be going. Only, there is hope in rapid
transit and the cosmopolitan spirit, and
especially in these United States, which bring
together the ends of the earth, and place
side by side a descendant of the Puritans
like Freeman, and a daughter of Irak-Ajemi.

"What are you coming to California for,
Mr. Freeman?"

Freeman had already told her what he had
been in the Isthmus for,--to paddle in miasmatic
swamps with a view to the possibility
of a canal in the remote, speculative future.
He had given her a graphic and entertaining
picture of the hideous and inconceivable life
he had led there for six months, from which
he had emerged the only member of a party
of nineteen (whites, blacks, and yellows)
who was not either dead by disease, by
violence, or by misadventure, or had barely
escaped with life and a shattered constitution.
Freeman, after emerging from the
miasmatic hell and lake of Gehenna, had
taken a succession of baths, with soap and
friction, had been attended by a barber and
a tailor, and had himself attended the best
table to be found for love or money in the
charming town of Panama. He had also
spent more than half of the week of his