leaving behind them on a table their two months' pay, which General Arebalo had brought, and was in the act of paying them. Arebalo then reproved them for the mutiny, and related to them that in the war of Italy, the soldiers did not mutiny, even when reduced by famine to eat one another. When Santa Anna Ceballos left Portobello for Mandinga, Colonel Don Andres de Arisa went in the same vessel, and afterwards to Carolina and Spain. Arisa used to bind up his hair and go through the bush like an Indian, with a gun, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by his Lieutenant Orencio, an Indian of the South of Darien, who was very faithful to him, and was afterwards killed by the Indians in the South. The Indians were very much afraid of Arisa, because he was the most active of the Spaniards, and had established forts in the South of Darien. He was a very little man. Santa Anna Ceballos's captain was Pedro Rifa, a Catalan, who afterwards went to the fort at Cayman (on the east side of the Gulf of Darien), and died there. Another of his officers, Don Antonio Espitalete (whose name appears as one of the witnesses to the treaty mentioned above), went to Carolina; he came from Spain with the regiment of Murcia, which, with that of Napoli, was sent over to relieve La Reina.

"The only occasion on which an Indian was killed, was one day that Quintana and Orencio went to Copola Island, to gather cocoa-nuts; when Quintana smelled Indians, fired, and killed one, upon which the Indians blew the fatora or pipe, and ran away to their canoes.

"He considers that the young Indians are friendly, though the old men are averse to intercourse with foreigners. The present Indians do not know how to fight, and would not attempt to resist a small body of men. All the most warlike Indians have died off. The English taught them the use of guns; but they are very much afraid of cannon (kinkilitumati). The present Indians are quiet and peaceable.

"William once asked Don Felix Malo, what sort of a

weapon the bomb was. Malo told him to come the next day, and he would show him. The next morning, at nine o'clock, William came, and the bomb was fired; whereupon he said it was a diabolical invention, and never returned to the fort again.

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During his stay at Mandinga, Colonel Robert Hodgson, an English engineer, who attempted to land at Caledonia with a body of men, was taken prisoner by a packet-boat of the king. He saw him at Portobello, where he was allowed to walk about, and used to look with a very powerful telescope from the top of the high hill behind Portobello. Antonio Espitalete used to keep him company, and said he was a very clever man. He relates, that an English frigate appeared off the coast, and seven Spanish vessels went to attack her; but when they came near, found that she had the plague [ship-fever] on board, and left her. An Englishman named Zapata46 [probably Soppit], who had many slaves in Veraguas, used to smuggle on the coast: his partner was taken by the guardacostas, and put to death.

"The fort of Mandinga was abandoned in consequence of the peace with the Indians.

"The fort of Concepcion was established shortly after that of Mandinga: one hundred men landed there, and erected a battery. On the ninth day after their landing, the Indians came and fought from six to ten A.M.: Arisa and Orencio were present. There was only one Spaniard killed; but it was not known how many Indians, as they immediately carried off those who fell. The Indians kept in the bush, and Orencio called out to them to come out into the campo raso (cleared ground) like the Spaniards; but they would not. The Indians fought with arrows and lances, called ichaguala. This was the only fight in the establishment of Concepcion.

"Of Carolina fort, in Caledonia Bay, he knows nothing,

46 There is a half Indian son of Zapata's on the coast, but he was absent at the time of my visit, and I sent a message to him.

except from what he has heard from other soldiers of that time. Arebalo went there from Mandinga, with a hundred men whom he had brought from Portobello, and established the fort, without any opposition, in 1785: the Indians made no resistance to his clearing and making plantations. At four A.M. on the fourth or fifth day after his landing, some Indians entered the precincts of the fort, and asked, 'Where is Arebalo?' Whereupon the soldiers fired, and the Indians fled, losing some killed; nor did they return till a long time after, when they came to make a peace.

"He heard, at that time, that a pilot named Peñan, living at Carolina, became insane, and used to go out very early every morning into the bush, and hide until some soldier passed, when he would kill him with a dagger, and then return to the fort; and that he continued thus to kill some one almost every day for some time, until he was seen to kill a man by a soldier who went out at four in the morning. Upon this being reported to Arebalo, who had believed that it was the Indians who were killing the men, he was shot. There were no men lost in Carolina except those killed by Peñan.

"He had heard much of Carrera and Garcia, who were trying to make a road from Principe to Carolina; but did not know them, as they were in the south.

"He says, that the Darien Indians are much afraid of the Mosquito Indians, and that the king of the Mosquito territory once offered to conquer the Darien Indians for the king of Spain; but the latter was afraid the Mosquito would be more dangerous than the Darien Indians. The establishments only lasted five years, and were withdrawn on account of the peace.

"He also says, that before M'Gregor's time (1819), he once fired from the battery of Portobello at the 'Mystico Cupido,' a Spanish man-of-war, just as she was entering the harbour, and carried away a mast and killed six menmistaking her for a vessel of the enemy, as she had not hoisted her colours. She had left Portobello the day

before, for Carthagena, with 20,000 dollars on board, and had put back, in consequence of meeting the enemy's privateers."

This fine old man, who walks about daily with the aid of a stick, has his memory and hearing perfect, though he is nearly blind; and complains much of not having received any pension from the king of Spain for his long services, which continued until the taking of Portobello. His wife and another old woman, both nearly as old as himself, as well as Domingo de Ollos, and Estanislao Garcia, each upwards of ninety years of age, corroborated his state

ments.

The following document, from the Chief of Police of Portobello, attests the veracity of the old man above mentioned, and his comrades:

"I, Jose Alesandro Cervera, Political Chief of the Canton of Portobello, certify that Dr. Edward Cullen has presented himself before me, soliciting to be furnished with whatever data may exist in the archives of this place, relative to the expeditions that were directed by the Spanish Government, from the year 1785, to the establishments of Mandinga, Concepcion, and Carolina, and there being no archives on this subject on account of their destruction at the taking of this place, in the year 1819, by the Colombian General, Gregor McGregor, I directed the said Dr. Cullen to seek for information from the old men, Santana Ceballos, Domingo de Ollos, and Estanislao Garcia, natives of this place. the first of whom was a soldier in the abovementioned establishments, and the others accompanied their masters, as apprentices, and who enjoy good reputation, and are held for men of truth; consequently, I consider the

information given by them to be correct, and deduce from it, that should a sufficient number of people come to the Coast, they will have nothing to fear from the Indians, and at the request of the person interested, I give him the present, at Portobello, this 14th day of July, 1852."

(Signed) JOSE ALESANDRO CERVERA.

On the 17th July I sent Ponciano Ayarza, who had brought me from Carti to Limon Bay in his canoe, and has great influence with the Indians, from having been reared by them, back again to the Indians, to negotiate with them for their consent to the opening of a road and the cutting of the canal, and I have lately received a letter from him, dated Portobello, 10th of August, in which he states that he has arranged that four or six of the head men of the Indians shall come to Portobello to discuss the subject with the Jefe Politico, himself and his cousin, and expresses his confidence that they will give their consent.

In another letter, dated Sept. 27th, he states that one of the Indian captains had arrived at Portobello, and given his consent, and had returned to the coast to bring the others to Portobello, to a council with the Chief of Police on the subject.

THE CONCESSION.-The Government of the Republic of New Granada has conceded, by Decree of Congress, dated Bogota, 1st of June, 1852, the exclusive privilege of cutting a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Darien, between the Gulf of San Miguel on the Pacific, and the Bay of Caledonia on the Atlantic-with liberty to select any other point on the Atlantic coast between Punta de Mosquitos and the west mouth of the Atrato, for the entrance of the Canal; and has granted, besides the lands necessary for the Canal and its works, 100,000

G