On September 20th, during some excitement due to the fear lest passengers from New Orleans afflicted with yellow-fever were being smuggled into the city despite the vigilance of the health authorities, I left New York for Nicaragua, then popularly spoken of as the Isthmus, sailing on the steamer _Illinois_ as one of some eleven or twelve hundred travelers recently arrived from Europe who were hurrying to California on that ship and the _Star of the West_. The occasion afforded my numerous acquaintances a magnificent opportunity to give me all kinds of advice, in the sifting of which the bad was discarded, while some attention was paid to the good. One of the important matters mentioned was the danger from drinking such water as was generally found in the tropics unless it were first mixed with brandy; and this led me, before departing, to buy a gallon demijohn--a bulging bottle destined to figure in a ludicrous episode on my trip from sea to sea. I can recall little of the voyage to the eastern coast of Nicaragua. We kept well out at sea until we reached the Bahama Islands, when we passed near Mariguana, felt our way through the Windward Passage, and steered east of the Island of Jamaica; but I recollect that it became warmer and warmer as we proceeded farther south to about opposite Mosquito Gulf, where we shifted our position in relation to the sun, and that we consumed nine days in covering the two thousand miles or more between New York and San Juan del Norte, or Grey Town.