At night, their dark masses,
rising on every hand, might be mistaken for frowning fortresses or
massive strongholds of the Middle Ages. They seem to mark the line
where the volcanic forces which raised the high islands in the Bay of
Fonseca had their first conflict with the sedimentary and primitive
rocks of the interior. The river is full of boulders of quartz and
granite reddened by fire, resembling jasper, and alternating with
worn blocks of lava,--further evidences of volcanic action.
Altogether, the country, in its natural aspects, reminds the
traveller of the district lying between Pompeii and Sorrento, in
Italy, and probably owes its essential features to the same causes.
From Goascoran to Aramacina, a distance of twelve miles, the road
traverses a slightly broken country, while the river pursues its
course, as before, through a picturesque valley, narrowed in places
by outlying _mesas_, but still regular, and throughout perfectly
feasible for a railway. Aramacina itself is prettily situated, in a
bend of one of the tributaries of the Goascoran, the Rio Aramacina,
and numbers perhaps three hundred inhabitants. Immediately in front
rises a broad sandstone table or _mesa_, at the foot of which there
are some trickling springs of salt water, much frequented by cattle,
and corresponding to the _saltlicks_ of our Western States.
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