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rotten that you had to walk easy on the main deck to
keep from going through—so crazy that in our berths
when there was sea on, the timbers over our heads worked
backwards and forwards n inches in their sockets—just
like an old basket, Sir—and the rats were as big as grey-
hounds and as lean, Sir, and they bit the buttons off of
our overcoats and there were so many of them that in a
gale once they all scampered to the starboard side when
we were going about and put her down the wrong way,
so that she'd come monstrous near foundering! But she
went through safe, I tell you, because she had rats
aboard."

Christmas Eve—9 P.M. Myself, the Captain and King-
man out forward. Capt. said—"Don't like the looks of
that point, with the mist outside of it." Quartermaster,
touching his cap: "The child is dead, Sir." [Had been sick
2 days] "What are your orders?"

Capt.: "Tell Ben to send the Dr. for the Parson to
speak to the grandmother, and the Mate to speak to the
young mother—bury at sea at daylight."

It was the first death of that tragic journey.

On the San Juan River

In that day eastern-bound passengers landed,
crossed the Nicaragua Isthmus by river, lake,
and overland, to Grey Town, to take the Atlan-
tic-bound steamer. The next entry is made on
the river steamer.

While gazing up a little narrow avenue, carpeted with
greenest grass and walled with the thickest growth of
bright ferns and quaint broad-leaved trees whose verdant
sprays sprang upward and outward like the curving sprays
of a fountain—an avenue that is fit for the royal road to
Fairyland that is closed with a gate of trellised vines

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