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. [rom 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 Chagres, which are here very 
deep, to cross it at Barbacous on a wrought-iron 
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. 
on? 
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