g their bed-rolls, to swell the bevy
already landed. Mr. Grigsby shouldered his own bedroll, gave Charley a
hand with the other, and together they joined in the scramble.

[Illustration: The route across the isthmus in 1849. About forty miles
by canoe from Chagres to Cruces; twenty miles by horse, mule, and
bullock from Cruces to Panama. Charley's party stopped at Gatun, Dos
Hermanos, Pena Blanca, and Cruces. Of course, to-day Gatun Lake covers
from Gatun to Gorgona, and people start from Limon Bay, not Chagres, by
canal]

"Hello!" greeted Mr. Adams. He was as breathless as they, for every
minute he was shoving away persons who tried to seize the canoe, and
was explaining that it was taken. A black boatman was busy thatching
the canopy top with dried palm leaves--and he, too, was obliged to keep
shaking his head and saying: "No. No. Go 'way."

"Well, here's our boat," continued Mr. Adams, briskly. "Here's one
boatman; his name's Maria. Francisco, the other, is up town buying
provisions. No," called Mr. Adams, to a _Georgia_ passenger who was
thrusting money fairly into the face of Maria, "you can't hire this
boat. It's taken."

"I've paid fifteen dollars apiece, for the three of us and our baggage
up to Cruces, forty miles. That's as high as boats go; there we'll
have to take mules across to Panama," continued Mr. Adams--the outsider
having gone off disappointed. "I think we've got a good boat; but I've
had a fight to keep it. If Maria hadn't have stayed, I'd have been
thrown out, long ago."

"When do we start?" asked Charley.

"Whenever Francisco comes back."

"Do you reckon we'll have time to eat?" queried Mr. Grigsby.

"Yes. And that might be a good plan, too."

"You and Charley go up and see what you can find, and I'll hold the
boat," directed Mr. Grigsby, climbing in.

"All right. Come along, Charley," and Mr. Adams alertly limped on up
the gentle slope, to the village.

The huts were square, made of cane and roofed with palm-leaf thatch, to
a peak. There were no window-panes or doors. The Chagres men and
women stood in the doorways, and gazed curiously out while they puffed
big black cigars and talked about the crazy Americanos.

This, then, was Chagres at the mouth of the Chagres River, the
beginning of the Isthmus trip to the Pacific. (But when the great
Panama Canal was built, it left the Chagres River, above the town, and
cutting across a neck of land struck the ocean at Limo