CHAPTER VII.
THE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA —ISTHMUS OF PANAJSli.
What deem'd they of the future or the past ? The present, like a tyrant, held them fast.
— Byron.
The isthmus of Panama, or, as it was anciently called, Darien, must ever command the interest of the civilized world. Aside from the charm which history throws over this region, as the bar which baffled the last attempt of the great admiral to find a passage to India, as the point where were planted the first perma- nent Spanish settlements on the North American conti- nent, as the window of the bi-continental Cordilleras which, opened by the hand of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, let in from the great South Sea a flood of light illumi- nating well nigh to blindness all Europe, as the initial point to many a marauding expedition, as the scene of divers piratical attacks, and local revolutions, — I say aside from historic associations, this narrow strip of earth must ever be regarded with attention by all the nations of the world, presenting, as it does, the smallest impediment to inter-oceanic communication and an uninterrupted pathway from Europe to Asia, sailino; to the westward. Said Walter Raleiirh to Elizabeth, "Seize the isthmus of Darien, and you will wrest the keys of the world from Spain." Here the continent was first spanned by iron, and here is being duo- the first inter-oceanic canal.
At the beo^inninty of the new traffic arisino- from the discovery of gold in California, the natives of the Isthmus were civil, inoflensive, and obliging. This
