erns, where passengers feed, and swing their hammocks
for the night. During the day one may bathe here
in safety, as it is said the aUigators frequent this por-
tion of the lake only during the night. Very kind of
the allig-ators.
Across the narrow strip of land, the only bar to un- interrupted water communication between the two i|i oceans, travellers proceed on mules and donkeys, '" women riding some side-ways and some astride. The ride is delightful. Half the way the road is level and straight, covered by a dark forest so dense in places that there seems scarcely standing room for the trees ; and the interstices are so filled with matted branches, leaves, coppice, parasites, and other vines, as in places to prevent the sun's rays from ever touch- ing the ground. The remainder of the road winds through rolling hills, then scales a lofty mountain, and descends to the sea. Thirty board houses, shingled and painted, stretched along the shore of a small bay^ constitutes the town of San Juan del Sur, which seems to be a cross between Chagres and Aspinwall. As at Panamd., the shelving beach does not permit the small boats to approach nearer than about twen- ty-five yards from the water's edge, and passengers must be carried aboard on the backs of the boatmen. Here steamers anchor about one hundred and fifty yards from land.
A hundred miles north we pass Realejo, one of the coal stations of the Nicaraguan line. The harbor is a good one, being an indentation of the shore line with an island at the entrance. Three miles from the town, which consists of one-story tiled adobe houses, and contains a squalid population of about four hun- dred persons, a dock has been built, to which ocean vessels may be made fast.
Thus the Central American coast is passed; and thus racing with the sun, down toward the equator, and up toward the pole, round by the southern cross.
