THE VOYAGE. 19 



orchids, grotesque in form and colouring, grew 

 everywhere, springing alike from the living and 

 the dead ; for amidst this flood of vegetable life, 

 decay and beauty, like twin sisters, walk hand- 

 in-hand. 



We stopped at Gatun for a short time, the 

 station being close to the little village of bamboo 

 huts thatched with palmetto-leaves, and only 

 remarkable as being the place where the 'bon- 

 goes ' (or native boats) used to stop for the tra- 

 vellers to refresh themselves ere the railroad 

 was. From here the line skirts the bases of an 

 irregular series of hills to cross the Rio Gatun, 

 tributary to the Rio Chagres, on a well-made 

 truss girder-bridge of seventy feet span ; passed 

 Frijoli, where the fields of golden maize were 

 decked with what looked, at a distance, like im- 

 mense bouquets of scarlet flowers ; and along the 

 banks of the Rio Chaores, which are here verv 



o ^ 



deep, to cross it at Barbacous on a wrought-irori 

 bridge, six hundred and twenty-five feet in length, 

 eighteen in breadth, and forty feet above the 

 surface of the water. There are six spans, each 

 over a hundred feet ; iron floor girders, three feet 

 apart, support the rails the entire structure 

 resting on five piers and two abutments. 



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