16 THE VOYAGE. 



getting ready, I took a turn over the Company's 

 wharf and round the town. 



The Wharf, built on piles driven into the 

 coral reef, extends about a thousand feet in 

 length, and forty in width, with a depth of 

 water at its landing-end sufficient to float the 

 largest ship. The piles are from the forests of 

 Maine, and have to be coppered above high- 

 water-mark, to resist the destroying power 

 of a boring worm (Teredo fimbriata), that 

 would otherwise destroy them in a very few 

 months. The Freight Department is a hand- 

 some stone structure, three hundred feet long by 

 eighty wide, through the arched entrance to 

 which is a triple line of rails. 



Man, it is said, diiFers from all other animals, 

 in being ' a tool and a road-making animal,' the 

 truth of which was well exemplified in the 

 curious assemblage of products collected from 

 all parts of the world, and stowed in this 

 huge house, brought by man's ocean highways, 

 and awaiting removal by his iron roads and 

 horses. 



Ceroons of cochineal and indigo from Guate- 

 mala and San Salvador, cocoa from E9uador, 

 sarsaparilla from Nicaragua, coffee from Costa 

 Rica, hides from the North and South Pacific 

 coasts, copper-ore from Bolivia, linen goods 



