He had been in that part of the world, in what character was not quite clear.

Some said that he had gone thither to convert the Indians, and some that he had gone thither to rob the Spaniards.

But, missionary or pirate, he had visited Darien, and had brought away none but delightful recollections.

The havens, he averred, were capacious and secure; the sea swarmed with turtle; the country was so mountainous that, within nine degrees of the equator, the climate was temperate; and yet the inequalities of the ground offered no impediment to the conveyance of goods.

Nothing would be easier than to construct roads along which a string of mules or a wheeled carriage might in the course of a single day pass from sea to sea.