Note 95 — REMINISCENCES OF VILLAGE LIFE AND OF PANAMA AND CALIFORNIA. 1840-1850.

Men who reached Panama late in the spring fared still worse. One of these was Collis P. Huntington who had come from Oneonta, where he had been for several years a prosperous village merchant. In October of the previous year, with the merchant’s keen appreciation of prices as affected by a larger demand and small supply, he had sent out to San Francisco a cargo of goods by way of Cape Horn, with the intention of following himself in the spring by the Panama route. He sailed from New York on March 15, 1849, and on reaching Panama was obliged to spend three months waiting for a steamer. During this enforced leisure he walked twenty times across the Isthmus and by various transactions in trade added several thousand dollars to his possessions. He finally set sail from Panama aboard the sailing ship Humboldt in company with about four hundred other persons. He did not go to the mines but engaged in trade in San Francisco where he made the acquaintance of Mark Hopkins, with whom he formed a partnership, the latter history of which is now a part of the history of the industrial development of this country.