- -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - ------ _ _ _ _, _ _ =~~ _._:L._ f>Tty OF nil "TTY OF ASPINWrLL. PANAMA IN 1855. AN ACCOUNT OF THE PANAMA RAIL-ROAD, OF THE CITIES OF PANAMA AND ASPINWAIL, WITH SKETCHES OF LIFE AND CHARACTER ON THE ISTHMUS. BY ROBERT TOMES, NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1855. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THIS little book is a record of observations made during a short residence on the Isthmus of Panama, under circumstances very favorable for the acquisition of such information as it is thought the public desire to have. While the author has striven to make his book useful as a guide to the traveler, and instructive to those interested in the commercial development of the Isthmus, under the auspices of the Panama.Railroad, he has endeavored to give a picturesque interest to his work which may render it acceptable to the general reader. That-the lively parts of his book may not be deemed frivolous by one class of readers, and the serious found dull by the other, is the hope of THE AUTHOR. NEW YORK, June 9th, 1855. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. FROM NEW YORK TO ASPINWALL.......................... 13 CHAPTER II. A SPINW ALL...................................................... 40 CHAPTER III. RIDE ON THE RAILROAD................................. 67 CHAPTER IV. THE RAILROAD CONSIDERED................................ 99 CHAPTER V. A W ALK ABOUT PANAMA..................................... 132 CHAPTER VI. T ABOGA............................................................ 158 CHAPTER VII. RETURN TO PANAMA........................................ 195 CHAPTER VIII. PEARL ISLANDS-CONCLUSION......................... 222 PANAMA IN 1855. CHAPTER I. " TW OULD YOU LIKE TO GO TO PANAMA?" was the question propounded to me by a friend on one of the bitterest of the cold days of a New York January. While thawing my frozen fingers with the breath which steamed out of my mouth, and fell condensed in a rime of frost upon the beard, I warmed up at once at the proposition, and my imagination, like a migratory bird, fluttered away from its forced hibernation in my "cold, uncomfortable body," shivering in an atmosphere which scorned double-milled pilot cloth with the coolest contempt, and sunk the thermometer into a degree of littleness to which 0 (zero) would have been an unexpected relief, and the freezing-point a hopeless aspiration. My imagination was at once basking in a 14 THE INVITATION. Southern sun and all a-glow with a tropical fervor. So when my friend strengthened his proposition with the comforting assurance "that it would cost me nothing," and smacked his eloquent lips over the dainty prospect he described of I don't know how many dozen-dozens of Champagne, rounds of beef, and other generous elements of the feasts in liberal contemplation, I smacked my lips in response, and closed at once. A few days subsequently-the thermometer in the mean time falling as my hopes of escape were rising — received the following note, which I put on record as a model invitation to be commended as an example to all givers of hospitality: OFFICE OF THE PANAMA RAILROAD COMPANY, NEW YORK, January 25th, 1855. DEAR SIR, The Panama Railroad having been so far completed as to admit of the trains passing from Ocean to Ocean, the Board of Directors desire that the work should be visited by a delegation of Stockholders and others interested in the enterprise, to commemorate this important event. A limited number of invited guests are expected to go out in the Steamer George Law, on the 5th proximo, under the direction of Wm. Whitewright, Jr., Esq., one of the members of the Board, and you are respectfully invited to accompany the party at that time. You will confer a favor by an early reply, signifying your acceptance of this invitation, or otherwise, so that the Company may have the opportunity to extend this courtesy to INVITATION ACCEPTED. 15 some other gentleman, should you be unable to honor the occasion by your presence. In behalf of the Board of Directors, Very respectfully, Your obed't Serv't, DAVID HOADLEY, Pres't. Here was a magnificent proffer of hospitality; a corporate host representing I don't know how many hundred thousands of stock and bondholders, with millions of money at its command, stretching out its Briarean hands, with its gigantic grasp of welcome, and taking to its generous embrace a poor devil of an author, whose last work had but provided for his sparse washerwoman's bill, and secured him the small honor of a "tea and turn-out," where he had roared as mildly as any sucking dove for the small consideration of a cup of dilute bohea. I accepted the invitation, of course; proudly repressing the sense of personal obligation, by adroitly descanting, in my note of acceptance, upon the great occasion, to use the modest railroad phrase, " of the trains passing from ocean to ocean." I would be.pleased, I said, to bear my humble share in "commemorating the important event." I had written very happy, having for a moment given way to the enthusiasm of my feelings, when, after some reflec 16 THE RAILROAD HOST. tion, I substituted pleased, as the term more appropriate to the cool indifference of the independent man of the world, and the importance of a guest solicited to share in the festivities of an august corporation. An interview with the representative of the Board of Directors followed, and I looked upon this gentleman-the impersonation of the Great Railroad Company, in whom was concentrated the gigantic hospitality of which I had been invited to partake-with a sentiment of sublime respect, not unmingled with a substantial sense of satisfaction, especially as he confirmed, word for word, all my friend's glowing description of the rounds of beef, and the dozens of Champagne in prospect. I was somewhat surprised, on first sight, at the moderate dimensions of this gentleman, as my imagination had swelled him, in his corporate capacity of the impersonated Railr6ad host, to something tremendous: but when I took a common-sense view of his well-developed person, in which the hardness of youthful muscle was fast softening into the unctuousness of increasing age and obesity, and when I observed that the restless expression of eager youth was now beginning to repose in the comfortable self-satisfaction of middle life, I consoled myself for the disappointment of my A BRILLIANT PROGRAMME. 17 imagination, by the reasonable expectations such a good-looking, well-ordered, respectable personage was calculated to inspire. I learned from him how some seventeen of us, under his hospitable guidance and by the generous invitation of the Panama Railroad Company, were to be conveyed from New York, on the 5th of February, to the Isthmus of Darien, in the steamer George Law, gratuitously; how we were to be wined and brandied on board, gratuitously; how we were to be boarded and lodged and doctored at Aspinwall, gratuitously; how we were to be conveyed in triumph over the Railroad, gratuitouslyy; how we were to be banqueted at Panama, and might immortalize ourselves in speeches on the occasion, gratuitously; how we might stay a fortnight on the Isthmus, to wander among its tropical delights, or to stretch ourselves beneath the shade of its beautiful mangroves, in the agonies of Chagres fever, gratuitously; and how, finally, we were to be conveyed home, by the steamer to New York, and wined and brandied as on the trip outward, gratuitously. This was certainly a brilliant programme, and I readily put myself down as a humble performer on the occasion. I am bound to say, as will appear in the course of this veritable B 18 PACKING UP. history, that the Railroad Company was faithful to its contract, in every respect, with the exception of the very important provision as to brandy and wine. Dick, the negro steward of the Illinois, will testify in any court of law that I paid him two dollars and a half in gold for one bottle of sherry-which Lord C. pronounced execrable, but drank his fair share of it nevertheless, though, as he protested, under excitement-and two dollars, in a bankable bill, for one bottle of brandy, the qualities of which I'll leave to negro Dick, as he has been called into court, to vouch for, since he enjoyed the most frequent; though stealthy, opportunities of forming a judgment. Collecting together the remnant of my last summer's wardrobe, hurrying through the wash the week's linen, quieting the preposterous anxieties of my tailor with assurances of a short absence, proudly settling his account with a promise to pay on my return, packing my portmanteau and taking a parting cup with some trusty friends, I yielded myself up incontinently to the hospitality of the Panama Railroad Company, on the fifth day of February, eighteen hundred and fifty-five. As the City Hall clock was fast approaching the hour of two, I hurried down Warren Street, THE STAeT. 19 with my eye fixed upon the tall chimney of the steamer George caw, which was throwing out its black banner of smoke, and signalizing approaching departure. On arriving at the dock I made my way aboard, under the cover of an iron-bound portmanteau, which staggered high upon the unsteady shoulders of a profane dock lad, whose dirty, ragged appearance, and by no means clean or tidy observations, cleared the road, like a pestilence, through the confused crowd of loaded-down hackney-coaches, mysteriously involved with heaped-up carts, of eager, hurrying passengers, staggering porters, drunken sailors and firemen, bellowing orangewomen, shouting boys, and of blubbering women and children, that thronged the dock and the passages to the steamer. The bell of the steamer clinked an impatient warning; " Clear the gangways for the mails," hoarsely roared a gusty mate; helter-skelter thronged the crowd ashore; tingle, tingle whispered the Captain's bell from the wheel-house, to which the engine responded with a loud snort, and threw out its gigantic arms in preparatory struggle, provoking the waters into a seething agony of rage. "Let go that hawser," cried the pilot, as his hand waved " a-port your helm" to the man at the wheel, and the George 20 (THE LAST LOOK. Law was in a moment out in the stream, away from the shouts of the multitude which thronged the pier, and I was left to contemplation and my cigar. With a brisk northwest wind, the tide ebbing out and a full head of steam, the ".Law," though no witch on the water, spared but little time for sentimental regrets of home. She rapidly cleared the teeming city, and its docks choked full with shipping, passed Governor's Island, with its winter mantle of snow, looking like a bank of ice floating in the bay, and hurried along Staten Island, with its Quarantine of bilious lazar-houses and hospitals, and its contrasting homes of wealth and comfort sending up from their firesides, into the cold air, a cheerful indication of enjoyment, in the smoke which wound through the valleys and wreathed about the snowy summits of the hills. The ship thence steamed through the Narrows into the lower bay, sending a graceful farewell courtesy to the land in her waving wake along the shore of Sandy Hook, and shaking out all her canvas drapery, strode gallantly on to sea. It was astonishing how soon their appropriate places were found by some four hundred and fifty people, which was about the number of the passengers on the George Law, who, with THE SEA-CHANGE, 21 their miscellaneous baggage of countless portmanteaus, square, angular unyielding chests, unaccommodating bandboxes, irresponsible packages, stray parcels, and their own diverse dispositions seemed at the start a mysterious problem of crowded confusion, impossible of solution. While, however, the heights of Neversink were still rising clear in the evening sun, and the steamer had just begun to stagger in her sea gait, at the hour our fashionable friends we had left behind in New York were sitting down to dinner, almost every man, woman, and child of the four hundred and fifty, with their several baggage accompaniments, was snugly stowed away. The sea-change, which was beginning to operate on the landsmen, had something to do, doubtless, with this rapid precipitation below. Cigars had long since ceased to console, brandy-and-water had been drunk and drunk again, and at last given up in hopeless despair, vigorous resolutions not to yield a jot had been rapidly losing their hold, and the sound of he-e-ve-ur-ur-p, which soon issued from the state-rooms, showed that the good resolutions were being, abandoned, in common with the contents of the stomach. The deck was left, at an early hour in the evening, clear to a few old salts, among whom 2'2 THE FIRST NIGHT. my marine experiences entitle me to class myself. The cigars of these waned out, one after the other, and they turned in below to brandyand-water and to bed, leaving me alone to solitary contemplation of the night upon the ocean, with all the starry host of the heavens looking down upon me, and the great sea roaring, heaving, and flashing its phosphorescent fire on every side of the tossed ship. But my thoughts turned from these sublimities, and wandered back to the humble fireside of home, and the gentle affections and cosey comforts which nestled about it. I lengthened out my solitary walk that night on the swaying deck of the ship; for the comfortable imaginings of home were far more agreeable than a hurried observation of my cell, which the steamboat proprietors had dignified with the lofty appellation of state room, led me to anticipate would be the realities of my nocturnal experiences at sea. To the untraveled experience of a landsman, there is something startling in the announcement, as he reads his morning paper, of a California steamer carrying some fifteen hundred passengers, the population of a fair sized county-town; but his surprise gives way when he is once booked, ticketed, packed, and shipped TURNING IN. 23 in one of those floating herring-boxes. Let him be tall or short, stout or meagre, he must submit to the inexorable fate of 5 x 2, preordained by the absolute will of the steam-boat proprietary for their own wise purposes. The "George Jaw" on this occasion was not crowcled, and each state room no bigger, on my honor, than my clothes-closet at home, the old coat hanging in which I could not help envying for its comparative stateliness of provision and comfort, contained only three passengers. Where the fourth was to be put in the emergency of a crowd, I could not devise with all my newly developed experience of the infinite adaptation of limited space to unlimited numbers. In No. 40 we were three, and by a ready instinct of self-preservation, it was mutually conceded, without a word of preliminary negotiation, but purely from the force of necessity, that no two should attempt to stand on the floor together. It was, in fact, utterly incompatible with personal individuality. When No. 1 turned in, Nos. 2 and 3 kept out; when No. 3 turned out, Nos. 1 and 2 staid in their beds, if it is permissible to call those three hard boards which were laid across the room, upon which we nightly shelved ourselves, beds, as we are bound to do, perhaps from the fact 24 SHELVED, of their being spread with a very thin slice of mattress and closed in with a dingy gauze curtain. Taking one's place-I speak for No. 2 -upon his appropriate shelf was a very mysterious operation, of which the sufferer can only recollect, by the reminder of a broken head and a pair of bruised knees, the pains and penalties- a remembrance strengthened, however, by a very lively recollection of the curses of his fellow miserables, who protested vigorously against the effects of the operation upon themselves; he-No. 1-on the shelf above denying emphatically any one's claim but his own to the hair of his head, and he-No. 2-on the shelf below refusing as positively to being kicked on the occasion. So with grasping the hair of one, and lodging my feet in the body of the other-a process which I must do my fellow-sufferers the justice of acknowledging that they bore with exemplary resignation after a few days of compulsory habit-I managed to get upon the middle shelf, where, from pure fatigue from hard work, and with a flexible temper which happily can bend to any thing, even to a berth in the George Law, I managed to sleep and be content. Night over, the gong roared out its early call, and the morning sun blazed through the TURNING OUT. 25 port-hole like a great burning-glass, awaking No. 1 to the matutinal duty of a call upon "Steward! steward! I say, steward, a glass, some iced water, and that -;" with which Nos. 2 and 3, protesting mildly at first, soon learned to conform. When that infernal gong ceased to roar, No. 1, having dismissed the steward, and smacked his lips with the satisfaction of a man who had fulfilled the first duty of the day, tumbled out, went through the absurd practice of shaving his beard and cutting his face, dressed himself, and proceeded to ventilate on deck. No. 2, then poising himself upon the rim of his shelf, and waiting anxiously for a convenient pitch of the ship, also tumbled out, and securing his back against the berth, his abdomen (the polite appellation we believe) against the wash-stand, propping his starboard with the baggage, and his port-side with the door, went through the small ablutions and meagre course of toilet to which the traveler by sea has to resign himself. Thus began the second day of the voyage. A notice to passengers conspicuously posted about the cabin and the deck to the effect that no deadly weapons were to be worn, no firearms discharged, and no person was to appear at table with his coat off, was calculated to UNCOMFORTABLE SUGGESTIONS. awaken in the heart of a timid traveler a fear of his personal security by no means encouraging. A bloody vision of deadly encounter, the brandishing of bowie-knives, the flashing of revolvers, and the other rude exercises of Californian discipline, startled the imagination, and sent it cowering to the security of New York, under the protection of that civic Draco, Mayor Wood. Discipline at sea is an excellent thing, but a little more of the substance, anld much less of the show of it, would be an improvement. Thus, too, most travelers go to sea with a dislike to drowning, and are pleased to find every security against so disagreeable an incident; but they do not care to be constantly reminded of the danger as they are by the display on board the George Jaw, of what the imaginative steamboat proprietors are pleased to call "life-preservers." The traveler shall find conspicuously hung up in each state-room a collection of yellow painted tin cylinders, which, after a day or two, he will puzzle his understanding, with the aid of the experience of the steward, into comprehending to be intended for the protection of his life. If he counts the half dozen boats which hang so lightly in the air on the ship's quarters, calcu LIFE-PRESERVERS. 27 lates the chances of a passage in a scramble for life of a thousand human beings in the despair of a sinking ship, if he looks in vain for the full complement of oars, marks the deficiency of row-locks, discovers the absence of the rudder, casts a knowing eye through the plug-holes down into the abyss of the ocean below, and anxiously searches for the corresponding plugs and don't find them, lie will turn with some degree of reverence to those tin cases-the skeletons in his cabin-which hang as ghastly memento moris above his head. If he is at all curious-as I do not recommend him to be, provided he values his ease of mind-he will find, if he has had any hope in those tin things, he has been a victim of misplaced confidence, and will see that, although like a millstone about the neck, they might assist in expediting the agony, they can not prevent it. Let him console himself then with the joke, as my friend M — did, that those who go to sea preserve the flesh of human creatures in tin-cans, as they do that of other beasts Thank Heaven, there was no necessity of testing the sinking qualities of the metallic lifepreservers, as there seemed to be no need of thundering out anathemas from the main-mast against the murderous propensities of bowie 28 CALIFORNIAN-S. knives and six-barreled revolvers. The only pistols, I am bound to say, I saw on board was a brace of Colt's, in the safe hands of an American Consul, a fellow-passenger, who also, to the best of mly belief, was the sole transgressor of the shirt sleeve ordinance, although there were some suspicions of a similar offense resting upon the character of the United States Minister Plenipotentiary to New Granada. Four hundred and fifty-two hundred cabin, and the rest steerage-was the number of passengers, most of whom were bound to California. The Californians still clung to their red shirts, the slouched hat, the capacious boots, the girdled trowsers, the flowing blankets, and other loose characteristics of dress, although they had for the most part abandoned the free habits of life which in the first days of the murderous bowie-knife and deadly revolver emigration to the gold region distinguished our adventurous countrymen. There were but few who were going now for the first time to California, although there were still some untried diggers, showing that the first passion for gold was yet burning in the heart of the people. In the steerage the greater part was composed of sturdy-willed and strong-armed laborers, some few of whom were accompanied by their wives STEERAGE. 29 and children, who having once earned a fair day's wages for a fair day's work in California, could not be content with what seemed to their enlarged desires the paltry price of labor at home. These, dignified with the self-respect of independence, seemed to yield with no dissatisfaction to their harder lot in the steerage, and kept forward patiently within the inevitable gate, watched by a vigorous sea-Cerberus, which barred them from all communication with the more pretentious cabin passengers. Their spirits did not yield a jot to the hard necessities of two in a bunk, and of salt grub six days out of seven, but merrily overflowed in boisterous talk and in negro songs, as they lounged upon their blue and red blankets spread upon the forward deck. Their quarters were clean, well-ventilated, and, apart from the practice of bringing two strangers at once into the close intimacy of bed-fellows, well ordered. The females were only guarded from intrusion. by the scant protection of a canvas curtain, and trusted themselves with confiding faith to the universal gallantry of the men in America, whether of broadcloth or red flannel. The food served up was plain and substantial; and I for one, after the first day's experience of cabin fare, would have been happy to have exchanged our cook's 30 FELLOW-TRA VELLERS. absurd attempts to translate the French cuisine into his own idiomatic Irish, for the native pork and beans upon which the hearty fellows of the steerage were, much to my envy, daily fattening. The two hundred in the cabin, were chiefly composed of returning Californian bankers, merchants, and tradesmen, whose fictitious successes or genuine means seemed to justify the expense of the apocryphal luxury of a firstclass passage. Aged matrons, youthful expectant mothers, and a swarming host of tokens of conjugal affection-children of all ages-secured to the well-wisher of his race the daily prospect of all the domestic relations from fond connubiality to conjugal satiety. There was a runaway couple from the West, who were provokingly tender on every public occasion, and several experienced pairs, who did not await a private opportunity to exhibit their mutual discontent. Ten days at sea will disclose more of intimate character than a life-time on land. After the first day's familiarity with the novelties of a sea-voyage, men and women, away from the usual distractions of business, pleasure, and ever-recurring incident and event of life on land, are thrown entirely upon their personal LOVE AND ASTRONOMY. 31 resources, which bring out all the characteristic elements of disposition, and whether you love or hate your fellow-creatures the more in consequence of the revelation it is not safe to say. Macaulay says somewhere, that the only diversion for the male traveler at sea is to quarrel with his own sex, and fall in love with the opposite. There was no very vigorous manifestation during the voyage of masculine pugnacity, but a very intense degree of the development of feminine coquetry, briskly responded to by some of the more susceptible. How the warm tropics expanded the young affections! How they would shrink languishing from the garish sun and ever-present eye of daily observation, and how revive in the shade and seclusion of evening, and in the invigorating breeze of the tradewinds! Those nocturnal promenades on deck beneath the glorious heavens of the tropical summer, showed doubtless an elevated sense of the celestial sublime; but, it is suspected, not unalloyed with a full appreciation of the beauty of things terrestrial. I give Miss full credit for the genuineness of her admiration as she exclaimed, "Look, what a pretty star!" when I stupidly intruded one night upon a tMte-d-tete behind the capsta-n, between the above Miss and a certain (I can swear to 32 BY JINGO. the whiskers). There seemed, however, no especial reason to continue that astronomical observation, night after night, and prolong it many hours after the peremptory steward had put out the lights in the cabin, and hung up the dim round lantern which cast its winking glimmer like a sleepy eye upon the closed doors of the state-rooms and the boots and shoes of their snoring occupants. It was time for Miss — and Mr. —, like all respectable people, to be in bed. There was one indefatigable coquette, a mettlesome damsel, whose expansive graces and free-and-easy manners had been developed in the wilds of the West. BY JINGO (her favorite expression) the wicked wags called her, and. there was not a youth aboard who had reached the maturity of whiskers that had not basked in her diffusive charms. Mamma was too much subdued by sea-sickness to exercise any vigor of maternal discipline, and papa only indulged in a faint protest during the intervals of poker and brandy toddy. But By Jingo carried the day, and the night, too; had her own way, and led all the men into it in the bargain. The old salt, Captain S -, in spite of threescore, and the vivid recollection of Mrs. S -- at home, gave in finally, and was NATIVE DIGNITARIES. 33 caught one day tying a knot in her streaming hair, which operation the old skipper was pleased to term taking in a reef, "as the dashing little craft was making too much headway in such a sea." But By Jingo has long since reached her destination, and it is hoped she may be safely moored. at home, and not again trusted at sea without the safe convoy of a marital cruiser. Each day, with the intimacy so characteristic of the unreservedness of a sea voyage, revealed scores of new acquaintances. There was the United States Minister Plenipotentiary, a slouchy Western politician and judge of decided national predilections, who chewed vigorously and spat enormously, keeping the man busy with his swab who was especially detailed for that service. There was the United States Consul to Panama, whose acquaintance I had the honor of making, a militia Colonel, and veteran torso, who had left a leg in Mexico, and disposed of an arm in a scuffle in Texas. He made up for his loss of limbs, however, by a very vigorous use of their wooden substitutes, and showed his energy of character by falling out with every one, and shaking his false arm and stamping his false leg with immense vigor. One little pale-faced woC 34 L ITERATURE IN CALIFORNIA. man was terribly startled when the formidable Colonel, preparatory to a siesta on deck, where he was fond of displaying his huge dismembered body in the scantiest of drapery, shook out one day his frouzy blanket, declaring that it was twenty-five years old, and that it had fallen into his possession as booty after he had killed the owner. The Colonel had a magnificent brace of silver-plated Colt's revolvers, which he was fond of exhibiting, and of which, it is hoped, his bellicose qualities will not lead him to any dangerous usage. He is not as highly valued in Panama as such a representative of our country should be, probably because the rude Border style of the man falls somewhat short, as it must be confessed, of the high standard of Castilian manners. One day I was received, over a bottle of bitter ale, into the confidence of a brisk Californian trader, who was largely in the book and stationery line, and who disclosed to me how he scattered books and newspapers broadcast over the States of Oregon and California; how he diffused over those benighted lands the civilizing literature of 1000 Ijcarper's icacgazine, monthly, for the small consideration of twenty cents a number, of 9000 IVewzo rork: eralcts, an equal nlumberl of r27ibunes, 13,000 NOTABILITIES. 35 Boston Journals, and 11,000 of the Courrier des Etcats UTzis fortnightly, at the moderate price of ten cents each copy, and how in fact he paid no less than $40,000 annually for newspapers alone. But this was nothing to the wonders revealed of another Californian —a primitive settler who, some twenty years ago, had fled ashore a runaway sailor, and now possessed 300 miles of land, and 12,000 head of cattle; worth at the butchers' stall in San Francisco $30 a head at the lowest computation; and there were others whose boasted possessions and grandiose incomes made an Astor of each of them; but it is hoped all was well-garneredc before the universal financial tornado which lately swept California into bankruptcy. Then among the notabilities I renewed my acquaintance with my old friend, the agent R- of Dana's Defoe-like narrative, whose marriage there so graphically described gives him a reasonable expectation of a fair share of old Norriega's leagues of California land, and unlimited herds of cattle which run wildly upon it. Among the passengers, too, there was the tragic actress who had made " her last appearance with great applause" at the Broadway previous to embarking for the fulfillment of her California engagement, but whose sock and buskin 36 THE SEA PRISON. did not at all appear to aid her in the acquisition of those useful but not very dramatic sealegs, of which the nautical discourse. Her walk was certainly not altogether of the high tragedy style, although sea-sickness gave a very melodramatic twinge to her expressive face. Such were the companions of the voyage in addition to the seventeen railroad guests, and a miscellaneous crowd of Californian traders, all with the unmistakable swagger of the denizens of a' great country," merchants of South America, mercantile travelers to China, Panama railroad officials, Jew peddlers, and uncertain adventurers. Even a brief ten days' sea-voyage exhausts the patience of the traveler. How restlessly he frets in his imprisonment! He feels the constraint like a caged hyena; his daily walk is measured by just so many feet of deck. He turns impatiently a thousand times from the staring brazen-faced binnacle (which, in the California steamers, even wants the silent companionship of the man at the helm, whose position is forward), to be met by the perpetually recurring blank wheel-house; he looks to the right, he looks to the left upon the tossing ocean; he listens to the never-ceasing creak of the timbers, and chatters his teeth in sym WAITING FOR DINNER. 37 phony with the everlasting tremor of the engine; he struggles up and tumbles down hill as the ship pitches; he staggers starboard and larboard as she rolls, until every nerve is shaken and sense confused, and the traveler hopelessly submits with a blear eye, a ringing ear, and dizzy brain to his inevitable fate. Dinner, though no very Sybaritic enjoyment under the auspices of the improvident steward and unsavory cook of the " Laww" was always impatiently longed for and eagerly devoured. With what restless anxiety eyes were cast through the skylights on deck, at the preparations for the great event of the day, no one but a traveler with that inexplicable voracity engendered at sea can fully comprehend. Every movement is watched, and each man feels that his fate is in the hands of Negro Dick, or Irish Patrick, as it may be; and how deliberately that inflexible fellow spreads the dirty cloth; how tediously he lengthens out expectation between the slow succession of knives and forks, clattering plates, and clinking glasses; and then, how he pauses before the hungry contemplation, until, with measue red tread he renews his slow efforts.'"N]ow!" eagerly exclaims the beholder, and turning away angrily adds, with fretful disappointment, "d-n it, it's only 88 APPETITE THE BEST SAUCE. the pickles " And so, the long tedium of preliminary preparation being over, the gong roars, and the impatient crowd hurry to their knives and forks. The promise of the entertainment so brilliantly set forth in the conglomerate FrancoHibernian of the steward's bill of fare was but meagrely sustained by the reality, nor did ally one console himself more readily with a tough beef-steak, surrounded by a frozen gutter of fat, because the steward was pleased to dignify it with the elegant appellation of" Fillet of Boeuf soused." The appetite, however, wonderfully overcame all obstacles, and those dinners, which are conscientiously believed to have been cooked in the ice-house, were eaten with an enjoyment that no Lucullus could give as a sauce to the choicest of his spreads ashore. Endless bottles of Champagne, fiery Sherry, and of our dearly beloved Chateaux Margaux-providently supplied by the railroad Amphitryon-cheered our party of seventeen daily, and always ended the worst of dinners in the best of humors, and sent us away rejoicing and staggering (from the motion of the ship, let it be understood) to our cigars on deck. Thus we passed ten days. —,ing voraciously, drinking deeply, sleeping heavily, promenading the deck perpetually, smoking vigorously, ob THE COURSE. 39 serving each other curiously, attempting to read. vainly, and yawning infinitely. The steamer, in the mean time, moved on in her course at the regular jog-trot rate of 250 miles a day, carrying us from the memorable winter of 1855 in New York (where, the New York Tribune informed us, as we read stewing in a Panama sun, that the thermometer had reached on February 7th 20~ below zero), southward along the coasts of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, gradually through these milder latitudes into the Tropic of Cancer, in and out among the isles of the Caribbean Sea, giving us a passing glance of the green hills of Cuba and St. Domingo, and a glorious vision of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, a hundred miles distant, set in the golden frame of a tropical sunset. Seething by day in the broiling heat of the perpetual summer, where Cancer holds sway and writhes its prey in its torrid grasp, and refreshed by night with the gentle fanning of the trade-winds, the staunch "Law," finally, on the eleventh day of the voyage, stopped her perpetual wheels, and trembling no longer under her hard struggle with the ocean, floated in like a tired seamonster, and leaned breathless against the dock at Aspinwall. CHAPTER II. ASPINWALL. PPROACHING arrival at Aspinwall was indicated by the unusual stir on board ship the day before. The baggage was hoisted up, lumbering the quarter-deck with a miscellaneous heap of multiform portmanteaus, trunks, chests, and other traveling encumbrances, and bringing together the throng of anxious owners, who hovered watchfully around their property. Great cables were coiled up by the unshipshape, greasy, steamboat men, who, with not a tarpaulin among them, in the Bowery rig of red flannel, frouzy woolen trowsers, strapped over round shoulders, and- stuffed into mouldy boots, would not have been acknowledged as brother tars by any genuine Jack afloat. The steward was indefatigable that day, and proved his long latent capabilities by the last excellent dinner, in which grumbling passengers were conciliated with roast turkey, ice-cream, and plum-pudding. The negro waiters brightened themselves up with clean white jackets and af FIRST SIGHT OF LAND. 41 fable looks, and, hopeful of coming gratuities, eagerly anticipated every call. The purser's black herald awakened each ear to his startling bell, and the announcement, "Gentlemen will please call at the purser's office and settle their wine bills!" a polite invitation, though tardily and by no means gratefully responded to. Our party agreeably appreciated on the occasion the privileges of being guests, by having no account to settle with that courteous but pertinacious purser, and scorned his grinning herald's proclamation with the cool indifference of independent gentlemen. All night the steamer groaned with noisy effort, the engine trembled with unwonted struggles, the beams creaked sharper than ever, and the heavy tramp of the busy sailors, the heaving and hoisting, the pounding of blocks, and the clanking of chains over the berths prevented sleep and disposed to early rising. On the morning of Thursday, 16th February, I got an early glance of the land through the port-hole.of my room, and hurrying up, reached the deck as the sun was rising through the gray mist of night which had exhaled from the dank verdure flooding the land, and still lingered above the thick-wooded heights of Point Manzanilla. As the steamer hurried. 42 VIEW OF ASPINWALL. round the Point, the bay was revealed in all the brightness of the morning sun. Just over the port bow, in the distance, low upon the surface of the water, the white houses of Aspinwall stared at us; while on either side rose the undulating heights, profusely covered with green growth from base to summit, which bound the harbor. The steamer came in from the exposed north of the bay, before the prevailing wind of the season, which was briskly stirring the sea into white crisp waves, fluttering the flag at the mast-head and our linen jackets, and tempering the lurid heat of the tropical sun, As the steamer neared the town, the general view was dissolved into, its separate details, and the eye glanced from object to object-now resting upon a native canoe bowing gracefully upon the waves, now upon a pelican diving for fish, now upon the cocoa-nut palms, which, rising with a graceful bend to the sea, from the surfwhitened beach, fluttered their feathery tops high in the air, and now upon the fleet of craft which, scattered about, swung in the swell of the harbor. And then the steamer, having skillfully bent her way through the shipping, close in, stopped her engine, and was tediously warped into dock by the aid of the hawsers now uncoiled from the deck, and laid alongside GHOSTLY INHABITANTS. 43 the wooden pier, facing the street of straggling, white-painted houses which border the shore. The shanty, tunble-down look of the town, in spite of the profuse proffers of entertainment, thrust, in large painted signs, upon the eyesamong which the LONE STAR shone conspicuously-did not extend a very inviting welcome to the voyager. Nor were we eager for the embrace of those denizens of that famous town, as they stalked aboard, with their gaunt, skeleton' persons clothed in white, and with ghastly death'sheads under Panama hats, and stared with ghostly wonder upon us animated beings, fresh and fat from the land of the living. The cigars they smoked so perpetually-puffing them with all their breath, as if they were the last embers of life to brighten a hope with-were the only signs of animation and proofs of human brotherhood. I thought regretfilly of home, and scorned all the bitter recollections of that cold February left behind ten days before in New York, and would have gladly exchanged the dangerous delights of a tropical summer for the safe though rude discomforts of a northern winter. The leading officials of the railroad were soon announced, and being duly presented by the dignified director who headed our party, we 44 GOING ASHORE. commenced a acquaintance which ripened at once into a hearty intimacy with some as glorious spirits (not to doubt their corporeal existence) as adorn this earth, and whose meagre frames are but scant indications of their full hearts. Under the guidance of these gentlemen, we-seventeen of the railroad party, strengthened by the addition of the American Minister to New Granada, his affable wife, and vivacious daughter-passed from ship to shore. Straggling along the wooden pier, through the gate, close by the great iron water-tanks, and the door of the steamboat agent's house and offices-cheerfully bright with white paint, and shaded by a grove of cocoa-nuts-we followed the railroad track along the front of the town, on the edge of the shore, overtaking groups of fellow-passengers who sweated in the hot sun under loads of baggage, straggled uncertainly, and inquired anxiously their way to hotels. On we went, staring at lounging, half-naked negroes, turbaned Coolies, and pale, livid white men, in Panama hats and linen jackets, until we reached the further end of the town, where our generous hostsbowed us into our welcome quarters, and refreshed us with iced claret, to which none objected except those who preferred brandy-and-water. Our domicile was a large roomy wooden THE MESS HOUSE. 45 house, double storied, with piazzas above and below, in front and rear. The whole affair, from its shingled roof to foundation, was an importation from the forests and saw-mills of Maine, and had been originally intended for a hotel, but now wisely appropriated for the use of the officials of the Panama Railroad Company; and though formerly dignified by the title of the United States Hotel, is at present known simply as the "NMess House." A prudent foresight has placed it at the extreme northern end of the town, as far away as possible from the putrefying filth of the centre of the settlement, and the malignant miasma generated by the rank vegetation inland. So it stands upon the verge of the white coral shore, where the waves of the Atlantic come roaring in and throwing their spray to the very eaves, while the seaward wind from the north blowing freshly night and day, and rustling the cocoa-nut palms, sweeps through and through the expanding balconies, the open doors, light casements, and spacious rooms, until the meagre building shivers and rattles with & perpetual ague. A grove of bananas and plantains has risen in quick growth, and intermingled with orange trees, already shades the rear from the hot sun. The botanist may turn 46 ASPINWALL HOSPITALITY. from this indigenous profusion, and peer curiously into those tubs of earth carefully shaded beneath the piazza, and his curiosity will be rewarded by a sight of some exotic cabbages of a yellow bilious hue, which he will find more valued and cared-for than all the luscious fruit of profuse native growth. Well, the "M ess House" was our home for the time being, and the generous concession of its courteous inmates allowed our seventeen roysterers to take possession of their comfortable quarters, giving us the full liberty of the house, breakfasting, lunching, and dining us by day, pouring down our thirsty throats dozens after dozens of Alsop's pale ale at all hours, throwing open ever-renewed boxes of the choicest cigars perpetually, and sending us to bed. at night to their own cool cots. The little brisk white man from Jamaica, who was honored with the title of steward of the establishment, was always at call, and his satellites, black Tom, Dick, and Harry, obeyed without a murmur the preposterous orders of the hungriest, thirstiest, and most importunate guests who ever invaded another man's house. The mess-table had been lengthened out to expand its hospitality to the new-comers, who were honored with the higher seats at the feast. RAILROAD DISCLOSURES. 47 The chief engineer presided at one end of the board, expanding his genial welcome every where, while the chaplain fed at the other in the intervals of the grace before and after meat, when he arose to give thanks properly, but rather lengthily, for the blessings vouchsafed. Various assistant-engineers, superintendents, and clerks of the road-all with the ghastly staring eye, and pulled-molasses-candy tint of complexion which mark universally the white residents of Aspinwall-filled in the intervening places at the table. Beyond an occasional yam, plantain, or banana, or perhaps a starved chicken, there was hardly an article on the table which had not come from abroad, probably Fulton Market. The servants were negroes from Jamaica, and served with that ready obedience characteristic of the African race. After dinner there would be a gathering on the piazza, where, in the refreshing coolness of the sea-breeze, the engineers entertained their guests with the history of their great enterprise, and submitted, with an inexhaustible good-nature, to a raking fire of questions from the anxious stockholders and inquisitorial newspaper reporters, who made up our party. And I fear that those good-natured answers led to some ill-favored results; for did not the 48 DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE. prudent X —, by return of steamer, write to Wall Street and order a peremptory sale of all his bonds and stock? Did not the artful Yinform his father, in the brokerage line, that he had better metamorphose himself into a bear? Did not the truthful Z — tell the public, as he was bound on his conscience to do, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and get terribly slandered and berated for having ventured upon so bold a step as to publish facts in the newspaper which employed and paid him for that purpose, which is supposed to be honorable, although it appeared otherwise to the confused conscience of the pure-minded stockjobbers of Wall Street? There was but little temptation at the Mess House to do much else than eat, drink, smoke, and sleep; the provision for which, it must be confessed, was of the most excellent kind. The zealous Methodist chaplain had made a praiseworthy effort to improve a taste for reading, by a generous diffusion of tracts on the hall table, with such attractive titles as, " Prepare to Die," "Will you go to Hell?" and other equally comforting suggestions; but it is feared the heathen only used them to light their cigars, or to serve a less worthy purpose. Colon, or rather Aspinwall, as the Yankee MANZANILLA ISLAND. 49 settlers insist upon calling it with as much propriety as if the Irishmen should, in spite of the Know Nothings, insist upon christening New York, Kilkenny or Cork, is upon the island of Manzanilla at the northeast of Navy Bay. The island is about a mile in length, and half a mile in width, extending north and south. The busy coral insect laid its foundation deep down into the depths of the sea, and is still hard at work with so much success that some fear an encroachment upon the conveniences of the harbor, though this is hardly possible in any period of time short of a geological era. Coral in all its arborescent forms can be picked up every where in abundance, together with the sponge, and many varieties of shells. The white beach which bounds the seaward edge of the island, and, in fact, the railroad track which skirts the same side of the town, are compact with the masonry of the little coral worm which had built its wonderful structures, extended its endless subterranean passages, and erected its enduring palaces long before man had thought of his clumsy pathway of iron, and his flimsy pine-board city. A gradual accumulation of organic matter thrown up by the perpetual tide of the Atlantic, aided by the unceasing activity of the winds and D 50 TOPOGRAPHY. birds, and then spread over the solid foundation of coral, supplied a bed of rich soil, from which sprang the rank vegetation of tropical luxuriance. A forest, centuries old, covered the island, and the spreading mangrove, the mahogany tree, and the poisonous manzanilla, interlaced with creeping vines, which hung their graceful festoons from bough to bough, overshadowed it with a perpetual shade, until civilization dispersed the dark cloud of growth impenetrable to the sun. The settlers have cleared a narrow space seaward, leaving here and there in the town the shade of a towering mangrove, or a grove of cocoa-nuts rustling upon the sea-shore, while inland the thickly-matted jungle of the manzanilla still darkens the island and exhales its poisonous breath. The island of Manzanilla is but a few inches above the level of the Atlantic at high-tide, and being as porous as a sponge, from the nature of the soil-composed of the detritus of vegetable growth-is, consequently, with the exception of a narrow rim of coral shore, an oozy marsh. With such a soil, and a perpetual summer, the temperature of which rises to 84~, and never descends below 72~, with incessant rain six months of the year, and frequent showers during the so-called dry season-from December HEALTH OF ASPINWALL. 51 to June-the island is, of course, unhealthy. The alternate action of sun and rain upon the rank vegetable growth, saturated with moisture and seething in a constant summer-heat, necessarily keeps up a perpetual process of rotting fermentation, which engenders intermittent, bilious, congestive, and yellow fevers, and the other malignant results of impure miasmatic exhalation. There is, however, a constant sea-breeze during the dry season, that blows from the cool north, which tempers the heat, and somewhat mitigates the unhealthiness of the climate, by diluting the poisonous atmosphere which hangs like a pall of death over the island, and stifles the breath of human life. The island of Manzanilla lies, near the opening, in a bend of Navy or Limon Bay, at the northeast. There is a wide expanse of sea on all but the southern side, where a narrow strait of water separates it from the mainland. The chief harbor is on the west, where the largest ships can anchor within a short distance of the shore; but such is the exposure to the fierce northers which occasionally blow, that no vessel is perfectly secure. The hazardous anchorage was sadly illustrated a short time since, when a fierce north wind blew in from the At 52 HARBORS. lantic, and swept the fleet of traders from their moorings, carrying a brig through the wooden pier, dashing a large vessel-from which no man escaped-upon the neighboring shore, and strewing the beach with wrecks, which yet remain as memorials of the fatal storm. Tle steamer Illinois, then in dock, was only saved from destruction, of which she was in great peril, by hastily firing up, letting go her hawsers, and forcing herself, with all the might of her engine, into the very teeth of the wind. The harbor will never be secure until a large breakwater is built at the northwest of the island-at the point where now a wooden bridge stretches out, with a tall look-out at the extremity, which serves as a lighthouse at nightto protect it from the fierce northers and the swell of the Atlantic, which comes sweeping all before it like a tornado. There is a roadstead on the east of the island, where there is also a considerable depth of water, but it is so little secure that it does not deserve to be termed a harbor. Sailing vessels have, in the difficulty of getting away from the island, with almost a perpetual head-wind to beat against, to pay dearly for the propitious northern gale which hurries them into port. Navy Bay was but little known to ancient FIRST SETTLEMENT. 53 navigators, with the exception of those bold robbers, the pirate Morgan and his men, who made it their hiding-place, whence they pounced out, with drawn hangers and blazing cannon, upon the silver-laden Spanish galleons, sailing from the neighboring Chagres and Portobello; and to modern sailors, until the adventurous American appropriators, armed with ax and shovel, commenced their march of civilization. In 1850, the engineers and laborers of the Panama Railroad Company, under the spirited leadership of the indefatigable traveler, the late John L. Stephens, with a favoring wind blowing fresh from their own northern land of vigorous enterprise, sailed into Navy Bay, and landed upon the coral beach of Manzanilla island. The forest rapidly yielded to the well-plied ax of the hardy adventurers, whose untiring labors by day soon found a rest by night under the cover of an American roof of laine shingles. American enterprise never faltered before the terrors of a wilderness of vegetation, the growth of ages, the deep darkness of which shadowed the eye like a perpetual cloud, while the howl of the tiger from its depths startled the ear, and the pestilential breath of its jungle fevered the blood. The strong arm struck blow after blow, encouraged by the bold heart which feared 54 GRAND PROSPECTS. neither the pestilence nor the wild blast; the resisting barriers of the overgrown wilderness gave way, and now American enterprise has stretched its iron arms across the hitherto impenetrable Isthmus of Darien, which bring together in one embrace the Atlantic and Pacific. The town of Aspinwall, as the Atlantic terminus of the railroad, soon became the nucleus of a settlement, and at this moment rejoices in the proud distinction of a city. There are some sanguine anticipations of its future, as I discovered when the ingenious draughtsman of the Railroad Company rolled out the plan of the city, and pointed out to me, with intense enthusiasm, the great Aspinwall in future, expanding over several feet of Bristol-board, with its wide avenues, A, B, C, and so on, to the exhaustion of the whole alphabet (the numerals being brought into play for the side streets). The courteous artist-who, I fear, is too much given to the cultivation of the " ideal"-kindly led me all over the modern Carthage, through the avenues, down the cross streets, along the great docks, giving me an imaginary drive on the magnificent promenade which surrounds the city, and takes up a very large portion of the Bristol-board; and, finally, dropping me in the A MEAGRE REALITY. 55 great central Park, left me there to rest my tired imagination. I was somewhat lost, I must confess, when, after taking leave of my good-natured, but I fear somewhat crack-brained guide, I attempted to find my way in the real city to that beautiful park and that pleasant promenade. In fact, I could not get any farther in the alphabet of the avenues than A and B, and was puzzled to count as far as number III. in the numerals. Avenue C appeared an impenetrable jungle to my confused brain; and although I had counted streets I. and II. as I passed over two wooden bridges so denominated, I could not for the world of me discover how I was to get through number III. unless, like Cvesar, I plunged into a very considerable arm of the sea which flows into the centre of the town, at the imminent hazard of drowning, and with the certainty of a tertian ague, which were the unpleasant consequences of a similar imprudence to the afore-mentioned distinguished Roman. A hundred or so are about the whole number of houses in Aspinwall. Upon the beach at the northern end of the island are a few scattered buildings, gay with white paint and green blinds, chiefly occupied by the officials of the Panama Railroad, while to the right of 56 WALK ABOUT TOWN. these are the works and ddpot of the company with machine shops and reservoirs. The shore at the north curves round, leading easterly to an uncleared portion of the island, where a narrow rim of white beach separates the sea from the impenetrable jungle. As we turn westerly and follow the shore, taking the Mess House as the point of departure, we come upon a building of corrugated, iron in progress of erection, intended for the residence of the British Consul, if he will ever. have the courage to live in what is only a great target for all the artillery of heaven. The lightning during the rainy season keeps it in a continual blaze of illumination, and I mourned, in common with Colonel Totten, whose house is next door, over several prostrate cocoa-nut palms, which had been struck down in consequence of their fatal propinquity to the iron-house. As we proceed we pass three wooden, peaked-roofed cottages with green blinds and verandas, inhabited by employes of the Company; hurry past some ugly whitewashed buildings, which the palefaced sailor and the melancholy convalescent negro, sitting smoking their pipes on the steps, remind us are hospitals, and soon passing by some outlying huts with half naked negresses and pot-bellied children sunning them THE STREETS. 57 selves in front, we make our way into the thicker part of the settlement over marshy pools corrupt with decaying matter, black rotten roots of trees, and all kinds of putrefying offal, which resist even the street-cleaning capacities of those famous black scavengers, the Turkey buzzards, which gather in flocks about it. We now get upon the railroad track, which leads us into the main street. A meagre row of houses facing the water made up of the railroad office,, a store or two, some half dozen lodging and drinking establishments, and the "Lone Star," bounds the so-called street on one side, and the railroad track, upon its embankment of a few feet above the level of the shore, bounds the other. There is another and only one other street, which you reach by crossing a wooden bridge, that a sober man can only safely traverse by dint of deliberate care in the day-time, and a drunken man never, and which stretches over a large sheet of water that ebbs and flows in the very centre of the so-called city. This second street begins at the coral beach at the northern end of the island, and runs southward until it terminates in a swamp. At the two extremities houses bound it on both sides; in the middle there is a narrow pathway over an 58 INHABITANTS. insecure foot-bridge, with some tumble down pine buildings on one side only, with their foundations soaking in the swamp, their back windows inhaling the malaria from the manzanilla jungle in the rear, and their front ones opening upon the dirty water which we have already described that fills up the central part of the city. The hotels-great, straggling, wooden houses-gape here with their wide open doors, and catch California travelers, who are sent away with a fever as a memento of the place, and shops, groggeries, billiard-rooms, and drinking saloons thrust out their flaring signs to entice the passer-by. All the houses in Aspinwall are wooden with the exception of the stuccoed Railroad office, the British Consul's precarious corrugated iron dwelling, and a brick building in the course of erection under the slow hands of some Jamaica negro masons. The more pretentious of the wooden buildings were sent out from Maine or Georgia bodily, and among them is the largest building in the place, the United States Hotel, which belongs to a Mr. Aspinwall of New York, and which I was sorry to hear does not pay. The inhabitants of Aspinwall-some eight hundred in number-are of every variety of CALIFORNIANS IN TOWN. 59 race and shade in color. The railroad officials, steamboat agents, foreign consuls, and a score of Yankee traders, hotel-keepers, billiard markers, and bar-tenders, comprise all the whites, who are the exclusive few. The better class of shop-keepers are Mulattoes from Jamaica, St. Domingo, and the other West Indian Islands, while the dispensers of cheap grog, and hucksters of fruit and small wares are chiefly negroes. The main body of the population is made up of laborers, grinning coal-black negroes from Jamaica, yellow natives of mixed African and Indian blood, and sad, sedate, turbaned Hindoos, the poor exiled Coolies from the Ganges. The arrival of the Californian passengers from New York or Panama each fortnight is a great event at Aspinwall. The population is doubled at once by the new-comers, who, arriving from New York and San Francisco, often meet together in the town, and exchange greetings from the two oceans. The inanimate lethargy of the place is at once quickened by the stirling adventurers. The hotels, deserted the day before as empty packing-boxes, are thronged, and mine hosts, awakened once more to the consciousness of their functions of taking in people; bar-rooms again reek with an atmos 60 ASPINWALL REVIVED. phere of gin-sling and brandy-cock-tail, which the now busy, bilious-faced bar-keeper, only yesterday prostrate with fever, shuffles across the counter in a quick succession of drinks to his throng of impatient, thirsty customers; billiard balls, long stowed away in pockets, begin to circulate, driven by the full force of sturdy, red flannel-sleeved arms; the shops flutter out in the breeze their displays of Panama hats and loose linen garments, and adding a hundred per cent. to their prices, do a brisk business; the very monkeys quicken their agility, the parrots chatter with redoubled loquacity, the macaws shriek sharper than ever, the wild hogs, ant-eaters, and even the sloths (for all these zoological varieties abound in the houses, hotels, and shops of Aspinwall) are aroused to unwonted animation. Apart from the devoted family of the agent of the Atlantic steamers, by whose refined and generous hospitality I was consoled for the absence of home, there is no society blessed by the gentle and holy influence of cultivated woman. The natural consequence of this want of the most powerful, since it is the most resistless, social tie, is a wild recklessness of life, which startles one subdued, if not entirely subjected, by the obligations of a more conventional ASPINWALL HABITS. 61 society. While the residents of Aspinwall are the freest, frankest, and most hospitable of men, it can not be denied that a little more constraint, however it might stifle and restrict their generous qualities, would improve their health and not injure their morals. There was a perpetual excitement among those men I met, which may be partly attributed to the excessive nervous sensibility engendered by the climate and its diseases; but I am sure it was increased by their habits. I do not wish to affect the Puritan, nor do I care that the reader should suppose that I am now, or ever, in a very penitent mood; but I will at this moment both profess and confess. I profess the belief that drinking Champagne cock-tails before breakfast, and smoking forty cigars daily, to be an immoderate enjoyment of the good things of this world. Now, by the way of a peccavi, I will make a clean breast of it, by acknowledging that I, in common with my Aspinwall friends, did both. Now let the uncharitable reader pause before he condemns me. Hear, oh ye civilized Pharisee! It was hot-remember I was writhing in the grasp of the torrid crab-I was thirsty, and drink I must. " Well," you coolly interpose, " take a glass of water." " Thank you! 62 CHAMPAGNE COCK-TAIL. a glass of pure Croton with all my heart," I answer; " but the Croton pipes are not yet laid as far as Aspinwall, and the tanks of rain-water, the only supply in that delectable city, are stagnant and fever-and-aguish." " What shall I drink?" I asked the friend at my side. "A Champagne cock-tail-the most delicious thing in the world-let me make you one," was his response; and he suited the action to the word. A bottle of prime, sparkling "3u nm" was brought, a refreshing plateful of crystal ice, fresh from Rockland by the last steamer, and rather a medicinal looking bottle, upon which was written in direct, brief terms, " Bitters." My friend, whose benevolent eyes expressed pity for my sufferings, while his lips were eloquent of prospective alleviation to myself, and of consciousness, the result of long experience, of his own anticipated enjoyment, pounded the crystal ice, with a series of quick, successive blows, pattered it into the tumblers like a shower of hail, dropped in the bitters, which diffused a glow like that of early sunrise, dashed in the sugar, which somewhat clouded the beautiful prospect, and gave what the artists call a dead tint to the mixture; then out popped the eager "( AMum," and the Champagne cock-tail, thus perfected, went whirling, roar WILL YOU TAKE A PILL? 63 ing, foaming, and flowing down mine and the friendly concocter's thirsty throats. I have preached my sermon, and illustrated it by my own bad example, from which the reader may take warning, and not taste Champagne cocktails, for they are so supremely good that if he once takes them, he will continue to take them, and not take the former. I say nothing by way of protest against the frequent practice of drinking quinine cock-tails, in which quinine is substituted for bitters, and the by no means agreeable but constant habit of freely indulging in quinine pills; for these are excusable, if not necessary on the score of health. It is a melancholy fact, that such is the unhealthiness of Aspinwall, that its inhabitants are obliged to mix medicine with their daily drink, and to pass around their pill-boxes with the frequency of a French snuff-taker of the ancient regime. I have been seriously invited, time and again, to drink a quinine cocktail, and to help myself out of a proffered box, to a pill or two, which, I need not say, I politely declined. I had no reason to go into the hospitals, which I did, and saw some miserable specimens of suffering humanity, to find out the state of health in Aspinwall. A walk in the 64 HEALTH OF ASPINWALL. streets was painfully convincing of the fact that I was among the sick and the dying. The features of every man, woman, or child, European, African, Asiatic, or American, I met had the ghastly look of those who suffer from the malignant effects of miasmatic poison. I do not believe there is a wholesome person in all Aspinwall; at any rate, every single individual I asked confessed to having suffered from the disease of the climate. The little negro Jamaica children invariably answered my question as to how they liked the country, with the plaintive words, "Me no like dis country, berra bad country; me hab de feber ebry oder day." A physician employed by the Railroad Company, who has been two years on the Isthmus, told me plainly that no one who resided over two months in Aspinwall escaped fever; that the first attack was generally a severe bilious remittent, which not seldom resulted in death, and was always followed by habitual fever and ague. Such, he assured me, was the intense malignity of the miasmatic poison, that perfect recovery from the disease of the climate, or any acclimation, unless a perpetual fever and ague may be so termed, was impossible. The beasts even do not escape. That hardiest of animals, the mule, is a frequent sufferer, and PRODUCTIONS. 65 I made the acquaintance of a poor Newfoundland dog that was a martyr to the universal complaint. Aspinwall and its neighborhood, though abounding in causes destructive of life, are very deficient in the necessaries for its support. A scant supply of drinking water is obtained by collecting the rain in large iron tanks, which as yet are so few that the inhabitants are forced to send to Gatun, several miles distant, to satisfy their wants. The chief articles of food come from the New York market, although the neighboring coasts supply a few fowls and a small quantity of the tropical fruits and vegetables. Canoes occasionally arrive with melons, green cocoanuts, pines, yams, and oranges, and a sparse market of these is displayed on the shore by the Indian hucksters, who have become, under the civilizing influences of Aspinwall, tolerably sharp at a bargain. Fish must abound in the bay, but there seems to have been little development as yet of this resource. Milk is obtained from the goats, which are seen picking up a scanty subsistence from the refuse vegetable garbage in the town. Having packed my portmanteau, I paid the E 66 DEAR WASHING. following washing bill, which will show that a fair day's labor receives a fair day's wages in Aspinwall: ASPINWALL. To Charlotte Miles. February 23, 1855. To washing twenty-four pieces wearing apparel at 20 cents each..................................... $ 80 Charlotte Miles, whom I had never the pleasure of seeing in person, as she did her business with me through her negro proxy, Sam of the Mess House, might have become the owner in perpetuity of my stockings, for washing each one of which she charged twenty cents, at the tenth of the sum a pair, and she would have had no bargain at that. Charlotte Miles having received her money, I prepared to leave Aspinwall for Panama. K /W