Phjsical Configuration of the Isthmus. 435 



carried him through the tropical intermittent fevers and 

 mental anxiety, wliich at one time threatened to prostrate 

 his jihysical strengtli, or even to lay him in his grave. Wag- 

 ner had been first struck by the very remarkable evidence of 

 an entire alteration in the form of the hills between Veragua 

 and Obispo. This change in the vertical configuration, the 

 decided depression of the Cordilleras, which is most apparent 

 between Limon Bay (at the mouth of the Chagres river) and 

 tlie Gulf of Panama, is just as much an important geological 

 fact for physical geography, and for solving the important 

 questions of the present and future commerce so intimately 

 connected witli the artificially cutting througli of this neck 

 of land, as the change in the horizontal configuration or the 

 sudden compression of this part of the world in the north- 

 west of the province of Choco, or the rugged steepness that 

 characterizes the range of hills which forms the contour of 

 the coast line. The geological and botanical facts, those most 

 reliable of all data for pliysical generalization, with which 

 Wagner illustrate^s his interesting exposition of the natural 

 character, the prevailing formations, and the most prominent 

 representations of the vegetation of the Isthmus, form at pre- 

 sent a valuable part of the collections of natural history in 

 the Museum of Munich. 



The journey across is not made at the speed one would ex- 

 pect on a line where the locomotive is in charge of a Yankee. 

 It takes four hours to do the 47J English miles. The stations 

 are very numerous, often situate in the heart of the forest. 



2 F o 



