PANAMA. THE PANAMA RAILROAD. The Terms of the Concession - The Great Difficulties of the road Extraordinary The Canal Company Secures the RailA Monopolistic Agreement The Assets of the Railroad and Their Value - Suggested Railroad and Steamship Traffic Reforms A New Application of Our Protective Policy. The great migration to the Pacific coast following the discovery of gold in "Forty-nine" acted as a strong incentive to the immediate establishment of an isthmian route by which the long and hazardous journey across the western territories of the United States might be avoided. In the last chapter a brief account was given of the enterprise conducted by the American, Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Company, which, although it never effected its original purpose of opening a waterway, afforded valuable service to the gold-seekers in the early fifties by maintaining a transportation line across Nicaragua. At the outset of the gold movement thousands made their way to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Steamships carried them from New York to the mouth of the Chagres. The journey thence to the Pacific coast, although no more than fifty miles by the trail, occupied from five to ten days and was accompanied by almost as much hardship and danger as in the days of Balboa. The emigrants were rowed or towed up the river by natives to a point near Cruces. The rest of the way to Panama was covered on foot or on mules. Women, when means would permit, were carried by selleros. These were native Indian porters, with a kind of chair strapped to their backs. There was, at that time, no regular steamship line between California and Panama. The travelers were often subjected to long and wearisome waits in the city. The old battery and the adjacent ramparts were favorite resorts of impatient watchers for a vessel from San Francisco, and their names and initials are cut in the stones by hundreds. On more than one occasion epidemic made serious inroads among them. General Grant, in his memoirs, tells us that he was with the Seventh United States Infantry at Panama in 1852, en route to California, when cholera broke out. Fifteen per cent of the regiment succumbed to the disease and more than five hundred emigrants died of it. Cholera is not one of the prevalent diseases of the Isthmus. An influx of foreigners to Panama has always been accompanied by an outbreak of yellow fever, to which the natives are immune. TERMS OF THE CONCESSION. 57 This transflux of travelers determined certain American capitalists to undertake the construction of a railroad across the Isthmus. A grant for the purpose had been made by the Government of New Granada to Mateo Kline, on behalf of a French syndicate, in 1847, but it had expired by default in 1848. In the following year, William Henry Aspinwall, John Lloyd Stephens, Henry Chauncy, of New York, and their associates incorporated under the name of the Panama Railroad Company. THE TERMS OF THE CONCESSION. Having declared all former similar concessions null and void, the Government of New Granada extended to this company the exclusive privilege of building a road and of operating it for a period of forty-nine years from the date of completion, which was to be not later than six years after the signing of the contract. Subsequently this agreement was modified in important particulars, and in its present form entitles the company to "the use and possession of the railroad, the telegraph between Colon and Panama, the buildings, warehouses, and wharves belonging to the road, and in general all the dependencies and other works now in its possession necessary to the service and development of the enterprise for a period of ninety-nine years from the 16th day of August, |