The proposition thus made and agreed to, was forthwith carried out. As Perley was determined upon a dissolution at all hazards, and, as his partner affected entire indifference, the odds were altogether against him, and he was compelled to accept of any arrangement that suited the other. So excited was he about California, and so eager to get off, that he accepted, as his half of the business, a portion of old, and, to a great extent, unsaleable stock, and shipped it by the first vessel that sailed for Monterey and San Francisco. Its real value in the New York market was about five thousand dollars; its estimated value in the settlement ten thousand, and its prospective value as an adventure at the gold diggings fifty thousand. Above this, three thousand dollars in cash were paid to Mr. Perley. Two thousand were left for the support of his family, and one thousand he took with him. Three weeks after the vessel in which he had shipped his goods sailed, the impatient Mr. Perley, who neither thought nor dreamed of any thing else but gold, and who already saw himself surrounded with heaps of the precious lumps and scales from Feather River, left New York in a steamer for Chagres. As to what Chagres was really like, and as to the real nature of the journey across the Isthmus, Mr. Perley had no correct notion. He had thought of a town with comfortable accommodations, and when those around him talked of canoes and mules as the means of transportation to Panama, something elegant, like a Venetian gondola, or a richly caparisoned animal, was present to his imagination. A few mud huts, with their naked inhabitants, was all he found, upon being disgorged, with some two hundred others, in the rain, to join a congregation of nearly a hundred others, who had arrived on the day before, and who were awaiting the return of canoes from Cruces. Mr. Perley, like most men of his class, never gave as much attention to little things as prudence required. The man who couldn’t waste time and precious thought on so insignificant an article as a linchpin, was about as wise as Mr. Perley in many of the affairs of life. His friends had nearly all asked him in regard to his outfit. “Oh, that is all right!” or, “I’ve taken good care of that,” he would unhesitatingly answer. Yet, on reaching Chagres, he had neither tea, coffee, sugar, bread nor meat in his possession. He had money, and this he knew to be all powerful in procuring supplies of any kind; at least, such had been his experience in life. But he was about coming into some new experiences. Neither food nor lodgings were to be had from the natives at Chagres, for “love or money.” Such a sudden influx of Yankee gold diggers was a thing altogether unanticipated and unprovided for, and those who came had, therefore, to provide for themselves.