All night we tossed on the bosom of the lake between San Carlos, at the
source of the San Juan river, and Virgin Bay, on the opposite shore. The
lake is on a table-land a hundred feet or more above the sea; it is a
hundred miles in length and forty-five in width. Our track lay
diagonally across it, a stretch of eighty miles; and when the morning
broke upon us we were upon the point of dropping anchor under the cool
shadow of cloud-capped mountains and in a most refreshing temperature.
Oh, the purple light of dawn that flooded the Bay of the Blessed Virgin!
Of course the night was a horror, and it was our second in transit; but
we were nearing the end of the journey across the Isthmus and were
shortly to embark for San Francisco. I fear we children regretted the
fact. Our life for three days had been like a veritable "Jungle Book."
It almost out-Kiplinged Kipling. We might never again float through
Monkey Land, with clouds of parrots hovering over us and a whole
menagerie of extraordinary creatures making side-shows of themselves on
every hand.
At Virgin Bay we were crowded like sheep into lighters, that were
speedily overladen. Very serious accidents have happened in consequence.
A year before our journey an overcrowded barge was swamped at Virgin Bay
and four and twenty passengers were drowned. The "Transit Company,"
supposed to be responsible for the life and safety of each one of us,
seemed to trouble itself very little concerning our fate. The truth was
they had been paid in full before we boarded the Star of the West at
Pier No. 2, North River.
Having landed in safety, in spite of the negligence of the "Transit
Company," our next move was to secure some means of transportation over
the mountain and down to San Juan del Sur. We were each provided with a
ticket calling for a seat in the saddle or on a bench in a springless
wagon. Naturally, the women and children were relegated to the wagons,
and were there huddled together like so much live stock destined for the
market. The men scrambled and even fought for the diminutive donkeys
that were to bear them over the mountain pass. A circus knows no comedy
like ours on that occasion. It is true we had but twelve miles to
traverse, and some of these were level; but by and by the road dipped
and climbed and swerved and plunged into the depths, only to soar again
along the giddy verge of some precipice that overhung a fathomless
abyss. That is how it seemed to us as we clung to the hard benches of
our wagon with its four-mule attachment.
Once a wagon just ahead of us, having refused to answer to its brakes,
went rushing down a fearful grade and was hurled into a tangle of
underbrush,--which is doubtless what saved the lives of its occupants,
for they landed as lightly as if on feather-beds. From that hour our
hearts were in our throats. Even the thatched lodges of the natives,
swarming with bare brown babies, and often having tame monkeys and
parrots in the doorways, could not beguile us; nor all the fruits, were
they never so tempting; nor the flowers, though they were past belief
for size and shape and color and perfume.
Over the shining heights the wind scudded, behatting many a head that
went bare thereafter. Out of the gorges ascended the voice of the
waters, dashing noisily but invisibly on their joyous way to the sea.
From one of those heights, looking westward over groves of bread-fruit
trees and fixed fountains of feathery bamboo, over palms that towered
like plumes in space and made silhouettes against the sky, we saw a
long, level line of blue--as blue and bluer than the sky itself,--and we
knew it was the Pacific! We were little fellows in those days, we
children; yet I fancy that we felt not unlike Balboa when we knelt upon
that peak in Darien and thanked God that he had the glory of discovering
a new and unnamed ocean.
Why, I wonder, did Keats, in his famous sonnet "On First Looking into
Chapman's Homer," make his historical mistake when he sang--
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout _Cortez_ when with eagle eyes,
He stared at the Pacific,--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
It mattered not to us whether our name was Cortez or Balboa. With any
other name we would have been just as jolly; for we were looking for the
first time upon a sea that was to us as good as undiscovered, and we
were shortly to brave it in a vessel bound for the Golden Gate. At our
time of life that smacked a little of circumnavigation.
San Juan del Sur! It was scarcely to be called a village,--a mere
handful of huts scattered upon the shore of a small bay and almost
surrounded by mountains. It had no street, unless the sea sands it
fronted upon could be called such. It had no church, no school, no
public buildings. Its hotels were barns where the gold-seekers were fed
without ceremony on beans and hardtack. Fruits were plentiful, and that
was fortunate.
There, as in every settlement in Central America, the eaves of the
dwellings were lined with Turkey buzzards. These huge birds are regarded
with something akin to veneration. They are never molested; indeed, like
the pariah dogs of the Orient, they have the right of way; and they are
evidently conscious of the fact, for they are tamer than barnyard fowls.
They are the scavengers of the tropics. They sit upon the housetop and
among the branches of the trees, awaiting the hour when the refuse of
the domestic meal is thrown into the street. There is no drainage in
those villages; strange to say, even in the larger cities there is none.
Offal of every description is cast forth into the highways and byways;
and at that moment, with one accord, down sweep the grim sentinels to
devour it. They feast upon carrion and every form of filth. They are
polution personified, and yet they are the salvation of the indolent
people, who would, but for the timely service of these ravenous birds,
soon be wallowing in fetid refuse and putrefaction under the fierce rays
of their merciless sun.
In the twilight we wandered by a crescent shore that was thickly strewn
with shells. They were not the tribute of northern waters: they were as
delicately fashioned and as variously tinted as flowers. All that they
lacked was fragrance; and this we realized as we stored them carefully
away, resolving that they should become the nucleus of a museum of
natural history as soon as we got settled in our California home.
We had crossed the Isthmus in safety. Yonder, in the offing, the ship
that was to carry us northward to San Francisco lay at anchor. For three
days we had suffered the joys of travel and adventure. On the San Juan
river we had again and again touched points along the varying routes
proposed, by the Maritime Canal Company of Nicaragua and the Walker
Commission, as being practical for the construction of a great ship
canal that shall join the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. We had passed
from sea to sea, a distance of about two hundred miles.
The San Juan river, one hundred and twenty miles in length, has a fall
of one foot to the mile. This will necessitate the introduction of at
least six massive locks between the Atlantic and the lake. Sometimes the
river can be utilized, but not without dredging; for it is shallow from
beginning to end, and near its mouth is ribbed with sand-bars. For
seventy miles the lake is navigable for vessels of the heaviest draught.
Beyond the lake there must be a clean-cut over or through the mountains
to the Pacific, and here six locks are reckoned sufficient. Cross-cuts
from one bend in the river to another can be constructed at the rate of
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or less, per mile. The canal
must be sunk or raised at intervals; there will, therefore, at various
points be the need of a wall of great strength and durability, from one
hundred and thirty to three hundred feet in height or depth.
The annual rain-fall in the river region between Lake Nicaragua and the
Caribbean Sea is twenty feet; annual evaporation, three feet. These
points must be considered in the construction and feeding of the canal,
even though it is to vary in width. The dimensions of the proposed
canal, as recommended by the Walker Government Commission, are as
follows: total length, one hundred and eighty-nine miles; minimum depth
of water at all stages, thirty feet; width, one hundred feet in
rock-cuts, elsewhere varying from one hundred and fifty to three hundred
feet--except in Lake Nicaragua, where one end of the channel will be
made six hundred feet wide.
Nearly fifty years ago, when a canal was projected, the Childs survey
set the cost at thirty-seven million dollars. Now the commissioners
differ on the question of total cost, the several estimates ranging from
one hundred and eighteen million to one hundred and thirty-five million
dollars. The United States Congress at its last session authorized the
expenditure of one million by a new commission "to investigate the
merits of all suggested locations and develop a project for an Isthmus
Canal."
And so we left the land of the lizard. What wonders they are! From an
inch to two feet in length, slim, slippery, and of many and changeful
colors, they literally inhabit the land, and are as much at home in a
house as out of it; indeed, the houses are never free of them. They
sailed up the river with us, and crossed the lake in our company, and
sat by the mountain wayside awaiting our arrival; for they are curious
and sociable little beasts. As for the San Juan river, 'tis like the
Ocklawaha of Florida many times multiplied, and with all its original
attractions in a state of perfect preservation.
All the way up the coast we literally hugged the shore; only during the
hours when we were crossing the yawning mouth of the Gulf of California
were we for a single moment out of sight of land. I know not if this was
a saving in time and distance, and therefore a saving in fuel and
provender; or if our ship, the John L. Stevens, was thought to be
overloaded and unsafe, and was kept within easy reach of shore for fear
of accident. We steamed for two weeks between a landscape and a seascape
that afforded constant diversion. At night we sometimes saw flame-tipped
volcanoes; there was ever the undulating outline of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains through Central America, Mexico, and California.
Just once did we pause on the way. One evening our ship turned in its
course and made directly for the land. It seemed that we must be dashed
upon the headlands we were approaching, but as we drew nearer they
parted, and we entered the land-locked harbor of Acapulco, the chief
Mexican port on the Pacific. It was an amphitheatre dotted with
twinkling lights. Our ship was speedily surrounded by small boats of all
descriptions, wherein sat merchants noisily calling upon us to purchase
their wares. They had abundant fruits, shells, corals, curios. They
flashed them in the light of their torches; they baited us to bargain
with them. It was a Venetian _fete_ with a vengeance; for the hawkers
were sometimes more impertinent than polite. It was a feast of lanterns,
and not without the accompaniment of guitars and castanets, and rich,
soft voices.
After that we were eager for the end of it all. There was Santa
Catalina, off the California coast, then an uninhabited island given
over to sunshine and wild goats, now one of the most popular and
populous of California summer and winter resorts--for 'tis all the same
on the Pacific coast; one season is damper than the other, that is the
only difference. The coast grew bare and bleak; the wind freshened and
we were glad to put on our wraps. And then at last, after a journey of
nearly five thousand miles, we slowed up in a fog so dense it dripped
from the scuppers of the ship; we heard the boom of the surf pounding
upon the invisible shore, and the hoarse bark of a chorus of sea-lions,
and were told we were at the threshold of the Golden Gate, and should
enter it as soon as the fog lifted and made room for us.
[Illustration: Fort Point at the Golden Gate]