OtT THE ISTHMUS, 157
their friends were the favored ones. Durmor all this time the cholera was playing havoc among the emi- grants as well as among the residents of Panamd. It is a fact that hundreds of the former were victims of that scourge, and of malignant fevers, and that nearly the whole black population of the Isthmus was also swept away by the epidemic, which lasted until 1851. In the course of time, ample facilities for the transpor- tation of passengers from the Isthmus were provided ; but the above data, and those given further on, con- vey an idea of what the first seekers after California gold by way of the Isthmus had to undergo, until the railway, commenced in 1850, was completed, in Janu- ary 1855=
Seven miles of that great undertaking — great con- sidering the time and the place — the Panama railway, was accomplished when, on the first of March, 1852, we dropped anchor off Chagres; and to afford the company due encouragement, those seven miles must be travelled over, and contribution levied for the same, at the rate of nearly one dollar a mile, on every pas- senger crossing the Isthmus thereafter. So orders were given to weigh anchor, and proceed thence two or three leagues easterly to Colon, or Navy bay, then called Aspinwall, the name and glory of the first ad- miral beino; thrust aside for those of a New York money magnate. However, the old name of Colon was a few years after restored. There we disembarked, and rode ever the seven miles of completed work, pay- ing for the same quite liberally, when we were per- mitted to engage boats and ascend the Chagres river, which we could as easily and as cheaply have done before as afterward.
Crossing the Isthmus in early times, for an untrav- elled, provincial people, was a feat altogether indi- vidual and unique ; a feat very different from a three or four hours' ride in comfortable rail-cars, through
