Fortunately, daylight soon came, and with it the shrill whistle and clanging bell, announcing the departure of a railway-train. Peeping cautiously through the window, I saw, to my intense delight, a long train specially put on, and the rowdies just ready to start. I watched them scrambling in, and as the engine with its freight dashed into the tropical jungle, I emerged from my room and the ‘Howard House’ with all possible speed, completed my toilet at the barber’s shop, breakfasted with the Commissioner at the Company’s messroom, and thus ended my night in Colon. The agency and mess establishment of the Panama Railway Company are really delightful residences, overshadowed by cocoanut trees, and surrounded by perfect bijous of gardens entirely reclaimed from the swamps: the papaw, the banana, blossoming creeping plants, fruit-bearing vines, and curious orchids, all growing together, a wild tangle of loveliness, yielding beauty, fruits, and shade. The cool verandah, and cane-chairs from China, together with the comfortably-furnished interior, gave ample proof that the products of a tropical country may be used to good account, as additions to our northern ideas of a substantial home. One of the most singular flowers growing in this pretty garden was an orchid, called by the natives ‘Flor del Espiritu Santo,’ or the ‘Flower of the Holy Ghost.’ The blossom, white as Parian-marble, somewhat resembles the tulip in form; its perfume is not unlike that of the magnolia, but more intense; neither its beauty nor fragrance begat for it the high reverence in which it is held, but the image of a dove placed in its centre. Gathering the freshly-opened flower, and pulling apart its alabaster petals, there sits the dove; its slender pinions droop listlessly by its side, the head inclining gently forward, as if bowed in humble submission, brings the delicate beak, just blushed with carmine, in contact with the snowy breast. Meekness and innocence seem embodied in this singular freak of nature; and who can marvel that crafty priests, ever watchful for any phenomenon convertible into the miraculous, should have knelt before this wondrous flower, and trained the minds of the superstitious natives to accept the title the ‘Flower of the Holy Ghost,’ to gaze upon with awe and reverence, sanctifying even the rotten wood from which it springs, and the air laden with its exquisite perfume? But it is the flower alone I fear they worship; their minds ascend not from ‘nature up to nature’s God;’ the image only is bowed down to, not He who made it. The stalks of the plant are jointed, and attain a height of from six to seven feet, and from each joint spring two lanceolate leaves; the time of flowering is in June and July.