In the Footprints of the Padres | Page 6

almost unbroken. We
began to feel as prisoners must feel whose time is near out. Oh, how the
hours lagged!--but deliverance was at hand. At last we gave a glad
shout, for the land was ours again; we were to disembark in the course
of a few hours, and all was bustle and confusion until we dropped
anchor off the Mosquito Shore.

II.
CROSSING THE ISTHMUS
We approached the Mosquito Shore timidly. The shallowing sea was of

the color of amber; the land so low and level that the foliage which
covered it seemed to be rooted in the water. We dropped anchor in the
mouth of the San Juan River. On our right lay the little Spanish village
of San Juan del Norte; its five hundred inhabitants may have been
wading through its one street at that moment, for aught we know; the
place seemed to be knee-deep in water. On our left was a long strip of
land--the depot and coaling station of the Vanderbilt Steamship
Company.
It did not appear to be much, that sandspit known as Punta Arenas, with
its row of sheds at the water's edge, and its scattering shrubs tossing in
the wind; but sovereignty over this very point was claimed by three
petty powers: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and "Mosquito." Great Britain
backed the "Mosquito" claim; and, in virtue of certain privileges
granted by the "Mosquito" King, the authorities of San Juan del
Norte--the port better known in those days as Graytown, albeit 'twas as
green as grass--threatened to seize Punta Arenas for public use.
Thereupon Graytown was bombarded; but immediately rose,
Phoenix-like, from its ashes, and was flourishing when we arrived. The
current number of Harper's Monthly, a copy of which we brought on
board when we embarked at New York, contained an illustrated
account of the bombardment of Graytown, which added not a little to
the interest of the hour.
While we were speculating as to the nature of our next experience,
suddenly a stern-wheel, flat-bottom boat backed up alongside of the
Star of the West. She was of the pattern of the small freight-boats that
still ply the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. If the Star of the West was
small, this stern-wheel scow was infinitely smaller. There was but one
cabin, and it was rendered insufferably hot by the boilers that were set
in the middle of it. There was one flush deck, with an awning stretched
above it that extended nearly to the prow of the boat. It was said our
passenger list numbered fourteen hundred. The gold boom in California
was still at fever heat. Every craft that set sail for the Isthmus by the
Nicaragua or Panama route, or by the weary route around Cape Horn,
was packed full of gold-seekers. It was the Golden Age of the
Argonauts; and, if my memory serves me well, there were no reserved

seats worth the price thereof.
The first river boat at our disposal was for the exclusive
accommodation of the cabin passengers, or as many of them as could
be crowded upon her--and we were among them. Other steamers were
to follow as soon as practicable. Hours, even days, passed by, and the
passengers on the ocean steamers were sometimes kept waiting the
arrival of the river boats that were aground or had been belated up the
stream.
About two hundred of us boarded the first boat. Our luggage of the
larger sort was stowed away in barges and towed after us. The decks
were strewn with hand-bags, camp-stools, bundles, and rolls of rugs.
The lower deck was two feet above the water. As we looked back upon
the Star of the West, waving a glad farewell to the ship that had
brought us more than two thousand miles across the sea, she loomed
like a Noah's Ark above the flood, and we were quite proud of her--but
not sorry to say good-bye.
And now away, into the very heart of a Central American forest! And
hail to the new life that lay all before us in El Dorado! The river was as
yellow as saffron; its shores were hidden in a dense growth of
underbrush that trailed its boughs in the water, and rose, a wall of
verdure, far above our smokestacks. As we ascended the stream the
forest deepened; the trees grew taller and taller; wide-spreading
branches hung over us; gigantic vines clambered everywhere and made
huge hammocks of themselves; they bridged the bayous, and made
dark leafy caverns wherein the shadows were forbidding; for the
sunshine seemed never to have penetrated them, and they were the
haunts of weirdness and mystery profound.
Sometimes a tree that had fallen into the water and lay at a convenient
angle by the shore afforded the alligator a comfortable couch for