Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/399

 Between this mountainous region and the Caribbean shore stretches a low level country, covered with a dense forest, rich in rubber, cedar, mahogany and dye woods. It is drained by several large rivers whose fertile intervales will yield almost incredible harvests of plantains, bananas, oranges, limes, and other tropical fruits.

West of the mountain zone is a broad valley, about one hundred and twenty-five feet above the level of the sea, extending from the Gulf of Fonseca, southeasterly to the frontier of Costa Rica. The greater portion of this valley is occupied by two lakes, Managua and Nicaragua. The latter one hundred and ten miles long by fifty or sixty miles wide is really an inland sea, being one-half as large as Lake Ontario and twice as large as Long Island Sound. These lakes, with the rainfall of the adjacent valleys, drain through the noble San Juan river, which discharges into the Caribbean at Greytown, at the southeast angle of the country.

Between the Pacific and these lakes is a narrow strip of land, from twelve to thirty miles in width, stretching from the magnificent plain of Leon with its cathedral city, in the north, to the rolling indigo fields and the cacao plantations which surround the garden city of Rivas, in the south.

The lowest pass across the backbone of the New World, from Behring's Strait to the Straits of Magellan, extends along the San Juan valley and across the Lajas—Rio Grande "divide," between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific; the summit of this divide is only one hundred and fifty-two feet above the sea and forty-two feet above the lake.

Nicaragua presents yet another unique physical feature. Lying between the elevated mountain masses of Costa Rica on the south and Honduras on the north, the average elevation of its own mountain backbone hardly one thousand feet, it is the natural thoroughfare of the beneficent northeast Trades. These winds sweep in from the Caribbean across the Atlantic slopes, break the surface of the lakes into sparkling waves, and then disappear over the Pacific, aerating, cooling and purifying the country, destroying the germs of disease and making Nicaragua the healthiest region in Central America.

The scenery of the eastern portion of the country is of the luxuriant sameness peculiar to all tropical countries.