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Show New News ST1 Of llESTEMDAr Zty defend r9 Road That Led to Eldorado Monkey Dinners, Mud and Distress on the Route Across Nicaragua Vanderbilt Established for Gold-Seekers. A Vanderbilt road that nobody hears of today is that one which the founder of the Vanderbilt fortunes and fame built in Nicaragua in '49 for the transportation of California gold seekers across that country, in opposition oppo-sition both to the Cape Horn route to the gold fields, and Commodore Will-lam Will-lam R. Aspinwall's route across the Isthmus of Panama, which finally resulted re-sulted in the Panama railroad, though, at first, Aspinwall carried his passengers passen-gers from Aspinwall (now Colon) up the Chagres river by native boats to Gordona, and thence by mule across the mountains to the port of Panama. The Vanderbilt "cut-off" to Eldorado Eldo-rado began at the Nicaraguan Atlantic Atlan-tic port of Greytown. Shallow side-wheel side-wheel boats took the passengers up the San Juan river to a steamer which carried them across Lake Managua to Virgin Bay, and between that point and the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur, across the twelve-mile wide strip of land separating ocean and lake, ran the Vanderbilt road . proper. Transportation across this road was by horses in charge of vaqueros, the animals for the first six miles from the lake struggling through the deep black mud of a wide graded and ditched road, and for the next six miles' following trails along creek beds, through a mountainous country. Those six miles were never worked by Vanderbilt. One of the surviving argonauts who traveled more than once over this now long deserted and all but forgotten forgot-ten Vanderbilt road is a prominent manufacturer in Little Rock, Ark., Mr. Dudley Jones. In the autumn of 1852, Mr. Jones left the American river, near the point where gold was first discovered, and, reaching San Francisco, was one of 75 persons to embark for the port of San Juan del Sur on a tramp sailing sail-ing ship. After a 45-day sail down the coast, during which they experienced a terrific storm and ran short of food, the ship dropped anchor off San Juan del Sur just before daylight. "As soon as possible we all went ashore," said Mr. Jones recently, "only to find that the passengers by the regular Vanderbilt steamer from San Francisco had landed the day before be-fore and taken with them eastward to the lake every animal in San Juan del Sur and thereabouts. As we had sailed sail-ed on a tramp ship, so we were tramps, we had no claim on the Vanderbilt Van-derbilt company, so, with our blankets on our backs, and our little possessions posses-sions in carpet bags, and with more or less gold dust apiece, we started off to tramp over the mountains in a tropical rain that fell all day. "As we struggled over the trails along the creek beds we became very much scattered. Finally, two or three of us came to a little house near the top of the mountains where a native family was eating dinner under a thatched shed. We asked for and were served with food, and we ate heartily, and after paying our bill asked what kind of meat we had eaten. eat-en. For reply our host pointed to some chattering monkeys in the trees. That was the only food we had for 24 hours. "That first day we made six miles, at night reaching what was known as Vanderbilt's Half-Way House, a large adobe warehouse, where the graded road began. "How many of the west-bound passengers pas-sengers reached the 'Half-Way House' during the night in the downpour I do not know; there were several hundred, hun-dred, at least. Yet next morning, as, with tightened belts, we trudged on our way to the lake over the graded portion of the road, we met many west-bound passengers struggling through the mud and water. We saw many pitiful sights on that six-mile stretch, enough to make us think lightly of our own troubles. There were delicate women on horsey, with children tied on to other horses, all wading through mud and water that sometimes reached to the bellies of the animals. As we were crossing a slough we saw a lady on a horse, with her three small children tied onto another. The children were crying; the mother was trying to keep her courage up and urge the poor beast, bearing her children, along. Presently Present-ly a vaquero came along and helped them through the slough. "This was Vanderbilt's road, over which that lady had paid her fare. With such terrible exposure practically practical-ly all the way across Nicaragua it was no wonder that so many of the trar-elers trar-elers were prostrated with fever by the time they reached the Pacific steamer. And of the thousands who paid to go to California over the Vanderbilt Van-derbilt road many never got nearer their destination than the open field back of the Mexican town of Aca-pulco, Aca-pulco, which came in time to be known as the American graveyard." (Copyright, 1910, by E. J. Edwards. All Rights Reserved.) |