their base, into which the waves rush with an echoing roar, and
in and out of which fly continually thousands of frightened bats.

The mining engineer on the rail of the tramp steamer observed
this peculiar formation of the coast with listless interest,
until he noted, when the vessel stood some thirty miles north of
the harbor of Valencia, that the limestone formation had
disappeared, and that the waves now beat against the base of the
mountains themselves. There were five of these mountains which
jutted out into the ocean, and they suggested roughly the five
knuckles of a giant hand clenched and lying flat upon the surface
of the water. They extended for seven miles, and then the
caverns in the palisades began again and continued on down the
coast to the great cliffs that guard the harbor of Olancho's
capital.

``The waves tunnelled their way easily enough until they ran up
against those five mountains,'' mused the engineer, ``and then
they had to fall back.'' He walked to the captain's cabin and
asked to look at a map of the coast line. ``I believe I won't go
to Rio,'' he said later in the day; ``I think I will drop off
here at Valencia.''

So he left the tramp steamer at that place and disappeared into
the interior with an ox-cart and a couple of pack-mules, and
returned to write a lengthy letter from the Consul's office to a
Mr. Langham in the United States, knowing he was largely
interested in mines and in mining. ``There are five mountains
filled with ore,'' Clay wrote, ``which should be extracted by
open-faced workings. I saw great masses of red hematite lying