so far as
its navigation was practicable,--say sixty miles,--and thence, mounted
on donkeys or mules, for the residue of the distance, which was perhaps
half as far. Short as this portage was, it soon came to be regarded with
a terror by no means unjustified. The ascent of the rapid, shallow,
tortuous stream was at once difficult and dangerous; the boats were of
the rudest construction; the boatmen little better than savages; rains
fell incessantly for a good part of each year; the warm, moist, relaxing
climate bred fevers in the blood of a considerable percentage of those
so suddenly and so utterly exposed to its malarious influences; while
the road from Cruces, at the head of navigation, being but a rugged
bridle-path at best, was soon worn by incessant travel into the most
detestable compound of rock and mire that ever aggravated the miseries
of human life. Arrived at quaint, dull old Panama, the early adventurers
long awaited with fierce impatience the steamers which were to have
anticipated their coming, and been ready to speed them on their way; and
many were goaded into taking passage on sailing vessels, which were
months in beating up to the Golden Gate against the gentle but
persistent breezes from the west and north-west which mainly prevail on
that coast. Rarely has human endurance been put to severer tests than in
the earlier years of gold-seeking travel by the Isthmus route to
California.

The Panama Railroad--commenced in 1850, and finished in 1855, at a total
cost of $7,500,000, for a length of forty-seven and a half miles--very
considerably reduced the expense, whether in time or money, of the
Isthmus transit, diminishing its miseries and perils in still greater
proportion. It is one of the noblest achievements, whereof our
countrymen are fairly entitled to the full credit. A ship-canal or
railroad across the Isthmus had been proposed, and commended, and
surveyed for and estimated upon, by French, South American, and other
officials and engineers; but the execution of the work was left to our
countrymen, and not in vain. Contractor after contractor abandoned the
undertaking in despair; hundreds, if not thousands, of laborers--Irish,
Chinese, and others--were sacrificed to the deadly miasma of the swamps
and tropical jungle which thickly stud the route. But the work was at
last completed, and the railroad has now been some six years in constant
operation, reducing the average length of the actual transit