or New York and were welcomed
on our arrival by friends with whom we remained for a week. On the
following Monday we secured passage for California on the steamer Ohio
bound for Aspinwall. I was too young and also too ill to know just the
route taken, but after a month we arrived at Aspinwall, and when
our belongings were properly taken care of we started on our journey
across the Isthmus of Panama.

[Illustration: Blake

_Virtue Alone Ennobles_

THE FAMILY COAT OF ARMS]

We were nine days going up the Chagres river in flatboats. This trip,
girl as I was, I can recall perfectly and it was an experience which
has served in after years as an education which I have used in many
ways. We, as children, had access to father's great library and
magazines from which we learned so much of foreign countries and
people. I had artistic tastes and I used to find the tropical pictures
and scenes much to my liking and asked many questions in regard to the
different people among whom the missionaries worked. I had never
thought ever to see or realize such a picture in the tropics as this.
We had a large boat assigned to our family alone. Our belongings were
deposited and two great, black natives were placed at each end of the
boat or scow. They were without clothing, save for a short, full skirt
of white cloth fastened around their waists on a band. Each used a
long pole to propel the scow. We were the only family of women on
board the steamer. There was Mr. Biggar and his wife and a bride and
her husband, besides several colored women and their husbands coming
out to take positions on the Pacific steamers. All the other
passengers were men, coming to hunt their fortunes and go back rich.
There were about eight or nine of these scows. The railroad was not
finished, but it was being built at that time. The surveying was being
done and small cabins were built for the surveyors' use at the
different stations where we camped for the night. The captain had
provided us with food in cans and packages, toasted bread and other
things for our comfort and utensils for cooking, and we had a jolly
picnic for nine long days before we came to the place where we mounted
the burros to take us the rest of the way to Panama.

To describe this journey needs a more romantic pen than mine, but I'll
endeavor to tell you of some of the features and things that we saw
which were so strange and wonderful to me. After we had said our
good-byes to the capt