Before long, however, they arrived at the water-front of the city. Here was a busy, bustling scene. A great steamer from San Francisco had arrived during the day, and a gang of negro labourers was busily transferring the freight from its capacious hold to the cars which stood alongside on the dock. On the other side of the Isthmus the process would have to be repeated in a reverse manner. The freight would be unloaded from the cars and shipped to New York, New Orleans, Liverpool, and other ports of the United States and Europe.
At the same time numerous small boats were drawn up near the beach, discharging fish, poultry, fruit, and various cargoes. Here the boys saw a sight which was new even to Vasco, though he had seen about everything that went on in Panama. A small schooner from up the coast had brought in a cargo of live pigs for the Panama market. The vessel was not made fast to a wharf and the pigs taken out over a gangplank, but it was moored as near the beach as safety would allow. Then the pigs were dumped overboard and compelled to swim for land, where they were caught. Later they would be slaughtered and their carcasses exposed for sale in the market-place.
The sight of the squealing, swimming pigs was very amusing to Vasco and Harlan, and they watched with glee the unloading of the whole boat-load before they went ashore.
"What queer-looking pigs those are!" said Harlan.
"Why?" Vasco asked.
"See how lean they are, and what long snouts they have!"
"Well, isn't that the way all pigs look?"
"Not up in my country," replied Harlan. "Those that I have seen were so fat that they could hardly move. These pigs are not at all like them; though I have heard that in the Southern States many of the wild hogs are thin and long-legged."
Soon the boys bade each other good night, and Vasco went to his home ready for the supper his mother had prepared for him. Not long afterward he went to bed, thoroughly tired, but very much pleased with his day's outing. If he dreamed at all that night there must have appeared a strange mixture of Spaniards and pirates and Indians and ruins and—pigs!