trail, to Panama City. So rough was the road that the mules could scarcely scramble over it, and many passengers preferred to be carried in chairs on the backs of negro or Indian porters. Four nights were usually spent on the journey across the Isthmus, nights of
From Harper's Magazine, by special permission of the publishers.
SURVEYING FOR THE PANAMA RAILROAD IN 1850.
crowded discomfort in native huts, where hammocks were rented for two dollars, and eggs cost twenty-five cents apiece. Panama was crammed with red-shirted Americans, who often waited months for a ship to take them to San Francisco, where ships were rotting three-deep at the wharves, while their crews went gold-hunting. To pass the time, the Yankees scratched their names on the ramparts of the sea-wall, and started two
