104 A JICAEAL. Book I. 
to return to Kivas, and thence start anew for San Juan 
del Sur. 
From Eivas to the latter place the traveller has to 
follow a road which, after having reached the shore of the 
Pacific, leads along it into the State of Costarica. With 
the exception of a few cattle-farms situated in the woods, 
the country in this direction may be called a wilderness, 
exhibiting nature, however, in great variety. Here I saw 
for the first time what is called a Jicaral, or tract of land 
overgrown by jicara trees. It is quite a characteristic 
feature in the country, and must be described in a few 
words. The tree is the Crescentia Cujete, or calabash-tree, 
well known by the use which is made of the hard shell of 
its fruit in manufacturing vessels for domestic purposes. 
The drinking cups, constructed from a smaller species of 
an oval form, are called jicaras, while the bowls or basins 
prepared from a large variety of a compressed subglobular 
shape, sometimes of as much as one foot in diameter, are 
named guaeales. For the purpose of manufacturing these 
vessels, the tree is cultivated. Here, however, I am 
speaking of the wild tree, which bears fruits of the size of 
a large orange. The tree is small, with a great number 
of long, thin, worm-shaped branches, covered all along 
with small and very poor leaves of their own, but bearing 
an additional vegetation of parasitic Bromeliacece, in tufts 
of stiff leaves striped red and green, in parrot-like colours, 
so that a superficial observer may believe these tufts to be 
the flowers of the tree. To form an idea of a Jicaral, a 
number of these trees must be imagined scattered over a 
horizontal portion of the country, the soil of which consists 
of a black stiff clay, and which is so situated as to become 
overflowed in the rainy season, when the entire district is 
transformed into a marsh. During the dry season the soil 
