288 ELDORADO 



staiitly eng-aged in carrying freight and passengers to 

 and from the principal ports of the /\tlantic States, be- 

 fore the construction of the Panama railroad. The 

 harbor of Chagres is small, but good for vessels of less 

 than two hundred tons burden. 



The following is a description of Chagres and its 

 inhabitants in the early part of 1849, written by a pio- 

 neer then en route to the gold mines of California : 

 -t is a strange, fantastic and oddish-looking town. 

 It consists of some forty or fifty huts with pointed 

 palm-thatch.ed roofs and reed walls. Nor were the in- 

 numerable buzzards which were flying about or rest- 

 ing on the houses, together with the energetic ges- 

 ticulations of the natives when in conversation, as we 

 drew near, at all calculated to lessen the picturesciue 

 effect of a first view. The surrounding country was 

 anything but devoid of interest and beauty. All had 

 a strange equatorial look ; while the green hills around, 

 clothed with rich tropical verdure, and the graceful 

 and shadowy palm, and cocoanut, with other strange 

 fantastic trees, together with the ruins of the large old 

 Spanish castle, on the heights above the town, gave to 

 the scenery a very beautiful and picturesque aspect. 



"We landed at the beach on some logs, which during 

 the rainy season are necessary to preserve the pedes- 

 trian from a quagmire, in the midst of dense foliage 

 that was here luxuriant to the water's edge, sur- 

 rounded by about thirty canoes and some forty or fifty 

 huge black fellows, mostly in the garb in which nature 

 arrayed them. A majority of the natives are black, 

 but some are of a deep copper or mulatto color. The 

 thick lips and woolly head of the African ; the high 

 cheek-bones, straight hair and dogged look of the In- 



