CHAPTER VIII.

THE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA-PANAMÁ TO SAN FRANCISCO.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. -The Lotos-Eaters.

While here upon the Isthmus, and before proceeding on our journey to San Francisco, let us glance at the route round the continent, that we may be better able to make comparisons as we go along.

There have been many remarkable voyages to California by sailing vessels, as well from Panamá to San Francisco as round Cape Horn; there have been many adventures connected with them far more thrilling than any that occurred in the voyages by steamer. The voyage round the Horn, as it was called, did not differ materially from sea voyages elsewhere; that from Panamá to San Francisco had at this time a marked individuality, a few examples of which I will give.

The rickety schooner Dolphin, of 100 tons, left Panamá in January 1849, with forty-five persons. After putting into several ports for supplies, the passengers had to abandon the craft at Mazatlan and transfer themselves to the bark Matilda. They finally reached San Francisco on the 6th of May, having spent 110 days on the voyage from Panamá.

But the career of the Dolphin was not yet at an end. Certain gold-seeking waifs then in Mazatlan, anxious to reach California, bought and refitted her.

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She sailed on the 15th of April with no less than sixty-eight persons, among whom were some who in latter years acquired more or less distinction in California. In the course of the voyage they underwent much suffering, scarcity of water contributing thereto. A number of the company, driven to desperation, landed in Lower California, and made their way north on foot. Reaching Rosario with the greatest difficulty, they sighted two vessels, one the Dolphin and the other an Italian bark. The latter took some of the schooner's passengers away with her, and a few of the land party returned to their own old craft, the rest. preferring to continue their journey up the coast. The latter after undergoing many hardships reached San Diego on the 24th of June. As for the Dolphin, she went into San Diego harbor in a sinking condition, and was condemned and sold without more ado. One of her passengers had died on the voyage.

The vicissitudes of a party on board the schooner San Blaseña, of thirty-five tons, which sailed from Mazatlan in May of the same year, were in many respects the counterpart of those suffered by the Dolphin's people. Some of their number were taken off by another vessel at sea; the rest abandoned the craft on the coast of Lower California, and made their way on foot, carrying their effects on their backs, to Todos Santos, where they procured mules, and on the 24th of May set out for La Paz. On the journey they suffered greatly for want of provisions and water. Finally, on the 11th of August, they fell in with Emory's surveying party at the initial point of the Mexican boundary line. Meanwhile the San Blaseña left San José del Cabo, and completed her voyage at Monterey, after the manner of the Dolphin, on the 1st of July.

Another of the land journeys up the peninsula was that of J. W. Venable, who came from Kentucky via Panamá in 1849, and was a member of the state assembly from Los Angeles in 1873, and who travelled

on foot with two or three companions from Agua Dulce, on the coast of Lower California, to San Francisco, about twelve hundred miles. They had been obliged to land by reason of the slowness of their ship, scarcity of water, and stubbornness of their captain. They arrived at San Francisco before the ship. The latter took 166 days for the trip.

But even crazy sailing vessels were better than dug-out canoes, in which some started on the long voyage from Panamá to San Francisco. Bayard Taylor states that in the early part of 1849, when three thousand persons were waiting on the Isthmus for conveyance to the new El Dorado, several small parties started in log canoes of the natives, thinking to reach San Francisco in them. After a voyage of forty days, during which they went no farther than the island of Quibo, at the mouth of the gulf, nearly all of them returned. Of the rest, nothing was ever heard. On other authority, we are informed that twenty-three men left Panamá on the 29th of May, 1849, in a dug-out canoe, for San Francisco. None of these madmen ever proceeded far on the road; neither did many of them ever return.

Returning to our voyage by steamer. "Ah!" exclaims the enthusiastic lover of California, immediately his foot touches the well-scrubbed deck of the Pacific Mail steamer in Panamá bay, "such is California, such the superiority of the new over the old. As the Atlantic steamer is to the Pacific steamer, as Aspinwall is to Panamá, so is your cold, dull, eastern coast to our warm, bright, western coast."

In due time a steam tender conveyed travellers from the company's wharf to the steamer at anchor some three miles away. On account of the tide, which rises and falls about seventeen feet at neap, and twenty-two feet at spring tides, the tender can float at the wharf only twice in twenty-four hours. Low water spring tides lay bare the beach for a mile

RE-EMBARKATION AT PANAMÁ.

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and a half from the wharf, while at high tide the top of the wharf is nearly awash. Later, toward the sixties, the railway company arranged the arrival of trains so that there might be no detention; passengers then stepped from the cars to the tender, and were soon on board the steamer. This arrangement was adopted in consequence of the riots which broke out on the 15th of April, 1856, during which the negroes of the arrabal assailed 250 or 300 passengers from the steamship Illinois, while they were procuring their tickets at the Panamá depot, a number of persons on both sides being killed or wounded. Much property was also plundered by the rabble. To avert a recurrence of such scenes, passengers to and from California in future traversed the Isthmus without detention. Usually some time elapsed after the passengers were settled in their rooms before the sailing of the steamer, as the baggage, fast freight, and mails came after the passengers, so that there was time to enjoy another view of the surroundings, under that sense of satisfaction and rest which always attended the establishing of one's self in the new quarter. There is now no more change; the horrors of the Isthmus are past; a fortnight's home is found, and the traveller feels almost at the end of his journey.

Much pleasanter on the Pacific is the voyage usually than on the Atlantic. As I have said, the steamers are larger and more comfortable. The temper of the passengers, like the Pacific, is smoother. În one respect it seems almost like beginning the journey anew, this reëmbarkation at Panamá, there is such a general shaking up and repartitioning that one wonders where so many new faces came from.

Lounging inert and listless under the awning on the upper deck, with the bay spread out before you in all its glorious beauties like a breathing panorama, with the evergreen isles rising from the mirror-like surface of the water, and the old-time city in the distance, the authoritative hill of Ancon marking the

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city of to-day, and the tomb-tower of San Gerónimo designating the site of old Panamá, which the bold buccaneers ravished with such a relish; the hazy mountains beyond, with their curiously shaped crests-thus quietly watching the boats come and go, the fruitvenders dispensing their wares, the sea-birds circling round the ship, and turkey-buzzards solemnly sailing through the air; listening to the friendly waters which lap the smooth sides of our monster vessel, with the softly perfumed air that wanders objectless between the sea and the low-lying sky, there comes stealing in upon the senses a delicious repose. Up to this point, and for several months past, mind and body have been upon the rack about this California expedition. There were the preparations, the adieux, the embarkation, the voyage, the Isthmus; then there is the remainder of it, the voyage up the coast, the landing, the new life, with all its desperate ventures and uncertainties; but here, for the moment, is perfect rest, earth, sea, and sky combining to intoxicate the senses, enrapture the soul, and overspread all with a sensuous tranquillity and calm.

At this time the commander of our steamer, which was the Panamá, was that veteran of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Watkins, called commodore; and among the five hundred and ninety-four passengers were Mr Hutchins, Mrs Davenport, Gihon, Maguire, and others notable in the annals of California. Late in the afternoon of the 12th of March, the chain from the buoy was dropped, and clearing the islands, in an hour we came abreast of Taboga-to Panamá what Capri is to Naples, but more beautiful. Oranges and tamarinds fringe the beach; the glass-green foliage of cocoa and banana trees sweep from the valley up the hillsides a thousand feet. Then we sailed down past Bona and Otoque, rounded Punta Mala, some ninety miles southward from our anchorage, and were fairly out at sea, with the warm bay of Panamá, and its quaint, old, dreary town, wakened once a century