Isthmiana. Theodore Winthrop

The following sketch, found among the author’s papers after his death, had not received his revision for the press. It was not intended for publication in its present form, and is merely a rapidly-written journal of youthful adventure, in a part of our country then less explored than at present.

The Cruces Road

Table of Contents

Ardent Californians, after a day of dragging in the mud and squeezing in the alloys of the Cruces Road, remember the Isthmus of Panama only as a geometrical line; a narrow, difficult, slippery, dirty path, paved like the bed of an Alpine torrent, beset with sloughs of despond and despair, with mosquitoes, tired mules, plundering natives, and bad provender. They follow this geometrical line on their way to California, as a pious Mohammedan treads tremblingly the slender bridge that conducts him to the seventh heaven, — looking forward, but very little around him, feeling painfully that the wire is cutting his feet, and regretting that the grave laws of his religion have not allowed amateur funambulistic practice. To American adventurers struggling towards their seventh heaven, the Isthmus seems to concentrate the obstacles of a continent. In dread of the thousand nameless terrors of the tropics, they hasten to Panama, eat one breakfast of eggs in their omelet stage of existence, and are off up the coast in the steamer.

From the moment of their arrival at Aspinwall an Isthmus fever floats before them, tangibly in the air. It bangs a yellow veil before every object. Their sight is jaundiced. They hurry over a railroad, laid, as they have been told, on human sleepers. The rich luxuriance of the forest along its course, now first opened to the eye of man, seems only rank, unwholesome vegetation. Instead of appreciating the almost superhuman enterprise that has placed such a trophy of civilization in the very home of unchanging repose, they growl because the prudent trains do not despatch them speedily enough to the discomforts of the next stage of their journey. It is nothing strange to them to be greeted by the whistle of a locomotive issuing from the depths of a tropical swamp. Nor strange to pass through an untouched garden of such magnificent, broad-leaved plants, and such feathery palms, as they had only seen before, dwarfed exotics, cherished in warm recesses of a conservatory. The twisted vines that drape the stems and swing from the branches of the massively buttressed trees, are mistaken by their averted glance for the terrible convolutions of gigantic serpents.

They embark on the river, are perplexed by the jabbering confusion of the boatmen, and again hardly observe the beauty that surrounds them. The Chagres is a pure type of the tropical stream. Forests, whose dense luxuriance is only known when you attempt to cut your way wearily through their mazes, overhang its course. High hills rise, covered to the summit with enormous trees, disposed in tiers to display the full effect of their great trunks and spreading foliage. Sometimes a grove of crested palms and cocoanut-trees marks the site of a native village. Its thatched bamboo huts have a shabby picturesqueness among the patches of plantains and sugar-cane. Near, laughing women are grouped in the water, washing clothes and themselves. Soft green savannas open, sprinkled, like a park, with groves and monarch trees; under their shade cattle, have taken shelter from the ardent sun. With constant change of scenes like these, the river winds along, but our party are too much preoccupied, too much distracted, for calm enjoyment.

The naked “bogas” with wild shouts thrust their canoe powerfully along against the current. They stop a moment at shabby Gorgona, to exchange emptied bottles for full ones. They pass the perilous whirlpool of La Gallina. Just at evening they reach the straggling village of Cruces. Their luggage falls into the hands of Philistine porters, whom they chase dispersedly. Arrived at their flimsy hotel, a hasty structure of whitewashed boards, the ladies are inducted into a chamber whose walls are paper, perforated with peep-holes. The gentlemen have “steerage accommodations” of board bunks in a public room. They pass a villanous night, to dream with dread of the morrow.

The morrow comes with row of mules and row of muleteers. The ladies of the party, with regretful remembrances of their last dress-promenade on horseback, are hoisted, califourchon, upon a pack-saddled mule, who, becoming conscious of his fair burden, hurries off down the street, with an inflexible determination to exhibit her at his stable, where his fellows, expecting a sensation, are already braying their compliments. At last the stragglers are collected, and, leaving Cruces to its curs, through a sunlit glade of the tropical forest they enter upon the unknown perils of the road.

Shall we here draw a veil over their progress, and exhibit the party only on the next evening, lounging, in fresh attire, upon Las Boredas, the Battery of Panama, looking out upon the beauty of the bay and inspecting the steamer which awaits them? Or shall we follow them through mud-hole and swamp-hole, through gulley and alley?

The two marked features of the Cruces Road are its mud-holes and its callejons, or alleys. Mud-holes need no description here. The two most profound are “La Sanbujedora” and “La Ramona.” In these I have frequently seen mules sunk to the neck, while their riders vainly endeavored to put a “soul under their ribs of death” by the aid of stout saplings applied upon and under. The callejons are narrow passages cut and worn from ten to twenty feet deep in the soft, friable rock of the frequent transverse ridges. They are wide enough only for a single mule. Long processions of pack-trains passing in perpetual succession have marked the path within with regular footsteps. Dark and cool passages they are, refreshing refuges from. the glare of noon, overhung by the thick forest, draped with delicate mosses and ferns; — convenient channels after the heavy showers of the rainy season, when the steps are concealed, and your mule flounders through, crushing your legs; — nice spots, too, for an ambuscade. When our party, entered the first, there was determined cocking of six-shooters. There are brave deeds in unwritten history. We make a hero of Putnam cantering down the church steps at Horseneck to escape a leaden shower; but till now no chronicler has sung the praises of our party, mule-galloping down the dislocated pavement of a Cruces Road hillside, vainly seeking shelter from the peltings of tropical rain-pellets. Down the hill, and something else is down; for lady No. 2 is over head and ears of her mule, while lady No. 1, who is in advance, ascending, has preferred to dismount at the other end of the animal. Meanwhile the mule of gentleman No. 2 has put the wrong foot foremost in entering a narrow callejon, and, trying

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