Following the valley of the Obispo, which river is crossed twice within a mile on iron bridges, we ascend gradually (the gradient being about sixty feet in the mile) to reach the watershed, over which the descent commences to the Pacific. About a mile from the summit the line winds through a huge pile of basaltic columns, that look as if some Titan force had hurled them into the air, and let them fall again one over the other, like a mass of driftwood piles itself in a North American river. Below, the Rio Grande may be seen, a mere brawling burn; a short distance through thick woods, and we are at Paraiso; as unlike one’s ideal of paradise as Cremorne Gardens or Ratcliff Highway. Again we reach the swampy lowlands with their dense growths; ahead, and looming high in the glowing atmosphere, stands Mount Ancon, whose southern base is bathed by the blue waters of the Pacific; on the left, Cerro-de-los-Buccaneros, or the Hill of the Buccaneers, from whose summit the terrible Morgan first looked on old Panama in the year 1670. We rattle past San Pedro Miguel and Caimitillo, small tidal tributaries to the Rio Grande, scream through the Rio Grande Station, sweep round the base of Mount Ancon; and before us are the tall spires of the cathedral, the long metal roofing of the terminus, and the quiet waters of the Pacific. Captain Harvey, R.N., then in command of Her Majesty’s ship ‘Havannah,’ met us at the terminus; the ship’s boats were in waiting to take both men and baggage on board, so that I saw but little of Panama. My old foes (that waged war against me at Colon), the gold-seekers, were assembled on the wharf, awaiting the small tugboat to take them off to the larger steamer anchored in the offing. To judge from appearances, there were amongst them a goodly sprinkling that would have deemed lynching or riddling a Britisher, a capital joke.