United States or Singapore ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Even now, reposing in the shade of the palm-tree, fanned by the orange-scented breeze that blows over the lake, I might drink the immortal juice of the sugarcane, called aguardiente, and dream, and gaze at the cloud-wrapped cone of Ometepec! But I must forget this. The dead killed in this plantain-patch were all that our men obtained sight of.
Such delays by the howitzer, and a wagon transporting spare muskets for the expected recruits, were so frequent, that we made but slow progress, and when we emerged from the woods the sun was already shining upon the broad Transit road, I might have said like a glory on the brow of Ometepec, but my memory is bad, and I doubt whether the fact may not be that the sun rises upon this point from lower down on the lake.
To the south-west there was a fine view down the Juigalpa valley to the lake, with Ometepec in the distance, and some sugar-loaf hills nearer at hand. The weather had cleared up, white cumuli only sailed across the blue aerial ocean.
Again Ometepec is nearly pure Aztec for Two Peaks, but the island itself only contains one, and the name was probably given by an invader who saw the two peaks of Ometepec and Madera from the shore of the lake, and thought they belonged to one island.
Coming down from this rugged high ground, we entered a wide plain, stretching away to Lake Nicaragua, out of whose waters we saw the blue cones of Ometepec and Madeira lifting their heads up above all, and capped with clouds.
As daylight broke next morning, I was up, anxious to see the great lake about which I had heard so much. To the north-west a great sheet of quiet water extended as far as the eye could reach, with islands here and there, and the central figure in every view of the lake the great conical peak of Ometepec towered up, 5050 feet above the sea, and 4922 feet above the surface of the lake.
The one we were in, the "Panaloya," drew only three feet of water when laden with 400 passengers and twenty tons of cargo. The lake of Nicaragua. Ometepec. Becalmed on the lake. White egrets. Reach San Ubaldo. Ride across the plains. Vegetation of the plains. Armadillo. Savannahs. Jicara trees. Jicara bowls. Origin of gourd-shaped pottery. Coyotes. Mule-breeding. Reach Acoyapo. Festa.
This place, being on the lake, was more convenient for provisions, which were easily brought by the steamers from the island of Ometepec and the towns and haciendas along the shore, and the enemy had gained boldness to go there by our repulse at Obraja: or it may be that the force at Obraja had come down from Granada by land, and so only continued their march to San Jorge, though the rumor was, that they had landed from the lake, as I have said.
Almost a week had passed in this manner, with no appearance or news of the enemy, and we had grown heartily tired of riding and watching to no purpose, when one day the steamer hove in sight towards the north; and steaming down she went to land, almost directly opposite Virgin Bay, against the island of Ometepec.
The latest important eruption here was that of Ometepec, a volcanic mount on an island of the same name in Lake Nicaragua. This broke a long period of repose on June 19, 1883, with a severe eruption, in which the lava, pouring from a new crater, in seven days overflowed the whole island and drove off its population.
Word Of The Day