captured and brought down the river by the Ulleros, and all these
have the usual features and coarse black hair of the Indians. One
little child that Dr. Seemann and I saw at San Carlos, in 1870, had
a few brownish hairs amongst the great mass of black ones; but this
character may be found amongst many of the indigenes, and may
result from a very slight admixture of foreign blood. I have seen
altogether five children from the Rio Frio, and a boy about sixteen
years of age, and they had all the common Indian features and hair;
though it struck me that they appeared rather more intelligent than
the generality of Indians. Besides these, an adult woman was
captured by the rubber-men and brought down to Castillo, and I was
told by several who had seen her that she did not differ in any way
from the usual Indian type.

The Guatuse (pronounced Watusa) is an animal about the size of a
hare, very common in Central America, and good eating. It has
reddish-brown fur, and the usual explanation of the Nicaraguans is
that the Indians of the Rio Frio were called "Guatuses" because
they had red hair. It is very common to find the Indian tribes of
America called after wild animals, and my own opinion is that the
origin of the fable about the red hair was a theory to explain why
they were called Guatuses; for the natives of Nicaragua, and of
parts much nearer home, are fond of giving fanciful explanations of
the names of places and things: thus, I have been assured by an
intelligent and educated Nicaraguan, that Guatemala was so-called
by the Spaniards because they found the guate (a kind of grass) in
that country bad, hence "guate malo," "bad guate,"--whereas every
student of Mexican history knows that the name was the Spanish
attempt to pronounce the old Aztec one of Quauhtemallan, which
meant the Land of the Eagle. I shall have other occasions, in the