ABSTRACT
Olmsted sailed from New York City to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, then crossed the narrow neck of Panama by way of the first American trans continental railway, which had been in operation for eight years. Olmsted, forgetting the war, found the novelty of tropical scenery a joy. Forests fantastically draped with vines passed his moving train window. A deep river, the Chagres, flowed past. At dusk, giant bats laced the quickly darken ing sky. Olmsted responded sensitively, as if sloughing off all the busyness of the past two years. “Simply in vegetation it is superb and glorious and makes all our model scenery-so far as it depends on beauty of foliagevery tame and quakerish. You will see it and I will not go into particulars. [He was writing to Mary, who was to follow at some future time.] I think it produces a very strong moral impression through an enlarged sense of the bounteousness of nature."3
