"We noticed several strange spectacles as we slowly walked through the city. Venders of fruit marching about, with huge baskets on their heads, filled with luscious oranges, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, and other choice fruits of the tropics; groups of blacks, carrying immense burdens in the same manner; invalids reclining in their hammocks, or ladies riding in their gay-covered palanquins, supported on men's shoulders; and water-carriers moving along by the side of their heavily-laden horses or mules." In his excursions along the small streams which penetrate the forests our traveller met with some magnificent scenes. Here is a description of one of them: "Now the grassy table-land would extend away for miles to our left, gemmed here and there with solitary trees, waving their branches mournfully in the wind, and looking like spectres in the mystic starlight. On the outer side, a gloomy yet splendid wilderness ran along the margin of the stream, flinging tall shadows across the water, and adding grandeur to the imposing landscape. As we advanced the brook gradually narrowed, and became more and more crooked in its course, until finally the thick clustering foliage met in a prolonged arch of verdure over our heads. "While winding through this natural labyrinth, the sun emerged from his oriental couch, and besprinkled us with a shower of luminous beams, which, falling through the interstices of the leaves, seemed like the spirits of so many diamonds. A more divine spectacle of beauty never was beheld. The most gorgeous creations of the poet's imagination, if realized, could not surpass in magnificence this sun-lighted arbor, with its roses and flowers of varied hues, all set like stars in a canopy of green. Sprightly humming-birds flitted before us, sparkling like jewels for a moment, then vanishing away from our sight for ever. Butterflies with immense wings, and moths of gay and striking colors, flew also from flower to flower, seeming like appropriate inhabitants of this little paradise. But the indefatigable mosquitoes, who were continually pouncing upon our unprotected faces and hands, as well as the mailed caymans, who now and then plunged under our canoe with a terrific snort, preserved in us the conviction of our own mortality.