recently acquired. It is difficult to describe the effect which
that message produced upon my mind. I read and re-read it, and the
suggestion of my brother to go to that country recurred to me, and
I felt some regret that I had not followed it. I remained in
Europe, however, and carried out my original plan of seeing its
most interesting cities, and returned to the United States in 1849,
arriving at New York on the 1st of October of that year.

There was already at that early period a steamer leaving that city
once or twice every month for Chagres. It went crowded every trip.
The impulse which had been started in me by my brother in 1846,
strengthened by the message of President Polk, had now become
irresistible. I joined the throng, and on November 13th, 1849, took
passage on the "Crescent City;" and in about a week's time, in company
with many others, I found myself at the little old Spanish-American
town of Chagres, on the Isthmus of Panama. There we took small boats
and were poled up the river by Indians to Cruces, at which place we
mounted mules and rode over the mountain to Panama. There I found a
crowd of persons in every degree of excitement, waiting for passage
to California. There were thousands of them. Those who came on the
"Crescent City" had engaged passage on the Pacific side also; but
such was the demand among the multitude at Panama for the means
of transportation, that some of the steerage passengers sold their
tickets from that place to San Francisco for $750 apiece and took
their chances of getting on cheaper. These sales, notwithstanding they
appeared at the time to be great bargains, proved, in most cases, to
be very unfortunate transactions; for the poor fellows who thus sold
their tickets, besides losing their time, exposed themselves to
the malaria of an unhealthy coast. There was in fact a good deal
of sickness already among those on the Isthmus, and many deaths