A few weeks before I reached Payta, there had been accidentally found in a cave among the bare sand-hills which form the naked desolate environs of the town, a quantity of maize, which was supposed to have formed part of a stock which had been placed here by the Incas. It was of a smaller kind than that grown at the present day. The grains, notwithstanding the centuries they had lain interred, were in very tolerable preservation. All along the coast nothing was spoken of but this incident, as though some great treasure had been discovered, whereas it was but some 60 lbs. of maize that were found. Moreover, the interest felt by the Indians in this trouvaille had nothing to do with its historic suggestiveness, but because their readily-inflamed imagination prefigured
boundless stores of maize yet to be lighted upon and made available, without their having to labour for them!
In the course of the afternoon we left Payta, and next day sighted the island of La Plata, distant about 10 miles from the mainland. A tradition, constantly in the mouth of the people, to the effect that the ancient Incas buried here a large amount of treasure, has led to many formal expeditions having been dispatched to this island at various times, every one of which, however, proved abortive. We now began to find the temperature perceptibly rising; for a few hours it rose from 65° to 76° Fahr.
At 6 P.M. of the 20th, we reached the Taboga Islands, a group of lovely islets, about 11 miles from Panama, where are the warehouses and wharves of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. Taboga Island, the most important of the group, is only one mile and a half long by half a mile broad, but with the adjacent islet of Taboquilla, forms a very convenient crescent-shaped harbour, which unites to a secure haven a tolerably healthy climate, so that during the unhealthy season, when the yellow fever sometimes commits fearful ravages in Panama, many of the inhabitants resort to this island, which, up to the year 1858, had remained entirely free of the scourge.
Late in the evening the English and American papers came on board, from which we got the first intelligence of the march of events at the seat of war in Italy, as also of another world-wide calamity,—the death of Alexander von
Humboldt. Even here on the shores of the far Pacific, the intelligence of the greatest naturalist of our age having departed from among us, made a deep and powerful impression, which not even the tempests which impended over the political horizon, and threatened to envelope the entire world, could allay. Although the outbreak of hostilities between two such powers as France and Austria must inevitably react severely upon the condition of the inhabitants of North and South America, yet little was discussed respecting events in Italy; while the obituary notice of Humboldt was read aloud in the cabin, and many a fellow-traveller inscribed on a slip of paper for preservation those beautiful words which the noble and venerable old savant is said to have spoken, when on a lovely sunny May-day his spirit winged its flight from our planet, whose physical constitution his mighty mind had more closely investigated and comprehended than any other mortal of our day. "How gloriously those sunbeams dart forth; they seem as though inviting the earth to the heavens!"
Thus it was forbidden to the members of the Expedition to find the great naturalist yet alive on their return to their common native land! How full of meaning did those touching words now prove, and how fall of mournful memories, with which Humboldt concluded his scientific suggestions to the Novara voyagers, when he prayed to Almighty God, "That His Holy Spirit would be with this great and splendid undertaking to the honour of the common Fatherland!"
The Novara staff above all must doubly regret the death of the "Nestor of Science." The warm and active interest he took in their expedition contributed in no small degree to advance its scientific efficiency, and if it be the privilege of the Novara to live in the memory of the scientific world, it will, as the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian himself expressed it in a letter to the venerable philosopher, "redound in its honour to the latest ages, that it was permitted to associate its name with that of Humboldt, who for three generations of men has been associated with every triumph that has been achieved in the domain of science."
On the 21st, at 7 A.M., we anchored in the roads of Panama. Large ships are obliged to lie to from two to three miles off shore, as the beach is nothing but "slike," and at ebb-tide presents an immense unsightly expanse.
The town of Panama (many fish), built on low green hills amid the most magnificent forms of tropical vegetation, presents when viewed from seaward a most lovely, enchanting aspect, especially to the traveller coming from the sterile sandy shores of the west coast of South America. As soon, however, as he sets foot on the shore, and has entered the precincts of the city, his first pleasing impressions are rudely dispelled. The streets are everywhere narrow and filthy, the houses low and poverty-stricken in appearance; even upon their roofs the luxuriance of tropical vegetation bursts forth! Moreover the chief square with its cathedral leaves an impression of decay. Only a few of the houses situate near the