1^ THE VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA.
strosities, aberrations, and abnormities, never. The early voyage to California, like everything purely Californian, is and ever shall be sui generis.
On the 24th of February, 1852, accompanied by my friend Mr Kenny, I set sail from New York in the steamer George Law for Habana. There were then two steamship lines in operation between New York and San Francisco — one by way of Nicaragua, and the other by way of Panamd,. By the Nicara- gua route, passengers were conveyed direct to San Juan del Norte, or Greytown, where they took a small steamboat and were conveyed up the river San Juan and across Lake Nicaragua to Virgin bay, Kivas, or Nicaragua, as the landing was severally called ; thence by land to San Juan del Sur, and again by steamer to San Francisco. Two steamers of the Panamd line, sailing one from New York and the other from New Orleans, met at Habana. There the passengers and mails of both were transferred to a third steamer and conveyed to the port of Chagres, where, disembarking, the Chagres river was ascended in small open boats to Gorgona, or Cruces, thence by saddle and pack mules to Panamd, where the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's steamer lay waiting to sail for San Francisco, touching at Acapulco.
As early as 1835 the attention of the president, Andrew Jackson, was called by Henry Clay to the subject of inter-oceanic communication, and Charles Biddle was appointed commissioner to examine the several routes and report thereon. Nothing, how- ever, was then accomplished. In 1847 the vexed question of the boundary line between British Columbia and Oregon having been settled by treaty of the United States with Great Britain, it was deemed desirable, if possible, that some shorter and safer route should be found to the rich valleys of the Northwest Coast, which were then rapidly being settled, than the savage path across the plains, or
