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“Trains, Boats and Trails: Tracking Levi Strauss in Panama — Day Two”
After Levi got off
the railroad about midway across the isthmus (as described in Day One), he
joined his fellow passengers on a ride down the Chagres River. The Chagres was the
lifeblood of historic Panama, for everyone from the indigenous Cueva people to
the gold rushers of the 1840s and 1850s.
Until the Panama
Railroad began running in 1851, Americans traveling to California via the
isthmus had to take a multi-day river journey in small canoes. They stopped for
the night at hotels which were sometimes nothing more than bug-infested canvas shacks,
and during the day they sweltered in the sun or got soaked by drenching
tropical rainstorms. After that was endured there was still a long walk or mule
ride ahead of them. But surprisingly, many letters and diaries of isthmus
travelers expressed wonder at the beauty of the river voyage and not its
horrors.
Joseph Gregory, who
published Gregory’s Guide for California Travellers via the Isthmus of
Panama in 1850, said of his trip on the Chagres, “I received the greatest
pleasure and never beheld more magnificent scenery, or luxuriant vegetation,
than I witnessed while upon this river.” Hubert H. Bancroft wrote of his 1852 river
voyage: “Palm trees of various descriptions line the banks, and gorgeous water
lilies dip their fragrant heads as the boat passes over them. Every shower of
rain is like the sprinkling of perfume on the vegetation.”
On Day Two of my
Panama adventure, I also got to experience the beauty of the Chagres. Early in
the morning my guide Hernán and I drove into Chagres National Park outside of
Panama City. There, we got  into 15-foot long dugout canoes, made by the Embera
people, who use them to take tourists up the river to their villages. The boats are long and narrow, with
wooden slats for seats. There’s a man at each end; the one in the front has a
very long pole, and the one at the back is in charge of something that would
have made Levi’s trip a lot easier: an outboard motor.
Levi traveled in a
flat-bottomed canoe called a “bungo,” rather than the long dugout, maneuvered
by native people who used long poles to push the boat along the riverbed. In
February, when Levi crossed the isthmus, it was the dry season, so the river
was sometimes quite low, making the transit into a crawl. It was still the dry
season in March, and we hit a few shallow spots ourselves, scraping the rocks and
almost coming to a stop. When that happened the man in the front of the boat
signaled to his partner in the back to cut the motor and he dug his pole into
the river bottom, pushing our canoe along until we were free. It took about a half hour to get to the
Embera Drua village, which we toured, and then we returned to the starting
point the same way.
I
thought a lot about Levi as we alternately zoomed or inched through the water.
Although I was on a different part of the Chagres than Levi was, Hernán assured
me that the scenery would have been the same, a wondrous green landscape which
varied in color from emerald to palest jade. We saw fish of varying sizes in
the clear water, and overhead flew egrets, herons and Amazon kingfishers. I
could have stayed on that river all day.
Next on the agenda
was a viewing of Hernán’s personal collection of historic maps of Panama. He is
the son of Amado Araúz, a legendary explorer and cartographer, and Reina Torres
de Araúz, Panama’s most revered anthropologist. A former diplomat, he is a naturalist and a historian, and was
the perfect guide for my trip. He’s currently writing a book about maps of Panama
which were published between the 16th and 19th centuries,
and has been visiting archives and libraries all over the world.
We had lunch in the
Casco Antiguo, the historic section of Panama City, which dates to 1673. Afterward,
as we walked on a nearby esplanade overlooking the ocean, Hernán said, “That’s
where Levi saw the Pacific  ocean for the first time.”
Our
final stop was the National Library of Panama, where the librarian, Nitzia
Barrantes, let me view original issues of the Panama Herald. This was an English-language newspaper published for
Americans and others making the trip across the isthmus to get to California.
It had ads for hotels, bars, restaurants, and the latest news from the United
States and Europe. It also – most importantly – advertised when the
next steamers were headed to San Francisco.
As I wrote in Day
One, Levi was able to travel by railroad about twenty-three miles inland before
transferring himself and his baggage to boats on the Chagres River. From Barbacoas, where he got off the
train, his boat went upriver to the town of Gorgona, a trip which probably took
about four hours. He likely spent
the night in Gorgona, to rest up for the final leg of his journey; or I should say,
the final four legs of his journey. Details in the final installment.
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