Chap.iI. HOME — ITS INFLUENCE. 7 
the kitchen, while the trees of the forest stood close to the 
houses. The most common vegetables or fruits of the 
tropics, such as plantains, bananas, yams, mandioca, &c, 
were unknown on the table of the "hotel." The natives 
did not cultivate more of these articles than they wanted 
for themselves, and nobody thought of an occupation that 
would not promise an instantaneous reward. 
Such, in 1850, was the North- American settlement at 
Chagres, — a place where, as Captain B. of our brig ob- 
served, no other than an utterly reckless man could be 
supposed to live of his own free accord. This opinion 
may have contained too severe a judgment. As to me, 
however, never more forcibly than at Chagres did the idea 
strike me, how much the development of many of the 
noblest qualities of our nature is dependent upon the in- 
fluence of a home, that is more to us than a fit place for 
doing business, — to which on the contrary we feel attached, 
— which we rejoice in improving and adorning, and in 
which we like to recognize, more or less deeply imprinted, 
the traces of our taste and character, our thought and 
action. It is not from men alone that we are entitled to 
expect a reciprocation of our affections, — nature too, and 
all the things around us, give us a reward for the in- 
terest our heart takes in them, by exerting an ennobling 
influence upon the mind. Not men alone, but even things 
cannot be neglected and degraded by us, without the bad 
consequences of such an offence against the deeper laws of 
the moral world falling back in just retribution upon our 
own characters. In neglecting and degrading the things 
around us, we unavoidably neglect and degrade ourselves. 
At a place where everybody was but a temporary resident, 
attracted by no other motive but the lust of gain, — where 
everybody, from the very day of his arrival, impatiently 
