A Lady's Ride Across Spanish Honduras by Maria Soltera

There was the river Juan. As the true Portuguese speaks of the Tagus as "El Señor Tajo" (the Lord Tagus), so do the Hondureians, in another form of speech, accord the greatest dignity to the river Juan, although it is not, by any means, the most important stream of the country. "El hermoso! el rey de los rios de las Honduras" (the beautiful! the king of the rivers of Honduras). Mr Stephens, in his ‘Central America,' alludes to this river as the "tortuous river Juan. " Well, there it was,-broad, turbulent, almost defiant. I felt that this love of the Hondureians was likely to be too much for me, as, on looking across, I discerned what might be a low hurdle of rocks, standing almost in its centre, very irregular in form, and literally showing their teeth, for they were jagged almost to a point.

The water leapt and swirled over and about these in all directions. The very sound was a laugh aimed against us, and the solemn dark trees which bordered the side were very far from being an enlivening feature in the prospect. The sun had become overcast, and the only colour in the scene was the strip of yellow path down which we had wound, our noble selves, and the crimson handkerchiefs on the heads of two Indian women, who were squatting on the river's edge watching their naked children, busy making "mud pastry," much after the fashion of the small people whose dwellings are on the banks of the Lea, Trent, or Thames.