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Waikna or Adventures on the Mosquito Shore
Waikna or Adventures on the Mosquito Shore Author:E. G. Squier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MADE many inquiries in Blue- -; fields, in order to decide on my future movements, to all of which Mr. Bell gave me most intelligent answers. At first, I pr... more »oposed to ascend the Bluefields river, which takes its rise in the mountainous district of Segovia in Nicaragua, and which is reported to be navigable, for canoes, to within a short distance of the great lakes of that State, from which it is only separated by a narrow range of mountains. Upon its banks dwell several tribes of pure Indians, the Cookras, now but few in number, and the Ramas, a large and docile tribe. Several of the latter visited Bluefields while I was there, bringing down dories and pitpans rudely blocked out, which are afterwards finished by persons expert in that art. They generally speak Spanish, but I could not learn from them that their country was in any respect re- UP, AND AWAY ! 77 markable, or that it held out any prospect of compensation for a visit, unless it were an indefinite amount of hunger and hard work. So, although I had purchased a canoe, and made other preparations for ascending the river, I determined to proceed northward along the coast, and, embarking in some turtling vessel from Cape Gracias, proceed to San Juan, and penetrate into the interior by the river of the same name. This, I ascertained, was all the more easy to accomplish, since the whole Mosquito shore is lined with lagoons, only separated from the sea by narrow strips of land, and so connected with each other as to afford an interior navigation, for canoes, from Bluefields to Gracias. So, procuring the additional services of a young Poyas or Paya Indian, who had been left from a trading schooner, I bade " His Mosquito Majesty" and his governor good-by, took an affectionate farewell of old Hodgson, and, with Antoni...« less