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More than once, indeed, after Panama adopted its constitution in 1904, elections threatened to become tumultuous; whereupon the United States saw to it that they passed off quietly.

We open'd a great quantity of the Merchants Letters, and found ... the Merchants of several parts of Old Spain thereby informing their Correspondents of Panama and elsewhere of a certain Prophecy that went about Spain that year, the Tenour of which was, That there would be English Privateers that Year in the West Indies, who would ... open a Door into the South Seas; which they supposed was fastest shut: and the Letters were accordingly full of Cautions to their Friends to be very watchful and careful of their Coasts.

Arriving at the town late the previous evening, he had been driven up from the steamboat in a carriage, from which he had been able to distinguish only the shadowy outlines of the houses along the street; so that this morning walk was his first opportunity to see the town by daylight. He was dressed in a suit of linen duck the day was warm a panama straw hat, and patent leather shoes.

Once more Almagro returned to Panama for more men, while Pizarro and his followers remained to starve on the barren isle of Gallo. Instead of permitting any more of his people to depart on what seemed so foolhardy and fatal a business, Rios, the new governor of Panama, despatched to the island two vessels, under a commander named Tafur, with orders to bring away every Spaniard left alive there.

"A man went down to Panama, Where many men had died, To slip the sliding mountain And lift the eternal tide. A man went down to Panama, And the mountain stood aside." That's the poetry of it, fellows, but the practical prose is like this: A shovel. A pick. And dig. And dig. And dig. Read Matthew 17:14-21.

So eager were the people of the interior of the State to have the enterprise commenced and completed, that they were willing to accede to any terms which would insure the success of the enterprise and relieve them from the oppression of a powerful water monopoly, which controlled a majority of the shipping both via the Panama Route and around Cape Horn.

The doctor, the following spring, shipped from Albany, twelve houses around Cape Horn, the freight on which was $5,000, he going by the way of the Isthmus, arriving in San Francisco on the 25th of September, 1849. On the steamer going up from Panama was Judge Terry, of Louisiana, who killed United States Senator Broderick in a duel, and who was years afterward assassinated.

Incessant storms of thunder and lightning, for it was the rainy season, swept over the devoted island, and drenched them with a perpetual flood. Thus, halfnaked, and pining with famine, there were few in that little company who did not feel the spirit of enterprise quenched within them, or who looked for any happier termination of their difficulties than that afforded by a return to Panama.

Those early days in California brought out character. It was a long way off then, and the journey was expensive. The fortunate could go by Cape Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama; but the mass of pioneers crossed the plains with their ox-teams. This took an entire summer. They were very lucky when they got through with a yoke of worn-out cattle.

"I have traced those seventeen prisoners in the first instance from San Juan de Ulua to Nombre de Dios; and upon my arrival at Nombre I was informed by His Excellency Don Sebastian de Albareda, the Governor of the city, that they had been dispatched to Panama.