P.M.S.S. Company’s Montana Watercolor on paper by Thomas Kennet-Were

“We left San Francisco for Panama on board the Pacific Mail S.S. Company’s vessel Montana, where we found a great scarcity of food, but a superfluity of charges, all regulated on the most exorbitant scale.

The number of adult passengers was not so great as to entail discomfort from overcrowding, but children were too numerous to be pleasant, and, though some of them were amusing and well behaved, there were others from whom it should be the constant care of every traveler in the States to pray that he might be delivered, and especially on board ship, where there is no escape from their molestations.”

Broiling at Panama Watercolor on paper by Thomas Kennet-Were

“Fortunately we were only detained three days at Panama, and on the morning of the 4th were taken across the Isthmus in the railway cars to Aspinwall, where we found the Rising Star waiting for us.

From the hotel at Panama were taken to the Railway Station in an omnibus, the driver of which sat so high that he was unable to reach the mules, which consequently took advantage of his position to shirk all work. Either his whip or the mules were too short; at all events they would not meet, and so whenever he wanted to use his whip he was obliged to climb down, when the mules immediately set off and left him behind.”

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