and lagoons, and had passed the site of the proposed Ochoa dam in the darkness.

At about ten o'clock we reached the foot of the Machuca rapids, where we stopped at a little station to deliver some mail and to get up sufficient steam to run the next mile. The rapids were not so bad as I expected, and we passed them without difficulty, although rather slowly. At three o'clock we reached Castillo, where the custom house is, and where we had been told that we should have no trouble, as arrangements had been made for passing all our possessions through without examination. As a matter of fact, however, no word had been received regarding us, and had it not been for an influential acquaintance whom we first met upon the boat, some of our effects would have been seized. We experienced a good deal of annoyance and delay, but finally got through and returned to the boat for the night. From the hurricane deck we had a good view of the interior of the custom house, and some of the proceedings which we witnessed amused us considerably. As all duties are determined by weight, it was manifestly proper that everything should be weighed, but the sight of three straw hats poised in solitary state upon large platform scales was a pleasing novelty. During the evening I received a visit from the Commandante of the Port, who had evidently

been dining "not wisely but too well" and was embarrassingly friendly. He finally departed after shaking hands a dozen times, and saying Good-bye, my dear!" in affectionate accents. I afterwards saw him enforcing discipline among his barefooted soldiers with a cocked revolver.

The town is not uninteresting. There is an old Spanish fort, from which the place is named, upon a steep hill close to the river, and along the bank runs the single street of the town. All the houses drain into it, and the result is a slimy, offensive thoroughfare, encumbered with pigs, chickens, and naked children. The best houses are wretched structures of wood and adobe, while the others are built of cane, and can be seen through like lattice work. The population of the place, although small, seems much in excess of its lodging capacity, and the quantity of clothing distributed among the people strikes a stranger as insufficient. Men bathe in the river within a few feet of the street, and women do their washing clad only in skirts, whose wet, transparent folds accentuate rather than conceal their forms.

In 1780, Castillo, then a Spanish military post, was assailed and captured by English troops under Colonel Polson, assisted by a naval contingent commanded by Captain (afterwards Lord) Nelson, in a gallant endeavor to accomplish a project devised by General Sir

John Dalling, Governor of Jamaica. This project, as has been explained in a previous chapter, was to take possession of the San Juan river, Lake Nicaragua, and the cities of Granada and Leon, thus interrupting the communication of the Spaniards between their northern and southern colonies, and at the same time obtaining control of the most practicable route for an interoceanic canal. Dalling's plans were well conceived, but his ignorance of local conditions led to disastrous failure. Five hundred men detailed to accomplish this blow at Spain's sovereignty were convoyed by Nelson from Port Royal to Cape Gracias á Dios, and thenceafter being reinforced by part of the 79th Regiment along the Mosquito Coast, stopping frequently to communicate with and propitiate the Indians, who were induced to furnish canoes and boatmen for the ascent of the river. It was not intended that Nelson should accompany the expedition beyond Greytown, but he was not the man to turn back when so much was to be accomplished, and with a force of seamen he joined the party as a volunteer. An advance guard of two hundred men, embarked in canoes and ship's boats, set forth against a foe entrenched in an unknown tropical wilderness and aided by climatic and physical conditions with which General Dalling had neglected to reckon. It was the end of