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Updated: June 28, 2025
They told us also, if we could induce the Indians to trade with us, we might have hogs, fowls, plantains, bananas, and other refreshments. While on our course towards Gorgona, the Duchess took the San Thoma de Villa nova of ninety tons, having about forty people on board, including eleven negro slaves, and but little European goods, except some cloth and iron.
The tropical scenery by day and night on the river, the fandango at Gorgona, and the ride to Panama through the dense dark forest, with death, in the shape of a cholera-stricken emigrant, following at their heels, are in the raciest spirit of story-telling.
The high, almost the highest Apennines were right a-head; and could we have taken the wings of the bird, or of the morning, and lighted on any of those peaks at no great distance, we should have looked directly down on to the Mediterranean, and almost into the gulf of La Spezzia; we should have seen the long Ligurian promontory in the distant horizon to the right, and have embraced Leghorn, Elba, Gorgona, and the coast as far as Piombino, in the opposite direction.
Arrived at Panama, we hired mules and rode across to Gorgona, on the Cruces River, where we hired a boat and paddled down to the mouth of the river, off which lay the steamer Crescent City. It usually took four days to cross the isthmus, every passenger taking care of himself, and it was really funny to watch the efforts of women and men unaccustomed to mules.
On the 20th of April, the Success anchored in the Gulf of Amapala, or Fouseca, in lat. 13° N. and not being able to water there, repaired to the Island of Tigers, where they procured water with great ease. They went to the island of Gorgona, in lat. 2° 53' N. for the same purpose, on the 4th June.
Before us was a most extensive view of the Mediterranean, with the isles of Gorgona, Caprera, Elba, and Corsica in sight. All around us was a wilderness of barren soil with stunted trees, moulded into grotesque and fantastic forms by the cutting S.W. gales.
I wondered how any person could live many months in Aspinwall, and wondered still more why any one tried. In the summer of 1852 the Panama railroad was completed only to the point where it now crosses the Chagres River. From there passengers were carried by boats to Gorgona, at which place they took mules for Panama, some twenty-five miles further.
From Gorgona the train returned crab-wise through Matachin and across the sand dyke that still holds the Chagres out of the "cut," and halted at Gamboa cabin. Day was dying as we rumbled on across the iron bridge above the river and away into the fresh jungle night along the rock-ballasted "relocation."
To be sure we had bargained for Cruces, six miles beyond; but as the majority of our ship's companions had decided on that route, we thought the Gorgona trail might be less crowded. So we beached our boat, and unloaded our effects; and set forth to find accommodations for the present, and mules for the immediate future. At first there seemed slight chance of getting either.
"There you are, Charley," said Mr. Adams. "That's Mount Carabali. It used to be a lookout for Indians and pirates. From that palm you can see both the Atlantic and the Pacific. We're about ten miles from Cruces." In four miles more a large village called Gorgona was passed.
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