[87] The company sailed from New York on February 23d. The Abrasia was a brig. For some years before the discovery of gold the Panama railroad scheme had been in process of getting born. That discovery at once accomplished the undertaking. Capital now was easily found and early in 1849, engineers were despatched to make the surveys and locate the land. This railroad became an enormously profitable enterprise and so remained until railroads were built across the continent further north. It was finally sold to the Canal Company originated by Ferdinand De Lesseps for some $20,000,000.
[88] After the Panama railroad was built Chagres ceased to have commercial importance and fell into decay, Aspinwall—twelve miles distant—having become the terminus of the railroad.
[89] The Chagres river is about thirty miles long. After the Trinidad flows into it, its depth is from 16 to 30 feet. Navigation of its upper part is interfered with by cataracts and rapids. It flows through a country of extraordinary fertility. The fever which takes its name from this stream is well known for its severity. From an attack of it, Dr. Halsey—as described further on—came near losing his life.
[90] Julius H. Pratt, who went up the river several weeks after Dr. Halsey, says in the Century magazine for April, 1891: “The river was broad and its bank low and covered with an impenetrable jungle. As night came on the stillness and darkness of that tropical wilderness were very impressive. The boatmen chanted monotonous songs to the dip of the oar and wild beasts on the shore responded with savage howls.”
[91] The reasons for stopping at Gorgona instead of proceeding on to Cruces appear from a statement in Bancroft’s “Central America” that early in 1848 cholera had broken out “in a malignant form” following the hurried crowds up the river and striking down victims by the score. Such was the death rate at Cruces, the head of navigation, that the second current of immigrants stopped at Gorgona in affright, thence to hasten away from the smitten river course.
[92] Panama is the oldest European city on the American continent. For centuries it was the great entrepot for Spanish trade with China and India. Its annals go back to 1518 when the old city was founded by Pedra Rias Pavila. In 1670 it was destroyed by the buccaneers under Morgan and when rebuilt a new site six miles distant was chosen.
[93] Keats’s error here is famous. It was not Cortez who discovered the Pacific, but Balboa.
[94] Some of the shells he gathered on that occasion are still preserved at the family home in Unadilla.
[95] Men who reached Panama late in the spring fared still worse. One of these was Collis P. Huntington who had come from Oneonta, where he had been for several years a prosperous village merchant. In October of the previous year, with the merchant’s keen appreciation of prices as affected by a larger demand and small supply, he had sent out to San Francisco a cargo of goods by way of Cape Horn, with the intention of following himself in the spring by the Panama route. He sailed from New York on March 15, 1849, and on reaching Panama was obliged to spend three months waiting for a steamer. During this enforced leisure he walked twenty times across the Isthmus and by various transactions in trade added several thousand dollars to his possessions. He finally set sail from Panama aboard the sailing ship Humboldt in company with about four hundred other persons. He did not go to the mines but engaged in trade in San Francisco where he made the acquaintance of Mark Hopkins, with whom he formed a partnership, the latter history of which is now a part of the history of the industrial development of this country.
[96] Mr. Pratt, who sailed aboard the Humboldt, in a Century article describes the class of passengers with whom he associated. “We found,” he says, “a promiscuous crowd from every nation under heaven, the predominating type being that of the American rough. The deck was so densely packed with men from stem to stern that we could scarcely move. Many were prostrate with sickness or supported by friends or lying in hammocks swung along the side rigging. All day long this crowd of men were scathing, swaying, quarrelling and cursing. No food was provided, and hunger and thirst gave an edge to the bad passions of the mob.”