296 A CALIFORNIA TRAMP. 



Aspinwall is underlaid with a coral reef, and the water is so 

 bad that for drinking purposes the people depend on huge 

 cisterns, which are filled in the rainy season. To supply the 

 ship-tank we were obliged to diverge from our homeward 

 course and proceed down the New Grenada coast for twenty- 

 five miles, where we took in water. I was glad of this, as it 

 gave me a chance to see the scene of an exploit I read of in 

 my young school days in "Parley's History;" namely, the 

 capture of Porto Bello by the buccaneer Morgan and his 

 piratical gang. 



Had we been under the Equatorial sun the weather could 

 not have been hotter or the scenery more tropical than what 

 we saw and felt while going down the coast. The high moun- 

 tain shores were covered with a network of vegetation that 

 hid the earth down to the edge of the water which duplicated 

 it in reverse. The stillness was oppressive, even the beauti- 

 fully plumaged birds flitting among the fever-suggesting 

 shrubbery being silent. 



Slowly steaming along we came before sunset to a scene of 

 picturesque quietude, whose equal I never saw. This was 

 Porto Bello, the " beautiful harbor," discovered in 1502 by 

 Columbus, and settled one hundred years after. The ruins of 

 the old town were close to our anchorage, consisting of 

 remains of towers, churches, convents and other buildings, 

 overgrown with tangled vines, and with limbs of trees pro- 

 jecting through the windows, and shrubbery growing from 

 the joints of the stones. How difl'erent from two hundred 

 years ago, when the town was the northern terminus of an 

 isthmus highway, paved with stones and extending over the 

 ridge to Panama. Then Porto Bello was the point of exchange 

 where the gold and silver of Peru met the costly merchandize 

 of Spain, when convoyed by armed vessels it was landed here. 

 At stated times fairs were held, to which the merchants of the 

 western coast of South America came to make their purchases 



