Carleton Watkins The Living Present
dishonest man?" [14] Collis's peculiar behavior in Panama in 1849 was news in 1887 but the full story was never told.
Equally peculiar is the fact that Carleton did not say one word to his biographer, Charles Turrill, about how he got to California[15] or about his two months on the isthmus. Evidently there were activities in Panama between March 24 and May 20, 1849, that neither Collis, nor Carleton, nor any of the other Otsego County boys ever shared with the rest of the world. As a result of their silence, the full story of what nineteen-year-old Carleton did for two months on the isthmus and for more than a year after his pals traveled north, is found buried in circumstantial evidence that requires application of the inferential method of writing history to unravel.
Let's examine some of Carleton's youthful interests as background to what he experienced in Panama that could have awakened his senses and caused him to reset his priorities for life. Carleton arrived in Panama with a cultivated sense of personal history. His mother's ancestors were founders of the town of Oneonta in Otsego County, with roots that went back to the first Dutch settlers in New York (as related in Chapter Two of Chasing Aurora). One of his first memories was of seeing a magnificent display of the colorful aurora borealis,[16] which was like a work of art. As a ten-year-old he was fascinated by the Mohawk Indian who appeared in Oneonta in 1840, and who told stories of the Revolutionary War.[17] As a youth he also explored the foundational remains of the oldest structure of his home town, the ruins of which dated from just half a century before his own time.[18] Carleton was drawn to beauty, history and unusual people. We can infer that the exotic people, historic ruins, and physical beauty found in Panama would have appealed to the romantic side of Carleton's character and have inspired the desire to experience more of the same.
Panama was full of historic ruins unlike anything back home. The first notable sight observed by the Otsego County boys and other passengers from the deck of the steamship Crescent City, when she arrived at the mouth of the Chagres River on March 24, 1849, were the hilltop ruins of Fort San Lorenzo [Fig. 3]. The fort was built when the isthmus of Panama was part of the Spanish Empire to protect the harbor from treasure-hunting buccaneers, like British Admiral Sir Henry Morgan, who was not deterred
[14] David Lavender, The Great Persuader, Garden City, New York: 1970, p. 15.
[15] Charles Turrill, "An Early California Photographer: C. E. Watkins," News Notes of California Libraries, 13 (no. 1, January, 1818) gave half of one sentence to the matter: "Carleton E. Watkins was born in the State of New York and came to California as a young man."
[16] Chasing Aurora, Chapter 2, note 29: Huntington, Old Time Notes, p. 2002.
[17] Old Time Notes, p. 2144
[18] Old Time Notes, p. 2044