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Having, therefore, obtained letters from the Governor of Porto Bello to the Commandant at Chagres, I chartered a canoe with four stout canoemen and a steersman, or patron, as he is called, to convey me to Cruzes; and having laid in a good stock of eatables and drinkables, and selected the black pilot, Peter Mangrove, to go as my servant, accompanied by his never failing companion, Sneezer, and taking my hammock and double barrelled gun, and a brace of pistols with me, we shoved off at Six A.M. on the morning of the 14th.
Rather a rum sort of request, it struck me; nevertheless, a purification, after the many disagreeables I had endured, could not come amiss; and slipping on my trowsers, and casting my cloak on my shoulders, away we trudged to a very beautiful spot, about a mile above Cruzes, where, to my surprise, I found a score of Crusafios, all Altering in the water, puffing and blowing and shouting.
For about fifteen or twenty miles below Cruzes, the river becomes rapid, and full of shoals, when the oars are laid aside, and the canoes are propelled by long poles.
I brought down one this day, about three feet long, and found it, notwithstanding its dragon like appearance, very good eating. At eleven AM on the 18th, we arrived at the village of Cruzes, the point where the river ceases to be navigable for canoes, and from whence you take horse, or rather mule, for Panama.
About eight o'clock A.M. I got under weigh, with Peter Mangrove, on two good stout mules, and a black guide running before me with a long stick, with which he sprung over the sloughs and stones in the road with great agility; I would have backed him against many a passable hunter, to do four miles over a close country in a steeple chase. Panama is distant from Cruzes about seven leagues.
The citadel de Sao Miguel, lately blown up, has been restored; the extensive works of dressed freestone, carefully whitewashed, stand out conspicuously from the dark bush dotting the escarpment top. Here also is the Alto das Cruzes, the great cemetery, and the view from the sheer and far-jutting headland is admirable.
In the State of Sao Paulo is a boy, Ramiro by name, now about thirteen years of age, the only son of parents who do not know a letter of the alphabet. Indeed, he is the only one in a large connection that has been taught to read. The family lives about twenty miles from their market town, Mogy das Cruzes, to which they go to sell the meager fruits of their labors on the little farm.
After Lerma, there still remained the pass over the mountains which border the valley of Mexico; and here in the midst of a dense pine-forest is Las Cruzes, "the crosses," a place with an ugly name, where several robberies are done every week.
This persistent reading of the Word went on for two or three years to a time when the Lord opened to Dr. J. J. Taylor, of Sao Paulo, a door of opportunity in Mogy das Cruzes. He found twelve people ready to follow on in the Lord's ordinance. Since that time even more abundant fruit has been gathered. Dr.
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