We had no trouble with our men after that.  The colonel at Chagres had evidently given us his best man.  They found that we were masters of the situation and it was for their interest to submit.  We treated them kindly after that, and all went well, for we passed every boat we came to.  I shall never forget the look of despair at two Frenchmen, evidently gentlemen, as we went by them, and they informed us the length of time they had been coming up the river, and that they could do nothing with their men.  That afternoon we came in sight of a thatched hut on the banks, evidently a ranch.  We thought it for our interest to rest.  We saw a man whom we took for the proprietor, entirely naked, rubbing his back against a post.  On landing and approaching him he excused himself for a short time, and returned dressed, walking with the air of a lord of a manor, which dress consisted of a coarse bagging shirt, coming down to his knees.  We arrived the next day at 11 A.M., at Gorgona, and took our dinner at the hotel kept by the Alcalde of the place, and bargained with him for a guide and three mules to continue our journey to Panama.  As soon as our guides and mules were ready, about 1 P.M., we started for Panama.  We soon got enough of our mules by being thrown a number of times over their heads.  They did not understand our language.  “Get up and go along,” was Greek to them, but when the guide said “mula vamous” they knew what it meant.  On reaching the place where we were to stay all night, we arose in the morning refreshed, but concluded to leave our mules and make the rest of the way a-foot, as we considered them a nuisance, and as we had no baggage but my little satchel previously referred to, in which I had bills of lading of my houses, they being consigned to me, the specifications of my carpenter’s schedule, my letters and a gold chronometer watch, worth $250, belonging to H., a broker in New York, a friend, and a bottle of the best brandy, which he presented to me to keep off the fever in crossing the Isthmus.  This bag I handed to the guide boy, about seventeen years of age, taking out the brandy bottle.  The watch I was to sell, for he had two nephews who had gone to California, and if they were in need, to supply their wants.  I did not meet them; sold the watch for $500 to Mr. Haight, one of the owners of the Miners’ Bank in San Francisco, and remitted the money to my friend, so I shall not refer to the watch again.

We were walking on at a free pace, our guide boy following behind.  Looking back after awhile we could not see him.  We stopped and waited some time, but he did not come, so we thought we would go on and he would follow.  The result was we lost our way and craved for a sight of the Pacific ocean with all the ardor that Gilboa could have done, the first Spanish discoverer of it, and on the same route, after our wanderings all day, almost without hope, until four in the afternoon, we came to a stream of water; oppressed