of Admiral Moresby, commanding the
Pacific Fleet; Mr. Blanshard, late Governor
of Vancouver's Island; Captain Stanley Carr,
formerly of Holstein, returning from Port
Philip, Australia; and two servants. These
gentlemen having arrived a few days
previously at Panama, as fellow-passengers in
one of the Pacific steamers from Guayaquil,
(after a tour through and along the South
American coast), had arranged to join
company in a party across the Isthmus. Had they
been less pressed for time, they would have
remained some time at the city of Panama,
which is not only one of the most beautiful—
but, in direct contrast to Chagres, one of the
healthiest—ports of South America.

At Panama, Mr. Perry, a relative of the
celebrated Perry of the Morning Chronicle,
is British Consul, respected and trusted by
all nations. Before his house, with no other
protection than the British flag waving over
it, the travellers saw what looked like a pile
of bricks—it was a pile of bars of silver worth
two million of dollars!

The first care of our travellers was to
engage mules for the land journey of twenty-
six miles to the town of Cruces; and here they
made the mistake of dealing with a fellow of
the name of Joy, an Englishman, instead of with
one of the natives, as the latter would have
supplied much better animals at a much cheaper
rate. Joy's mules, for the hire of which he
charged an ounce of gold, turned out wretched
brutes. On the following day, they set out
over what was once a road, constructed, and
in many places hewn through solid rock, by
the old Spaniards; but which, under the
perpetual contests and chronic feebleness of the
South American Republics, has decayed into
a mule-track, encumbered with enormous
rocks, interrupted by quagmires, and almost
perpendicular precipices: so narrow that, in
many places, only one loaded mule can pass
at a time; bordered on both sides by forests of
tropical trees, shrubs, and creepers, so dense
that it is impossible to penetrate, for even a
few feet, without cutting the way with an axe.
Along this execrable road they proceeded
beneath a tropical sun; the damp atmosphere
laden with vegetable miasma, the thermometer
at ninety degrees of Fahrenheit; the
wretched mules, struggling along, often falling;
some dying. It was like travelling in the
atmosphere of the great Palm-house at Kew.
Indeed, the plants which formed the boundary
line on either side, included many of the most
rare, costly, and beautiful of those raised with
great difficulty in English glass-houses. As
the party crept through a narrow defile,
Captain Carr riding first, and the rest forming
a long straggling line behind him, a tall lantern-
jawed Yankee, in a broad-brimmed hat, and
a blanket coat, with a sabre in his hand,
stepped out into the middle of the road, and
asked the "stranger" if five Britishers had
left Panama that morning? "Oh yes!"
Captain Carr promptly replied, for he saw
several gun-barrels peeping out of the thicket,
"we are looking out for them." "That be
hanged!" replied the fellow, "you go a-head!
we don't go shares with any one." Nothing
loath at being so easily mistaken for a Californian
robber, Captain Carr spurred his jaded
mule, and pushed on; his party followed, one
by one, and passed unquestioned. Had they
been all together, or less hairy and dirty, they
would, unquestionably, have been robbed,
if not murdered. What the Rhine was to
the German barons of old, the Isthmus of
Panama is to disappointed Californians. They
take up a position, and levy toll on the gold-
carriers.

After this providential escape, the travellers
rode on; until compelled, by the exhausted
state of their mules, to halt within ten miles
of Cruces, and to put up for the night at a
rancho, or Indian farm. They piled their
baggage outside, under charge of the Indian
muleteers, and retired to rest in grass
hammocks. They were too hot, too much annoyed
with insects, and too tired, to sleep much. The
walls of the rancho were composed of a sort
of thatch. A mat hung over each of two
door-ways. About the middle of the night
Mr. Young heard some one inquiring in
Spanish of the muleteers, how many Englishmen
were in the hut. He immediately struck
a light, awaked his companions, and sallied
out at one door, with a revolver in his right
hand, and a sword in his left; while Captain
Carr sallied out at the other door, calling on
the ladrones very energetically to come on
and have a good meal of fighting if they
were in the humour; but the inquisitive
gentlemen fled into the darkness of the forest,
without even pausing to return two shots
which were fired after them by way of parting
salute.

The next morning the party set out again,
reached Cruces, and there hired a boat with a
crew, to row them to Chagres. Here, again,
they committed a serious error, in engaging
a large heavy wooden boat, large enough to
convey the whole party, instead of two of the
light canoes of the country.

They set out; the rainy season had
commenced; the river was rising from the effects of
a thunder-storm higher up. They were late in
the year, and no one seemed taking the passage.
At Cruces they saw a number of unhappy
mortals in the last stage of exhaustion;
victims of the poisonous malaria of Chagres,
being carried in litters in the vain, hope of
being restored by the purer atmosphere of
Panama.

The master of the boat, an Indian, with
three others, rowed the English travellers
down the river Cruces at a steady pace,
assisted by the current. They sat under a
thatched roof of palm-leaves, admiring the
rich variety of vegetation that fringed both
sides of the broad stream, and the gorgeous
tropical birds that flew or floated across the
waters: thinking their troubles at an end.