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by a Pizarro, a Morgan, or an influx of Callfornian gold-seekers, far behind. That night a thunder shower attended us. There was no wind to speak of, only rain and lightning and cloud-ripping blasts — not the old-fashioned rolling artillery, and fire-lined, forked flashes of northern heavens, but sharp, angry, snap- pish blasts, an electrical whip-cracking, accompanied by torrents of light streaming from gulches sky-fur- rowed from horizon to zenith. For hours this luminous darkness hovered round our ship, between the ex- tremes of alternate pitchy blackness and bright, glar- ing light. Toward morning all w^as still, and the sun rose on an ocean with a face as sweet and peaceful as the sleeping babe of Bethlehem.
Next day the Panama sighted the promontory of Veraguas, a grand coast with grander mountains. Steaming lazily along through the quiet waters, like the chariot of Poseidon, attracting round us mj^riads of the monsters of the deep sporting and gamboling on every side, with the load of cares behind unbur- dened, and the load before us not yet put on, time and observation seemed to expand with the expand- ing sea. Gossips took heart ; matrons smiled serenely ; pater familias grew jocund ; attention turned toward comfort, reading, and amusements. Gallants mixed huge pitchers of iced punch and therewith regaled the ladies. Gamblmg, which in the earlier voyages mo- nopolized the saloon, had very rightly been prohibited on board the company's vessels ; yet there was plenty of card-playing in the state-rooms, where the occu- pants could gamble to their heart's content, and lesser games obtained on capstan, bench, and skylight. Three evils the law seems powerless to control, gamb- ling, drunkenness, and the social evil ; which with like social phenomena seem to say that law, so far as possible, should let the individual alone, nor place its grasp upon him but to prevent his interference with the rights of others. Self-injury is a moral wrong touching which the law appears to be inoperati
