The leading fact of the existence of some kind of a pass having been
sufficiently established by our observations from Conchagua, we next
set to work to obtain such information from the natives as might assist
our further proceedings. This was a tedious task, and called for the
exercise of all our patience; for it is impossible to convey in
language an adequate idea of the abject ignorance of most of the
inhabitants of Central America concerning its geography and
topographical features. Those who would naturally be supposed to be
best informed, the priests, merchants, and lawyers, are really the most
ignorant, and it is only from the _arrieros_, or muleteers, and the
_correos_, or runners, that any knowledge of this kind can be obtained,
and then only in a very confused form, and with most preposterous and
contradictory estimates of distances and elevations.
We nevertheless made out that the mouth of a river or _estero_, laid
down in Sir Edward Belcher's chart, on the opposite side of the bay in
front of La Union, was really that of the river Goascoran, a
considerable stream having its rise at a point due north, and not far
from Comayagua, the capital of Honduras, which, we also ascertained,
was seated in the midst of a great plain, bearing the same name.
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