sensation among the emigrants, but it did not terrify the natives, as they are used to earthquakes. A small lizzard crawled into the ear of an emigrant, who lives near the shore, which nearly killed him. I attended the Cathedral this morning, and the music and ceremonies were grateful to my heart. After the solemn scenes of last week, and the death of a beloved friend on Tuesday last. The attendance was not large. Youth, age, decrepitude, competence, affluence, penury and utter rags, all knelt side by side. Six priests of various grades were present. As I gazed on these splendid ruins, at the images, paintings and costly decorations, and grasped a retrospect of the long line of generations of Spanish nobility who had worshipped in its sacred aisles, and gazed down to the sepulchres of their fathers, contrasting this dismal structure with its tottering walls and spires, with its ancient glory, and as I gazed on its wildness and dilapidated magnificence, I was impressed with the most solemn and overwhelming emotions. Last evening I visited the ramparts, that encircle a portion of the city. The work is truly beautiful and exhilarating at early twilight, when the burning sun is gone, and when, as in last evening, the full moon was emerging with uncommon splendor from the far horizon of a tranquil sea. A group of lovely children just passed my window, followed by their slaves, with gorgeous turbans clad in red, white and blue. A passenger just entered my apartment and informs me that while dozing in his canoe on the banks of the Chagres, he was suddenly aroused from his slumber and saw an enormous alligator crawling over the base of his canoe, when he sprang and leaped to the shore and ran for his life up the embankment with the alligator in hot pursuit, which nearly caught him by the tail of his coat. He rushed into the hut of a friendly native, and closed and barred the door, and flew to the roof, where he found piles of stones for defensive operations, and immediately opened a battery of flying stones at the alligator, causing him to retreat and disappear beneath the waters of the Chagres. There are turkey buzzards in countless thousands hovering over the city, which greatly alarm the natives. Such flocks were never seen before. The timid and superstitious natives predict the most awful visitations from the sudden appearance of so many buzzards, which darken the air like a cloud with their hideous presence. Some of the natives prognosticate a famine, or others fatal convulsions of nature. My chum predicts extraordinary heat (theremometer now about 100 in the shade), and a shower of rain (only rained six times to-day,) and other calamities. But I do not fear these terrible disasters from the advent of large flocks of turkey buzzards, as I have been taught to scout every thing in the form of representation. STEPHEN H. BRANCH. ------------------------------------