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the busy market place, a bull fight ring, and the absence of women in public places. Then on to Chagres, where in the midst of many men waiting in rooms or in tents outside the city for the next steamer, he encountered five American ladies, Mrs. Fremont thin as a ghost among them." He described the local food, in particular a Spanish dish of "flour, onions, tomatoes and molasses well blended. I could not go it." But the long delay in tropical Panama was somewhat mitigated by the thrill of seeing for the first time the Pacific, "the ocean of promise," from the nearby hills. Prince and his associates finally left Panama on May 23 on the steamer Oregon, pausing briefly at Acapulco, "a mere village,—one church small and indifferent, in use—one ruined by the earthquake, all walls fallen, steeple standing—perhaps 200 to 250 houses in all including all that are scattered in the ravines or gorges between the hills and mounLetters of William Prince