s, many giving
dazzling accounts of immense deposits of gold in the new Eldorado; and
others, as ever the case with adventurers, gave gloomy statements of
peril and disaster. A judicious temperament, untiring energy, a lexicon
of endeavor, in which there is no such word as "fail," is the only open
sesame to hidden opportunities in a new country. Fortune, in precarious
mood, may sometime smile on the inert, but she seldom fails to surrender
to pluck, tenacity and perseverance. As the Oxford men say it is the one
pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness of the fellow;" it is
the one march more that wins the campaign; the five minutes more
persistent courage that wins the fight.

I returned to Philadelphia, and with some friendly assistance, sailed,
in 1850, from New York, as a steerage passenger for San Francisco.
Arriving at Aspinwall, the point of debarkation, on the Atlantic side,
boats and boatsmen were engaged to transport passengers and baggage up
the "Chagress," a small and shallow river. Crossing the Isthmus to
Panama, on the Pacific side, I found Panama very cosmopolitan in
appearance, for mingled with the sombrero-attired South American, could
be seen denizens from every foreign clime. Its make up was a combination
of peculiar attributes. It was dirty, but happy in having crows for its
scavengers; sickly, but cheery; old, but with an youthful infusion. The
virtues and vices were both shy and unblushing. A rich, dark foliage,
ever blooming, and ever decaying; a humid atmosphere; a rotting
vegetation under a tropical sun, while fever stalked on from conquest to
conquest.

The sudden influx, the great travel from ocean to ocean, had given much
impetus to business as well as to local amusements. For the latter,
Sunday was the ideal day, when bull and cock fights secured the
attendance of the elite, and the humble, the priest and the laity.

The church, preaching gentleness and peace in the morning, in the
afternoon her minister, with sword spurred "bolosed" bantams under their
arms, would appear on the scene eager for the fray.

After recovering from the Panama fever I took passage on the steamship
"Golden Gate" for San Francisco. Science, experience, and a greatly
increased demand have done much during the intervening fifty years to
lessen risk and increase the comfort of ocean travel. Yet it is not
without a degree of restless anticipation that one finds himself and
baggage finally domiciled on an ocean