"In the old times," he continued, "when this was the principal route of travel between New York and San Francisco, the arrival of a steamer made a busy scene. Several hundred passengers were to be transferred, together with a large amount of mail and express matter; the passengers were packed into the cars as closely as possible, and when there was an unusual rush it took two or perhaps three trains to carry them all. In such cases the steerage passengers were sent away ahead of the others, while the cabin passengers and mails followed an hour or two later. Most of the passengers were encumbered with several articles of hand-baggage, together with oranges, bananas, and other fruits bought from the natives that swarmed around the station; you would have thought they were setting out for a journey of a week or more, and provisioning themselves accordingly, instead of a continuous ride of three or four hours over a railway. There was often a contest for places in the carriages, and many an impromptu fight has occurred on the spot where we are so peacefully standing." Soon after the departure of the train Dr. Bronson and the youths returned to the hotel, where they found the official from the canal company awaiting them. He was accompanied by Mr. Colné, the secretary of the American committee of the company, and after the formalities of introduction were completed the party set out for the Atlantic entrance to the promised waterway from the Caribbean Sea to the Bay of Panama. The entrance to the canal is on the mainland, just behind the island on which Aspinwall is situated. The island has been enlarged in this direction, and, when the great ditch is completed, Aspinwall will be its Atlantic terminus in much the same way that Suez is the Red Sea terminus of the Suez Canal. Our friends were surprised at the magnitude of the works of the canal company, as they walked through the miniature city which has sprung up since the work of cutting the waterway was undertaken. There were acres and acres of warehouses and workshops, dwellings for the laborers, and residences of the officers, together with other edifices connected with the enormous enterprise. There was a scene of activity around the machine-shops, where engines and dredges were undergoing repairs, and it was difficult to believe that all this life had been infused into the tropical languor of the Isthmus in the past few years. [Illustration: NATIVE MARKET, ASPINWALL.]