There was more trouble at Mexico City. A religious procession was passing along the plaza, and the Americans did not fall upon their knees. The crowd set upon them, and they had to form a square for their protection, and hold the mob at bay until Mexican officers came to their rescue. Only after fighting a path through other towns and a long march did they reach the seaport of San Blas. One hundred and twenty of them took ship from there to San Francisco. Thirty, however, had left the others at Mexico City, thinking they could reach the sea-coast more quickly by another route. The ship they caught could get no farther than San Diego. From there they had to march on foot across a blazing desert country. Their food gave out, and they lived on lizards, birds, rattlesnakes, and even buzzards, anything they could find. Worn and almost starving they reached San Francisco, ten months after they had left New York. Such adventures were common to the American Argonauts of 1849. Those gold-seekers who went by the Isthmus of Panama had to stop at the little settlement of Chagres, where one hundred huts of bamboo stood on the ruins of the old Spanish fort of San Lorenzo. The natives, lazy and half-clad, gazed in astonishment at the scores of men from the eastern United States, who suddenly began to hurry through their town. Here the gold-hunters bargained for river boats, which were usually rude dugouts, with roofs made of palmetto branches and leaves, and rowed by natives. It was impossible with such rowers to make much speed against the strong current of the Chagres River. Three days were required to make the journey to Gorgona, where the travelers usually landed. At this place they had to bargain afresh for pack-mules to carry them the twenty-four miles that lay between Gorgona and Panama. Many men, who could not find any mules left in the town, deserted their baggage and started for the Pacific coast on foot. The chances were that no ship would be waiting for them there, and they would have to warm their heels in idleness for days.