We stopped at Gatun for a short time, the station being close to the little village of bamboo huts thatched with palmetto-leaves, and only remarkable as being the place where the ‘bongoes’ (or native boats) used to stop for the travellers to refresh themselves ere the railroad was. From here the line skirts the bases of an irregular series of hills to cross the Rio Gatun, tributary to the Rio Chagres, on a well-made truss girder-bridge of seventy feet span; passed Frijoli, where the fields of golden maize were decked with what looked, at a distance, like immense bouquets of scarlet flowers; and along the banks of the Rio Chagres, which are here very deep, to cross it at Barbacous on a wrought-iron bridge, six hundred and twenty-five feet in length, eighteen in breadth, and forty feet above the surface of the water. There are six spans, each over a hundred feet; iron floor girders, three feet apart, support the rails—the entire structure resting on five piers and two abutments. After crossing the river, the country becomes open, and large patches of rich land are seen under a rude kind of cultivation, until the native town of Gorgona is reached, where, in old days, boats were exchanged for horses and mules, on the overland route. Leaving the course of the river, the line passes through deep clay banks and rocky cuttings, suddenly emerging on the green meadowlands surrounding Matuchin. I never gazed on a more exquisite panorama. Dotting the foreground was a pretty native village; to the left the Chagres, and its tributary the Rio Obispo; on the right a group of conical hills, so clothed with vegetation that it was impossible to imagine what the land would look like if the trees were cut away. During our stay at this station we were regularly beset; numerous vendors of native merchandise crowded into and round about the open van; grey-haired old men, and women, pushed trays under our very noses, covered with filthy pastry, gingerbread, sweetstuff, and other like abominations; whilst little black urchins sat like imps on the rails of the truck, each with some live captive for sale—monkey, squirrel, parrot, or other bright-plumaged bird.