420 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



insurers. Steamboats will go smoking along the rich 

 coasts of Chilij Peru, Equador, Grenada, Guatimala, 

 California, our own Oregon Territory, and the Russian 

 possessions on the borders of Behring's Straits. New 

 markets will be opened for products of agriculture and 

 manufactures, and the intercourse and communion of 

 numerous and immense bodies of ,the human race will 

 assimilate and improve the character of nations. The 

 whole world is interested in this work. I would not 

 speak of it with sectional or even national feeling ; but 

 if Europe is indifferent, it would be glory surpassing 

 the conquest of kingdoms to make this greatest enter- 

 prise ever attempted by human force entirely our own 

 work ; nay, more, to make it, as it was once attempted, 

 entirely the work of our city ; for it is to furnish a new 

 field for the action of that tremendous power which, 

 first brought into being under our own eyes, is now 

 changing the face of the whole moral, social, and po- 

 litical world. Is it too much to hope that, in honour 

 of services poorly paid but never to be forgotten, a 

 steamboat, bearing the glorious name of Fulton, may 

 start from the spot where he made his first experiment, 

 and open the great " highway of nations" to the Pa- 

 cific Ocean? 



Thursday, February 27. At three o'clock in the 

 morning we left the yard of the licenciado. The in- 

 habitants of the town were still sleeping. At daylight 

 we passed a village, where, before the door of one 

 of the houses, a traveller was making preparation to 

 set out on a journey. We accosted him, and he said 

 that he would overtake us on the road. At eight 

 o'clock we reached a house, where we stopped to 

 breakfast. The hospitality of Central America is in 

 the country and in the villages ; here I never knew 



