Even
after the tropic rains along the river, the exposure, the bad food, the
back-breaking days on the mountain trails, further grief waited for the
travelers at Panama City. The city is shown above, as it looked
in 1849 to J. Pendergast, Esquire, described in one of the earliest
published books on the gold rush as "an amateur California artist of
the highest attainments."
The
solid men, led on to believe that their comfortable route to El Dorado
would progress with all the smoothness and efficiency of an urban trip
"downtown," found the crumbling Spanish city fairly humming with
indignant Americans. Amid the ruined churches and palaces, grass-grown
plazas and dry fountains, stranded gold-seekers milled restlessly about
and cursed the fine promises of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
One of the vessels scheduled to "make connection" at Panama City was
being repaired. Another steamer, booked solid for San Francisco, had
taken aboard seventy-two Peruvian adventurers at Callao. On arrival at
Panama City, the captain had little consolation to offer
disappointed ticket-holders. The Peruvians refused to vacate; the
American consul shrugged his shoulders. In order to give adequate
expression to their wrath, those who were left behind founded a
newspaper, the "Panama Star."
Meanwhile,
on the eastern side of the Isthmus, the steamers unloaded more and more
human freight at Chagres. The river was choked with overloaded canoes;
on the mountain roads, Chagres fever, dysentery and cholera struck
harder and harder.
On
top of all this striving and suffering came the delay at Panama City
that might consume as much as a month of precious time. It was an item
for which few of the solid men had budgeted.
