muyogalpa. The name, in 
the Aztec language, means Mosquito Town, from moyotl, 
mosquito, and calpa, a group of houses. The road led 
through the bush and over patches of savanas, where some 
half-starved horses and cows were straggling about to find 
nourishment between the parched grass. During the wet 
season when the savanas are covered with a fresh vege- 
tation, these animals are better provided. Some of the 
trees and bushes were covered with beautiful flowers. 
The habitations of the village are built either of canes or 
of mud, thatched with straw or palm leaves. Some of 
them stand in a group on the shore of the lake, where the 
situation of the village is marked by some very tall cocoa- 
palms. The rest of the huts are scattered in the bush. 
In the family of one of the principal men of the village, 
I saw a boy of four years, with large horny excrescences on 
various parts of the body. They were of a conical form, and 
looked very much as if the top of a cow's horn had been 
sawed off and planted on the skin. As one of these, de- 
formities was placed on his forehead, he looked exactly as if 
the real horn of an animal was growing there. He had 
another growing on the chin, a third, of smaller dimensions 
but very pointed, on the under lip, and several others were 
