i88 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



inhabited, the interior of the country being so scantily 

 peopled that the total population is only three millions, 

 while France, covering the same area, has a popula- 

 tion seven or eight times as large. There are next 

 to no roads, and what few exist are very badly kept. 

 Excepting these, the only means of communication 

 are the rivers, and many of these are very difficult to 

 navigate, as they are intersected by rapids, which the 

 Indian avoids by carrying his canoe overland. The 

 climate is a very torrid one, while it often rains for 

 six months in the year, the annual rainfall at Panama 

 exceeding ten feet. It is not surprising that, with 

 such a high temperature and so heavy a rainfall, the 

 vegetation develops with wonderful rapidity. Thus 

 the organic life of the isthmus is very exuberant, and 

 the virgin forests, with their gigantic cactus and 

 cocoa trees, and their undergrowth, athwart which the 

 native cuts a path with his axe or knife, form an inex- 

 tricable network. It would almost seem as if all the 

 venomous inmates of Noah's Ark had been emptied 

 here, the country swarming with serpents whose bite 

 is fatal, monstrous spiders, scorpions, and jaguars ; 

 but, upon the other hand, it lends itself admirably to 

 cultivation and industry, by means of which it would 

 soon be completely transformed. 



The ground is mountainous, the chain of the Andes 

 rising to a height of over 13,000 feet, and presenting 

 a striking contrast of volcanoes and of summits 

 capped with snow. This is the land in which the 



