PUEETO BELLO—COLON 
263 
Palaearctic. Another Noctuid—they were all single specimens— 
was a most distinct and beautiful insect, in superb condition, white 
with blue-grey and dark-green markings. Sir George Hampson has 
described it as Hoplotarache viridifera , sp. nov .; the type is a female, 
it belongs to the sub-family Erastrinae 1 [Plate III., Fig. 5]. Then 
there was a Limacodid, Eulimacodes dislincta, Moschl., presumably 
scarce, since the National Collection has to be content with a drawing 
of it, and a Sphinx, Aellopus fadus, Cram. Another specimen of the 
last-named had come to the ship’s lights the night before, soon after 
we had left the Colon anchorage, and this in spite of the strong wind 
blowing on to the land. 
At last, after knocking about outside for four days and nights, 
we tied up alongside the wharf. Such an experience, only too 
common in the old days of sailing vessels, is now quite exceptional. 
The most curious circumstance was that in spite of a persistent 
northerly gale and heavy sea, the temperature in our cabin through¬ 
out the whole time ranged from 80° to 85° F. It was especially trying 
at night, for when we steamed slowly with the wind aft for an hour 
or two, the air would be perfectly stagnant in the cabin as one lay 
close under the open port, with no covering save pyjamas, yet 
naturally in a profuse perspiration. At last one would fall asleep, 
to awake shivering in a gale of wind, for the ship having changed 
her course was now steaming on her own wake against the wind. 
This process was repeated again and again. 
On landing, every one was presented with a circular, setting forth 
in English and Spanish the danger of mosquito bites, signed by that 
famous sanitary reformer, Colonel Gorgas, of the United States 
Army. 
Colon is quite the most wretched place that it has been my 
fortune to visit. The houses of the Negroes stand on piles in the 
swamp; and in one place I saw a notice-board setting forth the 
eligibility of a building site, more than half of which was covered 
with several inches of water. The more recently erected houses for 
Europeans, and the barracks for canal labourers, are all enclosed 
with wire netting, and look like gigantic meat-safes. Originally the 
town bore the name of the railway promoter Aspinwall, but he had 
to give place to the great Genoese navigator. At Colon Lesseps 
buried a great reputation. 
A short mile from the town is some rising ground, not 100 ft. 
high, known as Monkey Hill, otherwise Mount Hope. This, the sole 
1 “ Lepidoptera Phalaenae,” vol. x., 1910, p. 716 (No. 6088), PI. CLXX. Fig. 32. 
