102 COUNTRY BETWEEN RIYAS AND BRITO. . Book I. 
both directions to the amount it has now in one. But in 
reference to any line that might be recommended between 
the lake of Managua and the Pacific Ocean, the above 
consideration, if I am not greatly mistaken, actually 
embraces an impossibility. From the statements in the 
fifth chapter, it results that the lake of Managua at the 
present time has no outlet whatever, or at least none 
during the dry season. Under these conditions that lake, 
in the most favourable case^ has a stationary level ; and 
as a double drainage would be necessary to connect it with 
the lower lake on one side, and with the Pacific Ocean on 
the other, there can be no doubt that a rapid decrease of 
level would be the result of its being included in the canal 
line. 
The country between Rivas and Brito is hilly, and in 
general must be very healthy. The whole tract from 
hence to the north-west, including the country around 
Jinotepet, and farther on, is in this, as in many other 
respects, highly fitted for the settlement of immigrants, if 
ever the stream of European emigration should be directed 
to Nicaragua. Here, while inhabiting a fertile, a healthy, 
and a most lovely country, they would have the inestimable 
advantage of a situation on the Pacific and on the Atlantic 
coast of the continent at once, a distance of a few miles 
being all that would separate the settler from the lake on 
one side, and from the ocean on the other. 
Leaving Rivas, the road, passing between plantations 
and gardens in the most charming situations, gradually 
ascends a range of hills ; when the summit is reached, the 
country forms a kind of table-land, with savanas, interrupted 
by bushes and clusters of trees. The coyol, or wine-palm, 
is growing scattered here and there over these prairies. 
Farther on towards the Pacific the road enters a forest, 
