every thing seemed to depend on securing those tickets on the Pacific side.  By the time I had all my arrangements made, Lieutenant M. made his appearance.  He said he was the second passenger that landed from the steamer.  Then behold us in what they called a dug-out, a boat somewhat similar to a canoe, with a little canopy over the center that you could crawl under to lay down with the two naked natives, with the exception of a cloth around their loins, neither understanding each other’s language, to whom we could only communicate by signs.  At 4 P.M., starting for Gorgona, fifty-five miles up the river, where we were to land and take mules for Panama.  Eight miles was the first stopping place.  We felt elated that we had got so good a start of all the other passengers.  The denseness of the vegetation first attracted our attention on the banks of the river.  The trees, the vines, the shrubbery, the vines clinging to the trees, hanging in all fantastic shapes, it seemed to be impenetrable, an ocean of green, unlike any thing we had ever seen before.

Early in the evening we arrived at the first stopping place, eight miles on our way up the river, where we both made ourselves at home, excited at the strangeness of the scene, surrounded by the thatched huts of the natives, who were having a dance on the square in the village.  After we had been there an hour, we thought our men had their rest, and it was time to go on according to our contract, to be rowed night and day.

In the meantime it seems the natives had taken some offense at Lieutenant M.’s familiarity, and they appeared with handles of long knives projecting back of their necks in a threatening manner.  We likewise learned that that was the home of one of our men, and that he proposed to stay there all night in violation of the contract.  So we had a consultation to decide what to do to get away.  It was pitch dark; we laid our plan.  Lieutenant M. beckoned one of the men away from the dance as if he wanted to give him something, and drew his pistol on him and marched him down to the boat, while I, with a pistol, kept him there while he went for the other man.

After a while he came with him and we got them both in the boat and started.  About this time there was a storm came up with the rain, and thunder and lightning, as the elements can only perform in that way in the tropics, surrounded by impenetrable darkness, and to us an unknown river, with its serpents and alligators, with our two naked savages, that we only got in the boat by force, and, of course, could not feel very friendly toward us.  Expecting to be fired on from the shore, if they could see us through the darkness, we took our departure from our first landing place on the Chagres river, surrounded by romance enough to satisfy the most romantic imagination in that line.  Our men kept steadily to work.  After a while the clouds broke away, the moon showed itself, and we made good progress that night.