[_From the New York Times._] The verdict and the sentence startled a great many people. BRANCH was immediately surrounded by a troop of friends, who nearly shook his hands off with their greetings. He was followed to the Tombs by a large crowd, who only left him at the gates of that edifice. But though incarcerated in prison, we have not as BRANCH says, heard the last of BRANCH. ------------------------------------ ALLIGATORS. PANAMA, New Granada, } Jan. 7, 1849. } JAMES GORDON BENNETT, _Editor of the N. Y. Herald_: When three miles from Panama, I saw two spires of the largest and most imposing cathedrals here—larger than any church in America. On either side I beheld the Cordileras and the Andes, towering high up towards the glorious sun—the Cordileras connecting the Andes with the Rocky Mountains. As you near the city, you are gradually lead upon a beautifully paved road—paved by Pizzaro, the fiend, under whose superintendence the path from there to Cruces was made, through which Pizzaro, with his terrible banditti, often passed. On entering the city, the natives outside the gates were singing and dancing merrily in honor of some festival. Boys were flying their kites on the road, which they seemed to enjoy like the youth of all countries. There kites were made in the form of a coffin, and fringed on the sides with a very curious tail, partially resembling a rattlesnake. The more genteel natives wore white dresses and Panama hats. These hats are not made in Panama, but at St. Helena, and other places on the coast, which was news for me. Panama contains an impoverished population, whose leading maintenance is a few merchants of very little energy, who deal in British drillings and manufactures of various kinds. There are some choice relics of the old Castilians who are never seen in the streets by day, but who walk in their rear balconies in the evening to inhale the tropic air. The female Castilians are as beautiful as the Georgians or Circassians, and will not recognize the common natives, nor even the English or Americans, nor the aristocracy or nobility of any country as their equals. I had the fortune, through influential letters to a large mercantile house here, to get an introduction to a Castilian family, and I was invited to a rural gathering of the friends and relatives of this family. The loveliest girl I ever saw is the daughter of the gentleman who is at the head of the family. To attempt a description of her accomplishments and extraordinary personal fascinations, would be as impossible as to describe the horrors of a trip up the Chagres, and especially the defile from this to Cruces, which still haunts, and will haunt me for a long period. The best description I can convey to my countrymen of the river