ou had for breakfast."

Let me see if I can remember. First we had fish and eggs, with fried
potatoes and bananas. Then we had beefsteak, coffee, tea, and iced
claret, as it isn't safe to drink the water there.

After breakfast, we sallied out to see the sights. We walked across the
public square, down to the fortifications, and there gathered some
beautiful yellow flowers, which I pressed. We saw plenty of natives in
their scant dresses. One little black fellow I was particularly amused
with. He had on a little blue shirt, which his mother had tied up in a
knot in the middle of his back; and there he was enjoying his mud pies,
and keeping his clothes clean too. We walked down on the beach outside
the city walls; for Panama is a walled town. Here we picked up shells
on the sand. The little crabs were very thick, and scampered away from
under our feet to their sandy holes, the opening of which looked as
round and even as if made by a cane,--just such as I used to make when I
was a little girl, after a hard rain, with the tip of my umbrella. As we
wandered over the rocks, for it was low tide, we found an exquisite
little natural aquarium, all stocked with its tiny inhabitants. It was a
circular rock, with two irregular terraces, and at its top a little
basin, deep here and shallow there; its bottom was all covered with
little spots of pearly whiteness, looking as if inlaid. The little
shell-fish clung lovingly to its side; the crabs, in their borrowed
tenements, crept securely about; and the funny little fishes darted
through the cool, clear waters. Many a wealthy nobleman would like to
have that treasure of nature in his garden; yet perhaps no human eye
had ever noted its beauty before.

"Aunty, what do you mean by the borrowed tenements of the crabs?" asked
Carrie.

There is one kind of crab that likes to live in a shell; so if they find
one empty, they take possession of it; they are called "hermit crabs."
We often used to pick up a shell with a crab in it.

At three o'clock we went to the cathedral, which was open at that hour.
The front of it is rather imposing; but the doors are roughly boarded
up, and do not look as well as our common barn-doors. We went in at a
side-door. There are many shrines adorned with tinsel and cotton lace,
but neither beautiful nor pleasing. There was a little girl, a child of
one of our fellow-passengers, in the cathedral; and knowing that grandpa
was a minister, she walked up to him