As we steamed quietly along, I had time to examine the new arrivals. Squatted in little groups or families, each group had all its property, piled or stowed in some fashion, amidst them, consisting of bundles of all shapes and sizes, crockery, parrots and parroquets, quantities of eggs and live poultry, fruits such as are usually consumed in tropical countries; bananas, mangoes, cocoanuts, water-melons, bad oranges, and vegetables; but what was most valued and cared for, clearly the grand object of the visit, were numbers of gamecocks, all _trimmed_, according to the most approved fashion, and tied by the leg, either to the bedding or, failing anything else, to the person of the owner. These Carthagenian blacks are evidently of mixed descent; most likely a sprinkling of Spanish blood flows through their veins. The men, of small stature, are lithe, sinewy, and extremely active; the women have a decided tendency to become fat; one or two of them had attained to such a state of obesity, that walking was next to an impossibility. The children are the most singular little frights imaginable; guiltless of garments, they seemed all eyes and stomach, arms and legs being merely trifling unessential appendages; a singularity of form that may, I presume, be traced to the habit of consuming such vast quantities of innutritious vegetable food. We reached Colon (or Aspinwall, as the Americans have named it) in due course, and landed about midday. The outfit being enormously heavy, some time had necessarily to be occupied in landing; and as the afternoon train was about to start, it was deemed the wiser course to send the men and officers at once to Panama, where Her Majesty’s ship ‘Havannah’ was waiting to take us to Vancouver Island—the Commissioner and myself remaining at Colon, with a sergeant and small working-party, to bring on the baggage. All the attendant miseries of unshipping such a heterogeneous medley of packages as we had on board was finished at last, and our equipment safely stowed away in the goods-vans of the Panama Railway Company.