the steamer the engines were stopped. The vessel, however, retained considerable headway, and the canoe instead of coming alongside of a lighter moored beside her, attempted to cross its bow, was struck and overturned. Two of the men were seized by deck hands and pulled on board, but the third man went with the canoe under the lighter. He, however, reappeared upon the surface some distance astern and began to swim bravely for the shore. But the swift current carried him rapidly downstream, and it soon became evident that his strength was failing fast. Some men on shore were making frantic but ineffectual efforts to launch a canoe, so it was plain the man would drown if it rested with them to save him. Happily other means of rescue were at hand. One of the steel canoes before mentioned suddenly shot out from the side of the steamer to which our backs were turned, and glided rapidly down the river. Even then the man's fate hung in doubt, for he was fully half a mile away and it seemed as if he must go down before the canoe could reach him. But he was

saved. Strong arms grabbed him just as he was

about to sink. His rescue was due to Mr. Chable, a young gentleman from Texas, who represented the canal company in Costa Rica. Hurrying from the saloon deck after the accident he made boatmen launch and man the

canoe.

Immediately above the San Carlos, the San Juan is divided by a large island, and just beyond that the river seems to flow out of a cavern at the base of a mountain fully 2,000 feet high. However, the river only makes a sharp bend and washes the foot of the mountain. A few white cranes and a beautiful species of snipe, called the "spur-wing," which has a most graceful way of holding its wings spread a second after lighting, were almost the only birds we saw along the river. Upon the sand bars along the margin, however, were millions of yellow butterflies. They covered the bars completely, and in the distance seemed like great patches of cloth of gold. I could not make out what they were doing there unless they were drinking water.

Early on Sunday morning we arrived at the Machuca Rapids, so called from Captain Diego

Machuca, who about 1539 built a vessel near Granada, explored the lake, discovered the San Juan, and followed it to the Atlantic Ocean. The rapids are impassable for steamers, so we left the Irma at the foot of them. They are between two and three miles long, and along the northern bank of the river is a road, which in the days of the transit company, was cut for transferring passengers and fast freight. Some of our party walked up by this road, but the majority went up in lighters pulled by natives.

Above the rapids we took a smaller steamer, the Adele, which carried us to Castillo early the same afternoon. Here again high hills with declivitous sides overtop the banks of the river. Here also the river makes a sharp descent, more like a fall than a rapid. Upon the crown of a lofty hill on the southern bank stands the old Spanish fort San Juan, built in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Subsequent generations called it Castillo Viejo, "old castle," but now it is contracted to Castillo and gives its name to the little village beneath it. It is an angular structure of stone, of considerable dimensions, and surmounted at one of the