in transit; but
we were nearing the end of the journey across the Isthmus and were
shortly to embark for San Francisco. I fear we children regretted the
fact. Our life for three days had been like a veritable "Jungle Book."
It almost out-Kiplinged Kipling. We might never again float through
Monkey Land, with clouds of parrots hovering over us and a whole
menagerie of extraordinary creatures making side-shows of themselves on
every hand.

At Virgin Bay we were crowded like sheep into lighters, that were
speedily overladen. Very serious accidents have happened in consequence.
A year before our journey an overcrowded barge was swamped at Virgin Bay
and four and twenty passengers were drowned. The "Transit Company,"
supposed to be responsible for the life and safety of each one of us,
seemed to trouble itself very little concerning our fate. The truth was
they had been paid in full before we boarded the Star of the West at
Pier No. 2, North River.

Having landed in safety, in spite of the negligence of the "Transit
Company," our next move was to secure some means of transportation over
the mountain and down to San Juan del Sur. We were each provided with a
ticket calling for a seat in the saddle or on a bench in a springless
wagon. Naturally, the women and children were relegated to the wagons,
and were there huddled together like so much live stock destined for the
market. The men scrambled and even fought for the diminutive donkeys
that were to bear them over the mountain pass. A circus knows no comedy
like ours on that occasion. It is true we had but twelve miles to
traverse, and some of these were level; but by and by the road dipped
and climbed and swerved and plunged into the depths, only to soar again
along the giddy verge of some precipice that overhung a fathomless
abyss. That is how it seemed to us as we clung to the hard benches of
our wagon with its four-mule attachment.

Once a wagon just ahead of us, having refused to answer to its brakes,
went rushing down a fearful grade and was hurled into a tangle of
underbrush,--which is doubtless what saved the lives of its occupants,
for they landed as lightly as if on feather-beds. From that hour our
hearts were in our throats. Even the thatched lodges of the natives,
swarming with bare brown babies, and often having tame monkeys and
parrots in the doorways, could not beguile us; nor all the fruits, were
they never so tempting; nor the flowers, though they were past