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Show CONCLUSION. 501 my adieux to San Francisco and the hospitable San Franciscans with regret. On the 15th of November, the Golden Age, Commodore Wat-kins, steamed out of the Golden Gates, bearing on board, among some 520 souls, the body that now addresses the public. She was a model steamer, with engines and engine-rooms clean as a club kitchen, and a cuisine whose terrapin soup and deviled crabs a la Baltimore will long maintain their position in my memory- not so long, however, as the kindness and courtesy of the ancient mariner who commanded the Golden Age. On the 28th we spent the best part of a night at Acapulco,the city of Cortez and of Dona Marina, where any lurking project of passing through ill-conditioned Mexico was finally dispelled. The route from Acapulco to Vera Cruz, over a once well-worn highway, was simply and absolutely impassable. Each sovereign and independent state in that miserable caricature 'of the Anglo-American federal Union was at daggers drawn with' all and every of its next-door neighbors; the battles were paper battles, but the plundering and the barbarities-cosas de Mejico!-were stern realities. A rich man could not travel because of the banditti ; a poor man would have been enlisted almost outside the city gates; a man with many servants would have seen half of them converted to soldiers under his eyes, and have lost the other half by desertion, while a man without servants would have been himself press-gang'd; a Liberal would have been murdered by the Church, and a Churchman- even the frock is no protection-would have been martyred by the Liberal party. For this disappointment I found a philosophical consolation in various experiments touching the influence of Mezcal brandy, the Mexican national drink, upon the human mind and body. On the 15th of December we debarked at Panama; horridly wet, dull, and dirty was the "place of fish," and the "Aspinwall House" and its Mivart reminded me of a Parsee hotel in the fort, Bombay. Yet I managed to spend there three pleasant circlmgs of the sun. A visit to the acting consul introduced me to M. Hurtado, the Intendente or military governor, and to a charming countrywoman, whose fascinating society made me regret that my stay there could not be protracted. Though politics were running high, I became acquainted with most of the officers of the United States squadron, and only saw the last of them at Colon, alias Aspinwall. Messrs. Boyd and Power, of the " Weekly Star and Herald," introduced me to the officials of the Panama Railroad, Messrs. Nelson, Center, and others, who, had I not expressed an aversion to " dead-headism," or gratis traveling, would have offered me a free passage. Last, but not least, I must mention the venerable name of Mrs. Seacole, of Jamaica and Balaklava. On the 8th of December I passed over the celebrated Panama Railway to Aspinwall, where Mr. Center, the superintendent of |