Apparently he and the Flints soon purchased the business and continued to conduct it as long as they remained in Volcano. They were associated in some way with Messrs. Baker and Stone, of the Buena Vista Ranch, very fertile mountain meadow land upon which heavy crops of barley were grown, and cattle were fattened for market.
After a year and a half the three of them, young men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, determined to “unite their fortunes for the undertaking of bringing to California sheep and cattle, more for the trip than profit.” Consequently, on Christmas Day, 1852, they left for home, making their way out of the mountains over roads so buried in snow as to be almost impassable. In Sacramento the river was twelve miles wide and the streets so full of water that the hack from hotel to steamer was a flat boat pulled by a horse.
In San Francisco they investigated possible ways of returning to New York. First cabin was three hundred dollars, “and get across Isthmus from Panama at your own expense.” The plan adopted was to go steerage on the S. S. Northerner, the one upon which Dr. Flint and father had come, then unseaworthy, but now making her first trip after a thorough overhauling. The fare to Panama was only fifty dollars, which pleased their thrifty souls, and, as there were few passengers, the third class accommodations were very comfortable, a great contrast to their previous experience. They sailed January first.
One of their problems was the safe transfer of their gold to the mint at Philadelphia. Express charges were so high they decided to avoid this expense by carrying it with them in buckskin jackets especially made for that purpose. They soon found the weight, about thirty-five hundred dollars apiece, too burdensome, so they appropriated a vacant state-room, put the treasure between two mattresses and set a guard, one or the other of them remaining in the berth day and night.
Before leaving the steamer at Panama they packed this gold in a large chest which contained their blankets and clothing, the extra weight not being sufficient, in so large a container, to arouse suspicion, as would have been the case if they had attempted to carry it in a valise, which, Dr. Flint comments, “would have had to be backed with a revolver.”
On landing they hired a muleteer to carry the precious box while they followed on foot, taking pains to keep the pack train in sight most of the time.
They walked as far as Cruces, spending a night on the way. They were hardly settled comfortably at the Halfway House, when there arrived a much bedraggled party, westward bound, containing women and children, whose thin-soled shoes had been little protection on the rough and muddy trail. I venture a comment that the granddaughters of these women with light shoes would have been prepared for the exigencies of such a trip with knickers and hiking boots. Those were days of gallantry, so our young men surrendered their place of shelter, and moved on in the rain to a distant shack, where, at first, there seemed no prospect of food; later, when the owner of the cabin came in, their recently acquired ability to speak Spanish stood them in good stead, and they each were favored with a cup of hot stew.
From Cruces they took a small boat down the Chagres River to Barbacoa, to which point the railroad had been completed. Here there was some delay incident to the refusal of a negro to accompany his master further on the return way to Virginia. He had discovered that by staying on the Isthmus he would escape the slavery that was his. An attempt was made to take him by force from the garret in which he had taken refuge, but was given up when the storming party, as they went up the rickety stairs of the old building, were met by the very deterring muzzles of big-bore Mexican rifles. The sympathy of the young Maine men was, naturally, with the negro. The diary comments that it was a frequent custom for Southerners to take slaves with them to do the actual work in the California gold fields.
At Aspinwall passage on an independent steamer was found for twenty-five dollars, making the total fare from San Francisco but seventy-five dollars, as contrasted with three hundred dollars, the first cabin rate.
They stopped at Kingston, Jamaica, for coal. “Llewell stayed by our deposits” while the others went ashore, just as he had done at Aspinwall. I am interested to learn from these early entries that the capacity for “staying by” in times of stress was as characteristic of father in his young days as it was in later years when I knew him.