ten
thousand miles, north, south, and west, rolHng up the bay for ninety miles its slow, strong, eternal swells, while in the backoround banks of dark gfreen foliatre rise from the white sandy beach, and swelling into hills and mountains, disappear in the distant clouds. Pyramids of green verdure, made purple by distance, rise from the azure sea, and mingle with the azure heavens. Looking; southward from the fortifications you see Flamenco, Perico, and Llenao or Islahao, and beyond some three leagues away is the island of Ta- boga, near which the coaling vessels rest at an- chor. The island is about a mile and a half long by half a mile wide, and has its semi-European town, and its native population, with their hamlets of bamboo huts. Far away toward the east, over indo- lent waters reflecting the blue sky, the sun's glare softened by the breath of summer mists, past little paradises of brilliant green seemingly floating on the placid surface which mirrors their foliage, are the Pearl islands, where Vasco Nunez and his crew an- chored the ships which they had brought with so much labor and peril across this formidable Isthmus. On the island of San Mio-uel, the largjest of the Pearl archipelago, is situated the town of the same name, where the unbreeched natives used to deck their tawny skin with gems that would make the eyes of a city belle sparkle with delight, and ebony pearl merchants displayed their wares, haggling in the sale of them with all the cultivated cunnino- of a Jew.
Panamd, patched and whitewashed under the new regime ofl^ered a seemingly grand array of comforts after our late privations. At the hotel we found cot beds, one to a man, although there were many men to a r(jom. Here was a new field for fretting and brain-whetting, and well the gold hunters improved the opportunity. The streets were crowded day and night with Californian emigrants. Outside the town were encampments of them, apparently as comforta-
