The short time he took to change his profession was very characteristic of the gambling habits of these Central Americans.
I slept in the canoe, and at daylight the boatmen returned, having made a night of it. The monte banker had been lucky, he informed me, and had left his wife behind, to which I was ungallantly indifferent. Another day on the river, and another night spent at a hut, and on the third morning we arrived at Gorgona, from whence we had to take mules to Panama.
The bargaining for mules at Gorgona was in every respect similar to the canoe transaction at Chagres; and after passing a day in the sun, and accomplishing in the evening what might, but for the vacillation of the natives, have been done at once, we started for Panama in company with the baggage, Barnes walking from choice with the dogs. With our mules in a string we plunged at once into a narrow rocky path in the forest, where palm trees and creepers shut the light out overhead;—splashing through gurgling muddy streams, that concealed loose and treacherous stones—stumbling over fallen trees that lay across our road—burying ourselves to the mules’ girths in filthy swamps, where on either side dead and putrid mules were lying—amidst lightning, thunder, and incessant rain, we went at a foot pace on the road to Panama. The thunder-storm changed the twilight of our covered path to darkness, and one of my mules missing his footing on the red greasy clay, falls down under his heavy load. When he gets up he has to be unpacked amidst the curses of the muleteer, and packed again, and thus losing half an hour in the pelting storm, file after file passes us, until, ready once more to start, we find ourselves the last upon the road. At Gorgona a flaming advertisement had informed us that half way on the road to Panama the “Washington Hotelâ€� would accommodate travellers with “forty beds.â€� Anxious to secure a resting-place for my own party, I left the luggage train under the charge of Barnes, and pressed forward on the bridle road.
At nightfall I reached the “Washington Hotel,â€� a log hut perched on the top of a partially cleared hill; an immense amount of fluttering calico proclaimed that meals could be procured, but a glance at the interior was sufficient to destroy all appetite. Round it, and stretching for yards, there were mules, drivers, and passengers, clustered and clamorous as bees without a hive. To my surprise the crowd consisted for the most part of homeward bound Californians—emigrants from the land of promise, who had two days before arrived at Panama in a steamer. Some were returning rich in gold dust and scales, but the greater part were far poorer than when first they started to realise their golden dreams.
And these latter were as drunken and as reckless a set of villains as one could see anywhere. Stamped with vice and intemperance, without baggage or money, they were fit for robbery and murder to any extent; many of them I doubt not were used to it, and had found it convenient to leave a country where Judge Lynch strings up such fellows rather quicker than they like sometimes. They foretold with a savage joy the miseries and disappointment that awaited all who landed there, forgetting that there travelled on the same road with them those who had in a very short space of time secured to themselves a competency by the exercise of industry, patience, and temperance. The Yankee owner of the Washington was “realising some,â€� judging from the prices he charged, and that every eatable had been consumed long before my arrival. The “forty bedsâ€� respecting which we had met so many advertisements on the road, consisted of frames of wood five feet long, over which were simply stretched pieces of much soiled canvas—they were in three tiers, and altogether occupied about the same space as would two fourposters—they were all occupied.
Wet with the thunderstorm, I took up my station on a dead tree near the door, and as night closed in and the moon rose, awaited the arrival of my man and dogs with impatience. Hours passed, and I felt convinced at last that fatigue had compelled Barnes to pass the night at a rancheria I had seen a few miles back. Rising to stretch my limbs, I became instantly aware of a succession of sharp stings in every part of my body; these became aggravated as I stamped and shook myself. In sitting on the dead tree I had invaded the territory of a nest of ants of enormous size—larger than earwigs; they bit hard, and had sufficiently punished my intrusion before I managed to get rid of them. During the night file upon file of mules arrived from Panama. These were unloaded and turned adrift to seek their supper where they could; and travellers, muleteers, and luggage were spread in every direction round a large fire that had been lit in the early part of the evening. Deserting my inhospitable tree, I found myself comfortable enough among a heap of pack saddles, buried in which I slept till morning. With the first streak of day everything was moving, luggage was replaced on kicking mules; the sallow, wayworn, unwashed tenants of the “Washington,â€� with what baggage they had on their backs, started for Gorgona on foot. The morning oath came out fresh and racy from the lips of these disappointed gentlemen; nor could the bright and glorious sun reflect any beauty from their sunken bloodshot eyes; when they disappeared in the winding road leading to Gorgona, it was quite a comfort to me to reflect that we were not about to honour the same country with our presence. In less than an hour I found myself alone at the half-way house; the crowd had dispersed on either road, but as yet my baggage had not arrived. When it did come up at last we were all very hungry, but as there was nothing left eatable at the “Washington,â€� we started for Panama without breaking our fast.
Through a tortuous path, which had been burrowed through the forest, we stumbled on at the rate of a mile and a half an hour; at times the space between the rocks on either side is too narrow to allow the mules to pass; in these instances all our efforts are directed to the mule that is jammed; heaven knows how we get her clear—several shouts, some kicking, a plunge or two, a crash, and, the mule being free, proceeds on her path, whilst you stop to pick up the lid of your trunk, which has been ground off against the rock, as also the few trifles that tumble out from time to time in consequence. And shortly afterwards we meet more travellers homeward bound, some on foot, with a stout buckthorn stick and bundle, and others on mules, with shouldered rifles. Each one, as I passed, asked me what state I was from, and if I came in the “Cherokeeâ€� steamer. I had been questioned so much after this manner at the “Washingtonâ€� that I began to think that to belong to a state and to arrive in the “Cherokeeâ€� would save me much trouble in answering questions, for my reply in the negative invariably led to the direct query of Where did I come from? So along the road I surrendered myself invariably as a “Cherokeeâ€� passenger and a native of Virginia, and was allowed to pass on in peace. At last the country becomes more open, huts appear occasionally, and the worst part of the journey is well over. Still the human tide flows on to Gorgona, for another California steamer has arrived at Panama; and now we meet some California patients carried in hammocks slung upon men’s shoulders, travelling painfully towards a home that some of them will not live to see. Trains of unladen mules are going down to meet the emigration, some with cargoes of provisions for the Washington Hotel perhaps.
Pass on filth, squalor, and poverty, and make way as you should for wealth, for here, with tinkling bells and gay caparisons, comes a train of mules laden with gold—pure gold from Peru; as each mule bears his massive bars uncovered, glittering beneath the cordage which secures them to the saddle, you can touch the metal as they pass. Twenty of these file by as we draw on one side, and after them, guarding so much wealth, are half a dozen armed natives with rusty muskets slung lazily on their backs; but behind them, on an ambling jennet, is a well “got upâ€� Don, with muslin shirt and polished jack-boots, richly-mounted pistols in his holsters, and massive silver spurs on his heels, smoking his cigarette with as much pomposity as if the gold belonged to him, and he had plenty more at home. This gentleman, however, is in reality a clerk in an English house at Panama, and when he returns to that city, after shipping the gold on board the English steamer, and getting a receipt, he will change this picturesque costume for a plaid shooting-coat and continuations, and be a Don no longer. As the gold train passed, I thought, in contrast to its insecurity, of the villains I had parted from in the morning, all of whom were armed. Then followed a train much larger than the first, and just as little guarded, carrying silver. For years these specie trains have travelled in this unguarded state unmolested, not from the primitive honesty of the natives, for a greater set of villains never existed, but from the simple difficulty of turning a BAR of gold to any account when once it has been taken into the jungle. Since the time of which I am writing many attempts have been made to rob the gold trains, but, when pursuit has been active, the bars have invariably been discovered in the jungle a short distance from the scene of the robbery.
The country became more open as we approached Panama, and when the town appeared in the distance, we had no shelter from the sun, and the dogs, panting and footsore, dragged on very slowly. Here I found a man by the roadside attacked with fever, shivering with ague, and helpless. He was going to Gorgona, but as he had no mule, he wished to return to Panama. I hoisted him on to mine, and we proceeded; he was very ill, wandered in his speech, and shook like a leaf; and before we got into Panama, he died from exhaustion. As I did not know what to do with him, I planted him by the road-side, and on my arrival at the town, I informed the authorities, and I presume they buried him. Weary and sunburnt, we arrived at the gates of the town, outside of which we found a large American encampment, in the midst of which we pitched our tent. Every bed in the town had long before been pre-engaged, and these cribs, after the fashion of the “Washington,� were packed from fifty to a hundred in a room. We slept comfortably that night under one of Edgington’s tents, the baggage inside, and the dogs picquetted round us.
Since Panama has become the half-way resting-place of Californian emigration, the old ruin has assumed quite a lively aspect. Never were modern improvements so suddenly and so effectually applied to a dilapidated relic of former grandeur as here. The streets present a vista of enormous sign-boards, and American flags droop from every house.