wonderful discoveries which Mr. Stephens made
in his low-priced city, the story is much too extensive to be
given here, and those who would know more about these
remarkable ruins must refer to his "Incidents of Travel in
Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan," which will be found
abundantly worth perusal.]

THE ROUTE OF THE NICARAGUA CANAL.

JULIUS FROEBEL.

[The waters which it is proposed to utilize in the construction
of the Nicaragua Canal, mainly those of the San Juan River and
the Lake of Nicaragua, are of sufficient interest to call for
some description at our hands, and we subjoin, from Froebel's
"Seven Years of Travel in Central America," an account of a
journey on those waters.]

At that time [1850] steamboats were not yet plying on the San Juan River
and the Lake of Nicaragua, and I had to content myself with the
accommodations of one of the large canoes of the natives called
_bongos_, which were then the principal means of transport between the
coast and the interior, for passengers as well as for merchandise. In
company with two Americans, who, like myself, were anxious to proceed to
Granada, I hired one of the largest of these clumsy little crafts,
manned with ten boatmen or _marineros_, together with their captain or
_patron_, all of them colored people from the interior. We laid in
provisions for a fortnight, such being the full time of a passage which
is now performed by steamers in two days.

We left San Juan on the 23d of November, and arrived at Granada on the
5th of the following month. In reference to the beauties of nature the
trip is one of the most interesting that can be made, though the state
of my health prevented my enjoying it.... An open shed, furnished with a
hammock and surrounded by a plantain garden of half an acre, was the
only improvement in an extent of more than a hundred miles. With this
single exception, and with that of the site of the old castle of San
Juan, more generally known by the popular name of _Castillo Viejo_, the
banks were covered with trees to the water's edge, their branches often
bearing a vegetation of vines, climbers, and parasites, so densely
interwoven that the whole appeared like a solid wall of leaves and
flowers.

I shall never forget the impressions of one night and morning on this
river. Our boat had anchored in the midst of the stream. Strange forms
of trees, spectre-like in the dark