s that no mosquito after
biting me should be able to bite anyone else. We had been some two and a
half days out of Corinto, so my period of detention was not of long
duration. I also got infinitely better messing than any hotel in Panama
afforded.

The seas on either side of Darien Isthmus were at one time the scene of
the many brave but often cruel deeds of the great adventurers and
explorers like Drake, buccaneers like Morgan, pirates like Kidd and
Wallace. Morgan, a Welshman, sacked and destroyed old Panama, a rich and
palatial city, in 1670. He also captured the strong fortress town, Porto
Bello. Drake captured the rich and important Cartagena. Captain Kidd,
native of Greenock, was commissioned by George III. to stamp out piracy,
but turned pirate himself and became the greatest of them all.

It had been my intention to sail from Panama to Guayaquil, cross the
Andes, and take canoe and steamer down the Amazon to Para. But the
reports of yellow fever at Guayaquil, the unfinished state of the Quito
railroad, and the disturbed state of the Trans-Andean Indians, through
whose country there would be a week's mule ride, decided me to alter my
plans once more. So, bidding good-bye to my very kind New York friend,
who went home direct, I myself took steamer for a Colombian port and
thence trained to Baranquillo, a considerable town on the Magdalena
River. It was a novel experience to there find oneself a real live
millionaire! The Colombian paper dollar (no coin used) was worth just
the hundredth part of a gold dollar; so that a penny street car ride
cost the alarming sum of five dollars, and dinner a perfectly fabulous
amount. By Royal Mail steamer the next move was to La Guayra, the
seaport of Caracas, a most romantic-looking place, where the mountains,
some 9000 feet high, descend almost precipitously to the sea. There we
saw the castle where Kingsley's Rose of Devon was imprisoned. At that
time President Castro was so defying France that war and a French fleet
were expected every day. Consequently his orders were that no one
whomsoever should be allowed to enter the country. All the passengers of
course, and for that very reason perhaps, were hoping to be allowed to
land, if only to make the short run up to the capital and back. At
Colon, assisted by my American friend and the United States consul, we
"worked" the Venezuela Consul into giving me a passport (how it was done
does not matter), which at La Guayra I, of cou