On the day a woman is delivered of a child she goes to the sea-side,
wades into the water knee depth, washes herself and infant, and the next
day slings the child on her back, gets into a canoe and paddles two or
three miles to visit her friends.

I here take my leave of Musquitto laws and customs for the present.

As the plan of cutting a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean,
by the way of the River St. Johns, which leads from the Atlantic into
the Lakes Nicaragua and Leon, has so much engaged the attention of the
public latterly, my thoughts have been carried back to a conversation I
had with an old Musquitto Indian about thirty-five years since.

He said, "The Indians frequently paddled their canoes up the St. John's
River, through Nicaragua Lake into Lake Leon, where they found a small
river, and proceeded to the head of it, which brought them so near the
head of another river which led into the Pacific, that they hauled their
canoes over by land from the head of one river to the other, and then
passed through into the Pacific Ocean."

CHAPTER X.

The bite of many of the snakes of this country is so poisonous as to
cause death in a few hours. During my residence at the Lagoon I was
visited by an Indian admiral, named Drummer, who resided at Sandy Bay,
some forty miles north of the Lagoon; he related the following story,
which happened a few weeks before. "He sent an Indian slave to his
plantain walk, distant two or three miles, to cut some bread-stuffs; not
returning that night, he the next morning sent his son-in-law to look
after the slave. He not returning, the following morning a number of the
inhabitants proceeded to the plantain walk, where they found the dead
bodies of the two men, and the snake which had caused their death lying
near them."

Some hurricanes occasionally visit this coast, which destroy their crops
of bread-stuffs, and cause temporary famine in certain districts.

While cruising along the coast some months after the occurrence of one
of these tornadoes, I landed within a few miles of the residence of
Admiral Hammer, in company with a man named Benjamin Downs, who was well
acquainted with the admiral. We proceeded to his house and asked for
something to eat, when he told us his bread-stuffs had all been
destroyed by a gale of wind, and addressed Downs as follows: "Ben Downs,
don't you think the Almighty little bit too bad this time?" "Why, and
what do you mean?" asked