Carleton Watkins Canoa!--Canoa!
cargo-transfer service between Gogona and Panama City, and 3) securing foodstuffs produced on haciendas around Gorgona then transporting the goods to Panama City by mule.[27]
A close look at the calendar between the arrival of the steamship Crescent City at the mouth of the Rio Chagres on March 24, and the departure of five[28] of the six Otsego County boys on May 20, 1849, shows that it would not have been physically possible for Collis to single handedly perform the work as reported to Bancroft's scribe. When the calendar is analyzed there just weren't enough days or hours in the day to single handedly perform the hands-on labor not counting the time required for one peculiar adventure.
In recounting events of forty years earlier at the isthmus of Panama, Collis took the narrative device of "long-story-short" to an extreme of brevity and distortion. He condensed the multiple enterprises into a one-man operation with himself as the sole agent. For example, he led Bancroft's scribe to believe that he personally made twelve round trips between Panama City and Gorgona "starting early in the morning, making half the distance before the heat became intense, then the remainder during the late afternoon or night."[29]
However, the trip could not have been made in one day as we know from journalist Theodore Johnson, who traveled from New York to California and back in the winter and spring of 1849 (see note 1), who said the native cargadores traveled the twenty-four miles from Gorgona to Panama City in two days for which they received ten cents per pound.[30] Each man carried about one hundred pounds earning him ten dollars per trip. Even if Collis had made twelve solo round trips in twenty-four days starting April 16, he would have finished the week of May 7, not long before May 20, when he left Panama City for California on the sailing ship Alexander von Humboldt. Moreover, Collis would have earned for this effort at the going rate of ten cents per pound just one hundred twenty dollars, which was not close to the five thousand dollars he took away with him from Panama.[31]
The cargo transfer enterprise could have worked if Collis had strategically deployed the manpower and money at his disposal to make
[27] "Huntington Manuscript," and "Huntington Typescript," Bancroft Library, which form the basis for the publication cited in note 7 above, as digested by Lavender (see note 20 above), pp. 13-16. The author is herafter referenced as "Bancroft's Scribe." About this Lavender says: "Huntington dictated the raw materials. . .to the uncritical scribes of Huber Howe Bancroft in either 1888 or 1889, " p. 15.
[28] Le Roy Chamberlain, Daniel Hammond, George Murray, and Egbert Sabine
[29] Evans, p. 25
[30] Johnson, p. 43
[31] Bancroft, p. 34