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As I have said, when satisfied of our good faith, the mule owners soon offered us the use of their beasts, and next morning Velasquez and I started at seven o'clock on two fine fresh mules and rode merrily up the valley of the Depilto.
Some of these huge boulders were fifteen feet across, the largest of them lying in the bed of the river two miles below Depilto. Most of them were of the Depilto quartz rock and gneiss, and I saw many in the unstratified gravel near Ocotal fully eight miles from their parent rock.
It is only where protected by a covering of clay or gravel from the action of the elements, that they have been preserved through the ages that have passed since the glacial epoch, and as I did not see any rock surfaces near Depilto that had been recently bared, it is not surprising that, notwithstanding the other proofs of glacial action, I should not have seen any ice scratches or grooves.
Great, bare, rounded masses of hard quartzite protruded through the scanty soil, and in the river were enormous boulders of granite-like gneiss. Depilto is only nine miles from Ocotal, but we took three hours to reach it, as I made many stoppages to examine the rocks and to catch fleet-limbed speckled tiger-beetles on the sandy roads.
GEOLOGICAL SECTION NEAR OCOTAL. Section of Strata between Depilto and the hill three miles south-west of Ocotal. Gravel with boulders of trap and conglomerate. Gravel with boulders of gneiss and quartz rock. Contorted schists. The evidences of glacial action between Depilto and Ocotal were, with one exception, as clear as in any Welsh or Highland valley.
On the banks of the river, from about a mile below Depilto, unstratified beds of gravel are exposed in numerous natural sections. These beds deepen as the river is descended, until at Ocotal they reach a thickness of between two and three hundred feet, and the undulating plain on which Ocotal is built is seen in sections near the river to be composed entirely of them.
To this point large bungos come up the river, and Don Pedro had been very wishful to get it opened out above for navigation, but had not succeeded. There were very few men to be hired at Ocotal, and we determined to go on to Depilto, a small mining town near the Honduras boundary, where we were assured there were plenty to be obtained.
The river rises in the high ranges that form the boundary between Honduras and Nicaragua, and running down past Depilto joins the Ocotal river a little below the capital. Our road lay up the valley close to the river, which we crossed and recrossed several times. The vegetation was scanty, but the morning was a lovely one after the thunderstorm of the night before, and we greatly enjoyed our ride.
Palacaguina. Hospitality of the Mestizos. Curious custom at the festival at Condego. Cross range between Segovia and Matagalpa. Sontuli. Birds' nests. WE got back to Ocotal, from Depilto, before dark, and made arrangements for setting out on our return to the mines the next morning.
After getting some breakfast at a house that seemed to be the hotel of Depilto, we set out to visit a silver-mine named "El Coquimba." We had to ascend a high range opposite the town, and found riding over the steep bare exposures of quartz rock so difficult and dangerous that about half way up we tied our mules to some young pine trees and proceeded on foot.
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