Sixty Years of California Song. Margaret Blake Alverson
into the church, removed one side of the pulpit steps and let my brother crawl over to the other side and put the gold beneath the steps there. After depositing it, she quietly put everything in place and returned to the house. Then we retired for the evening.
None of the neighbors knew of the money being received. It came at an hour when no one was coming home or happened to be on the sidewalk. The shutters on the first floor were solid wood so no one could molest us. We had been clearing the house and packing things away. We were all tired and slept well. Mary and Emma occupied the front room and for some unknown reason left the wooden bar off that made the door secure, and these two men came in so quietly that no one heard them. They had unlocked the doors to escape in case they were discovered. Mother was awakened during the night and said, "Mary, are you up?" No answer. After a short silence she heard another sound and she called, "Are you ill, Mary? If you are, I'll get up and help." Receiving no answer, she reached out to light the candle, but hearing nothing more she thought she had been mistaken and went to sleep. She arose early and found the shutters unlocked and the side door ajar. Then she went into the parlor and all the chairs had been taken from the front door where they had been piled. She immediately realized that there had been robbers in the house searching for the gold. She awoke the girls and told them of what had happened, and you can imagine our consternation. As long as we remained in the house we lived in fear of a second attempt. The next morning sister Sarah was sent with the gold to our friend, Mr. Butler, who was surprised and simply amazed at the amount sister gave him to keep. He immediately put it into safer hands at the mint where the gold was weighed and the value given in money and placed in the bank subject to mother's order. When Mr. Butler was told of the attempted robbery he immediately arranged to have the house watched each night until our departure, which came the first week in June, 1851. We left Cincinnati for New York and were welcomed on our arrival by friends with whom we remained for a week. On the following Monday we secured passage for California on the steamer Ohio bound for Aspinwall. I was too young and also too ill to know just the route taken, but after a month we arrived at Aspinwall, and when our belongings were properly taken care of we started on our journey across the Isthmus of Panama.
We were nine days going up the Chagres river in flatboats. This trip, girl as I was, I can recall perfectly and it was an experience which has served in after years as an education which I have used in many ways. We, as children, had access to father's great library and magazines from which we learned so much of foreign countries and people. I had artistic tastes and I used to find the tropical pictures and scenes much to my liking and asked many questions in regard to the different people among whom the missionaries worked. I had never thought ever to see or realize such a picture in the tropics as this. We had a large boat assigned to our family alone. Our belongings were deposited and two great, black natives were placed at each end of the boat or scow. They were without clothing, save for a short, full skirt of white cloth fastened around their waists on a band. Each used a long pole to propel the scow. We were the only family of women on board the steamer. There was Mr. Biggar and his wife and a bride and her husband, besides several colored women and their husbands coming out to take positions on the Pacific steamers. All the other passengers were men, coming to hunt their fortunes and go back rich. There were about eight or nine of these scows. The railroad was not finished, but it was being built at that time. The surveying was being done and small cabins were built for the surveyors' use at the different stations where we camped for the night. The captain had provided us with food in cans and packages, toasted bread and other things for our comfort and utensils for cooking, and we had a jolly picnic for nine long days before we came to the place where we mounted the burros to take us the rest of the way to Panama.
To describe this journey needs a more romantic pen than mine, but I'll endeavor to tell you of some of the features and things that we saw which were so strange and wonderful to me. After we had said our good-byes to the captain and officers who were so gallant to us and did all they could for us during the long month on the rough Atlantic, we climbed into our boat and these natives took charge of it, one at each end, with a guttural grunt from both. They lightly took their places and we began our journey up the Chagres river. It was a warm, bright morning, and a light haze in the atmosphere made it appear like spring. At first we felt afraid of our boatmen, but soon we were drinking in all of the panoramic effects of the changing scenes of trailing vines, tropical flowers and other splendors. The chattering of monkeys and parrots, the alligators lying upon the opposite shore like great gray logs, some sleeping, some with their great mouths wide open to allow the insects to gather on their tongues, were things never to be forgotten. I observed that when a large number of flies had gathered the alligators would close their capacious jaws, satisfied with the sweet morsel, and roll their eyes with apparent enjoyment. Then they once more slowly opened their ponderous jaws and quietly waited for another meal. We had gone on our way several hours without speaking, there was so much to see and it was all so new. The quaint song of the natives amused us. They never seemed to weary of the same "Yenze, yenze, ah yenze." At the third "Yenze" the boat would shoot up the stream twice its length. It was nearing noon and the sun was getting torrid and the air close and stifling. Without any warning the rain showered upon us and we were obliged to remain in our places and let it come down upon us, regardless of results to our clothing. The rain was of short duration, however, and we rather enjoyed the cooling effect. Presently the sun shone in all its glory and in an hour we were once more with dry clothing. This mixed weather continued the whole ten days of our journey.
At noon of each day we disembarked and prepared our meal, generally stopping at one of the stations of the railroad. We found quite a number of white men and Mexicans at each place. They gladly received us and offered us some of their fare. In exchange we gave them soup, made in a large kettle, and had several things they were strangers to in their life in the forest of vines, flowers and fruit of the tropics where they subsisted on rations of pork, bacon, hardtack, etc. They gladly accepted our fare and we partook of theirs. Before we started again the men came to the boat with baskets of fresh cut oranges and bananas and plantains. They were for us to take on the steamer and we could enjoy them as they ripened on the way. We received marked attention from the men at every station. Women coming to California were a novelty, and when they learned we were all of one family of the American Padre, they were still more gracious. So we journeyed for ten days, each day bringing forth some new feature. At night we left the boats and slept in the bungalows perched high in the air, and to reach them we climbed steps cut out in a large log placed at the opening. There was only one large room and we all slept on the floor, rolled in our blankets. We got but little sleep because of the noise from below made by Americans and Spaniards playing cards and smoking cigarettes and Spanish girls dancing as the men thrummed on the guitars. The Spaniards carried long knives at their sides and pistols in their belts, wore wide straw hats and red sashes, black trousers slashed down the side and trimmed with rows of bright buttons. High-heeled boots and spurs finished the unique garb. The women wore a white chemise and white petticoat and slippers. Their black hair, plaited in two braids, and a silk shawl thrown gracefully over their heads and a fan, which is an indispensable article to a Spanish lady, completed the toilet. Nothing but troubled sleep came to our relief during these days. Fear of the Spaniards and the movements of the lizards on the rafters and walls, with now and then a tarantula, made rest almost impossible. At last we had only one day more, the tenth day. We had gotten familiar with the different scenes, the waving palms, the trailing vines where the monkeys climbed or hung by their tails and chattered in their own way. The scarlet lingawacha, or tongue plant, hung in graceful lengths and brightened the varied colored green in the background. Innumerable families of parrots talked and screamed from the branches. Bananas and orange trees everywhere interspersed with tall cocoanut palms, the large and small alligators basking in the sun on the sand were pictures never to be forgotten. The natives in their peculiar dress, the fandango at night, the graceful twirl of the Spanish waltz put the life touch to the picture that comes to me today at the age of seventy-five as it was in those days when I experienced, a girl of fifteen, all the discomforts of travel from Cincinnati to California.
It was about 4 o'clock on the tenth day when we arrived at the small village where we were to remain for the night and next morning,