lone on
mules, taking with us three native guides on foot; and although the
distance was not much over twenty miles, and we started at daybreak,
we did not reach Panama until nightfall. But far from being surprised
at this, my chief wonder was that we ever succeeded in getting over
the journey. Through sand and mud, over hill and plain--through thick
forests, deep gulleys, and over rapid streams, ran the track; the road
sometimes being made of logs of wood laid transversely, with faggots
stuffed between; while here and there we had to work our way through a
tangled network of brushwood, and over broken rocks that seemed to
have been piled together as stones for some giant's sling. We found
Panama an old-fashioned, irregular town, with queer stone houses,
almost all of which had been turned by the traders into stores.

On my return to Navy Bay--or Colon, as the New Granadans would have it
called--I again opened a store, and stayed there for three months or
so. I did not find that society had improved much in my absence;
indeed, it appeared to have grown more lawless. Endless quarrels,
often resulting in bloodshed, took place between the strangers and the
natives, and disturbed the peace of the town. Once the Spanish were
incensed to such an extent, that they planned a general rising against
the foreigners; and but for the opportune arrival of an English
war-steamer, the consequences might have been terrible. The Americans
were well armed and ready; but the native population far outnumbered
them.

Altogether, I was not sorry when an opportunity offered itself to do
something at one of the stations of the New Granada Gold-mining
Company, Escribanos, about seventy miles from Navy Bay. I made the
journey there in a little vessel, all communication by land from Navy
Bay being impossible, on account of the thick, dense forests, that
would have resisted the attempts of an army to cut its way through
them. As I was at this place for some months altogether, and as it was
the only portion of my life devoted to gold-seeking, I shall make no
apologies for endeavouring to describe the out-of-the-way village-life
of New Granada.

Escribanos is in the province of Veraguas, in the State of New
Granada--information uninteresting enough, I have little doubt, to all
but a very few of my readers. It lies near the mouth of a rivulet
bearing that name, which, leaving the river Belen, runs away to the
sea on its own account, about a mile f