8 CHAGEES — VILLAGE OF THE NATIVES. Book I. 
counted the time to the moment when he would have 
gained enough to justify his departure, a result for which, 
at Chagres, a few years were thought rather a long period, 
— at such a place life must have a mean and debased 
aspect, without much hope of improvement. I do not 
know what may have become the character of Aspinwall, 
to which place many of the inhabitants of Chagres have 
removed not long after my visit, nor am I informed of the 
merits of social life* in the gold mines of Australia. As to 
California, however, a considerable number of those, who 
went there from all parts of the world, have justly found it 
so desirable a home from the very beginning, that even the 
mining regions of that country have soon been graced with 
the charms of home life, and nowhere it has been better 
understood than in California, that one individual intending 
to make the country his permanent home, is worth more to 
the community than a number of temporary residents, 
however important may be the business they come to 
transact for a while. 
I passed the river to examine the village of the natives. 
There is a swamp on one side of it, the fetid exhalations of 
which, mingled with the dew of the evening, were so thick 
and substantial that, beyond their affecting the olfactory 
sense, I had the taste of them on the tongue. Neverthe- 
less, this part of Chagres made a far more favourable 
impression on me than the American town. The habita- 
tions, standing on a more or less elevated ground, neatly 
built of canes, and covered with palm-leaves, were ex- 
tremely clean. Seen from the opposite side of the river, 
they represented a very picturesque view. A grove of 
palm-trees surrounds them in the rear, at the foot of 
a steep hill covered with a dense forest of exogenous 
trees, some of them of a gigantic growth, waving their 
