The road the padres built, and what got built on top of it

of land, the depot and the coaling station of the Vanderbilt Steamship Company. It did

not appear to be much that sand spit, known as Punta Arenas, and its row of sheds at the

water's edge, and its scattering shrugs tossing in the wind, but sovereignty over this very

point was claimed by three petty powers, Costa Rica, Negaragua, and Mosquito. Great Britain

backed the Mosquito claim, and in virtue of certain privileges granted by the Mosquito King,

the authorities of San Juan del Norte, the port better known in those days as Grey Town, albeit

twas as green as grass, threatened to seize Punta Arenas for public use. Thereupon Grey Town was

bombarded, but immediately rose Phoenix-like from its ashes and was flourishing when we arrived.

The current number of Harper's Monthly, a copy of which we brought on board when we embarked at

New York, contained an illustrated account of the bombardment of Grey Town, which added not a little

to the interest of the hour. While we were speculating as to the nature of our next experience,

suddenly a stern wheel, flat-bottom boat, backed up alongside of the Star of the West. She was

of the pattern of the small freight boats that still ply the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. If the

Star of the West was small, this stern wheel-scow was infinitely smaller. There was but one cabin,

and it was rendered insufferably hot by the boilers that were set in the middle of it. There was one

flush deck with an awning stretched above it that extended nearly to the prow of the boat. It was said

our passenger list numbered 1400. The gold boom in California was still at fever heat. Every craft

that set sail for the isthmus by the Nicaragua or Panama route, or by the weary route round Cape Horn,

was packed full of gold seekers. It was the golden age of the Argonauts, and if my memory serves me

well, there were no reserved seats worth the price thereof. The first riverboat at our disposal was

for the exclusive accommodation of the cabin passengers, or as many of them as could be crowded

upon her, and we were among them. Other steamers were to follow as soon as practicable. Hours,

even days, passed by, and the passengers on the ocean steamers were sometimes kept waiting,

the arrival of the riverboats that were aground, or had been belated up the stream. About 200 of us

boarded the first boat. Our luggage of the larger sort was stowed away in barges and towed after

us. The decks were strewn with handbags, campstools, bundles, and rolls of rugs. The lower deck was

two feet above the water. As we looked back upon the star of the west, waving a glad farewell to

the ship that had brought us more than 2000 miles across the sea, she loomed like a Noah's ark above

the flood, and we were quite proud of her, but not sorry to say goodbye. And now, away into the very

heart of a Central American forest, and hailed to the new life that lay all before us in El Dorado.

The river was as yellow as saffron, its shores were hidden in a dense growth of underbrush that

trailed its boughs in the water, and rose a wall of verger far above our smokestacks. As we ascended

the stream, the forest deepened. The trees grew taller and taller, wide-spreading branches hung

over us, gigantic vines clambered everywhere, and made huge hammocks of themselves. They

bridged the bayous and made dark, leafy caverns wherein the shadows were forbidding. For the

sunshine seemed never to have penetrated them, and they were the