534

NO VEHICLES NOR WAGON ROADS.

[1865. Castilian blood, never intermarrying with the natives, preserve nothing but their complexions, and are an imbecile and cowardly race. So in India the experience of a century has failed to produce a single person of genius or high talents born on the soil

from European parentage; but there, sev

ability

sprung

from the lower

classes of the

native race.

eral men of great power Acapulco does not contain a single wheeled vehicle. No wagon roads lead to the interior; and even in peace all supplies are brought in upon the backs of mules and donkeys.

We found Mr. Cole, the American consul, in a cool, airy adobe dwelling, with high walls, stone floor, and a garden in the rear, rich with oleander trees and other gorgeous growths. He was dressed all in white, and reposing at full length in a swinging hammock, prostrate with the prevailing fever. May and June are the hottest months, December the coolest. The town is warmer and unhealthier than Panama, six hundred miles further south.

Gladly we returned from this scorched and devastated city to

1865.]

WONDERFUL BEAUTY OF THE NIGHTS.

535

our pleasant ship, which had been detained six hours for coaling. At length, with a supply of food for our hungry engines, we steamed out of the sleepy harbor into the ocean, so calm and smooth that our vessel often seemed as free from motion as a parlor-floor. Again and again, while reading in the captain's room on the upper-deck, I supposed we had stopped; but on looking out, found we were making eleven miles an hour. It is easily increased to fifteen; but ten or eleven knots is the most economical speed, requiring only half as much coal as fifteen, and causing far less wear and tear of machinery.

We crossed the Gulf of Tehuantepec, and skirting the low level shore of Guatemala, rich with foliage, saw dimly two huge volcanic mountains, smoking through their veil of cloud.

The North Star dipped lower and lower until it was only seven degrees above the horizon. We were unable to see its total disappearance because we did not go south of the equator, where the three Magellan clouds take its place in the northern sky to guide navigators on their pathless way. Every morning we gazed on the brilliant Southern Cross, only seen below twenty-two north latitude. Unlike most constellations, its form is suggestive of its name, four bright stars shaping a perfect cross. Great sea-green turtles appeared on our land side, and the shore foliage grew heavy, profuse and drooping.

The stars looked larger than in the north, perhaps from the deep blue of the sky and snowy whiteness of the cumulose clouds. As midnight approached the heavens were wonderful; it seemed almost a sin to turn away from gazing upon them and go to bed. O, these delicious tropical nights, with new vegetation on earth and new constellations in heaven—with luminous foamy track in the wake of our vessel, the soft vivid luxuriance of the shore, the perfumed air which makes physical existence an absolute luxury, and the Southern Cross blazing like a pillar of fire!

On the thirteenth day we met the Colorado, going north, crowded with passengers. The convexity of the earth hides the hull of a vessel nine miles away; but the beautiful steamer seemed to stand almost entirely out of the water, gliding by within a hundred yards, swarming with men and women shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs, while flags lowered and guns fired.

536

ARRIVAL AT PANAMA.

[1866

To this day, the boom of the most Pacific cannon makes me in. stinctively and nervously glance about, to see where the shot will strike.

The heavy eyes of the fourteenth morning were wide open, when we approached Panama from the south. A long point of land. compels vessels to go one hundred miles below before entering the great bay, surrounded by wooded hills. On our left appeared Toboga with two English steamers, which ply down the coast of South America, lying before it. Winding among high mountain islands, which stud the bay, we came in view of New Panama, while the old city, destroyed by earthquakes and buccaneers, was pointed out six miles distant. Three men-of-war-two English and one American-three ships of the Mail line, and one steamer of the Panama railway for plying up the coast, were lying in the harbor.

At ten o'clock-precisely the minute appointed at the beginning of our long voyage two weeks before the Sacramento made fast to a buoy; for shallow water and wicked reefs forbid first-class steamers to approach within two miles of the shore. Three of us took passage in the captain's dispatch boat, protected by umbrellas from the broiling sun. We pulled two miles out of our course to avoid the sharp teeth of the long reef standing above water at that stage of tide. Here the Pacific rises and falls thirty feet; at Aspinwall, just across the narrow isthmus, the variation of the Atlantic is only as many inches.

Here close my journeyings on the Pacific, from snowy north to burning south, from Vancouver Island, within a thousand miles. of the Arctic sea, down to a thousand miles within the tropics. Here is the beautiful bay studded with islands, fronting the quaint old city of a dead civilization. Here, three hundred and fifty years ago, armor-clad and sword in hand, Balboa waded into the Pacific, taking solemn possession of ocean and all bordering lands for the king of Castile and Leon, his heirs and assigns forever. Truly a magnificent domain, had there been no flaw in the title !

1866.] NATIVE COMPLEXIONS AND COSTUMES. 537

CHAPTER XLIV.

AFTER our little boat was pulled up the beach by coal-black natives, we landed among tumble-down buildings. Climbing rickety stairs and passing under a crazy arch, we were in the narrow streets of Panama, shaded by tall dwellings of adobe and stucco. The population is six thousand.

As this was January first, a church holiday, the thoroughfares were thronged with gaily attired natives of every hue, from jet black to light buff. A few, boasting untainted Castilian blood, are as fair as the people of Louisiana and Mississippi; but chocolate is the prevailing tint of the mob. Interspersed were Frenchmen, Germans, Jews, English, and Americans, all in white linen from head to foot; and richly dressed Spanish ladies with dazzling eyes, and clear rich complexions tinctured with olive.

Women of the poorer classes (these low latitudes where bountiful Nature supplies absolute wants without labor, have no working classes) wore light linen lawns with immense frills about the neck, and exhibiting one entire shoulder and breast. The chariest maid of Panama is prodigal enough only when she unmasks her beauty, not merely to the moon, but to the blazing sun and entire populace. The whiteness of her drapery is in sharp contrast with her tawny skin. Some boys under twelve wear shirts, but most are entirely naked; while girls appear 'in the elegant costume of the Greek Slave.' They form striking couples for promenade young ladies arrayed only in straw hats, and juvenile gentlemen in the same attire with hats omitted. The youthful republicans of New Grenada are incredibly callous to the prejudices of civilization, and flagrantly rebellious against 'the Paris milliner who dresses the world from her imperious boudoir.' If there be

538

THE OLD CATHEDRAL OF PANAMA.

[1866.

any Calvinism in dress, they are hopeless examples of total depravity.

The large, well-stocked trading houses sell goods cheaper than New York; for Panama is a free port, a paradise for smokers who love genuine Havanas, and for homeward-bound Yankees, who purchase for wives, daughters, and sweethearts, exquisite lawns of Irish linen which are said to last a hundred years. Price, thirty cents per yard, specie. Panama hats, which endure water and crushing like gutta percha, sell for from three to fifteen dollars. There is a large American hotel, and a cathedral, seemingly a thousand years old. Many buildings are shattered by earthquakes and war. The 'old' city is reduced to a pile of ruins; and 'New' Panama, apparently about the oldest town in the world, is tending in the same direction. Crumbling walls surrounding the city, adobe ruins within, even roofs of tall buildings, and church towers, are profusely covered with growing vines and shrubs. Here Nature accumulates while men decay; here vegetation triumphs over masonry.

The ancient cathedral facing the plaza is a quaint, irregular pile of stone and stucco, with half-a-dozen medieval Spanish bells in one of its towers, and crumbling walls covered with mosses and vines. A tottering negro, in spectacles and gray hair, who looked old enough to be an Aztec king, and spoke only Castilian, invited us to enter. We passed in by a side door, through a cobbler's shop. The roof is supported by tall pillars, and the edifice will hold four thousand people. There is much silver-ware about the altar. Scores of marble grave-stones flat upon the ground, recite in mellow Spanish or sonorous Latin the virtues of departed cavaliers. Our cicerone pointed out one of the paintings as 'Saint Francisco,' another as 'Saint Sebastian,' a third as 'Mary and the Child;' and then, with polite beseeching, presented the contribution box. Just now no religious service was held, as the repub. lican leader of the late revolution had driven away all the priests. Ordinarily, a revolution in a Spanish-American town attracts little more attention than a thunder shower in the United States.

At this coolest season of the year the blazing sun was fearful. A superannuated New York omnibus, drawn by two mules, rattled its bones through the streets, and a newsboy brought us the Daily