Mark Twain’s journey through Puerto La Virgen, Rivas, Nicaragua in 1867. History of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua, https://youtu.be/Go-KHbfxgZc. At the end of 1866, Mark Twain traveled to Nicaragua and the San Juan River. A traveler for nearly a decade of his adult life, Twain needed to go from San Francisco to New York City. Instead of crossing the United States by land, he chose to make his way to New York City via Nicaragua and the San Juan River.
In a series of letters to the Alta California newspaper, Twain describes his travels through Nicaragua and down the San Juan River. Not published in book form until 1940 as Travels with Mr. Brown, Mark Twain’s commentary on Central America has remained relatively unknown to a good many historians and even readers of Twain. The trip took eleven days to arrive at San Juan del Sur, three days to cross the isthmus, and eleven more days to sail from Greytown to New York City.
José Higinio Vega-Noguera was born in Puerto La Virgen, Rivas, Nicaragua (located at km 120 of the highway Panamericana Sur in the department of Rivas) in 1835 and he was married to María Cristina Noguera, she was born in 1838, and her parents were Higinio Noguera and Francisca Gómez. Their ten children were born in Costa Rica and in Nicaragua. Juana Vega, Francisco Vega, José Angel Vega, Rafael Angel Vega, Jacova de Jesús Vega, Trinidad Sebastiana Vega, Juan Vega, María Antonia Vega, Jesús Trinidad Vega, (Jesús T. Vega's son's daughter's son is Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega) and Adelo Celestino Vega. José Higinio Vega and Felipa Villafuerte had Hermenegilda Vega. Higinio Noguera's great great great grandson is Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega.
Vanderbilt opened the Nicaraguan route for wide commercial use in 1851, and it was done to ferry people to California to “pick nuggets.” After gold was discovered at Sutter’s mine in California, and after President James Polk’s curt but consequential comment before the United States Congress (“Recent discoveries render it possible that these mines are more extensive and valuable than was anticipated”), nothing could stop the stampede to California. Vanderbilt had already made a fortune building and operating steamships, and he took note of the mad rush to California. He had conceived the idea of creating a passage to California via Nicaragua to compete with the Panama route, and the California gold rush made his plans to traverse the isthmus all the more economically enticing.
Twain’s journey through Nicaragua and down the San Juan River was not without incident. He and his fellow passengers faced an outbreak of cholera, which killed a good many of his fellow shipmates. Cholera on steamships was common and traveling on a Vanderbilt steamship was not easy. When his ship arrived in San Juan del Sur on the Pacific coast, an epidemic of cholera, as Twain says, was “raging among a battalion of troops just arrived from New York”. Although no infection occurred in Nicaragua, cholera did break out on the New York leg of the trip, and his steamer San Francisco became, as Twain himself describes it, “a floating hospital” and “not a single hour passes but brings its new sensation—its melancholy tidings”. Passengers were “sheeted and thrown overboard,” and Twain remained sober about the whole affair, noting the responses of his fellow passengers and his own to the epidemic and its toll on human life.
By the time Mark Twain took the route in 1867, some sixteen years after its inauguration, it had not changed much. The route had endured, during the intervening sixteen years, the changing of hands, William Walker’s meddling, the United States Navy's shelling and burning of Greytown, and the territorial disputes between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. But the route that Vanderbilt had marked out in 1851 was still essentially the same in 1867: A steamship to San Juan del Sur, mule or wagons to the Lake of Nicaragua, Puerto La Virgen, Rivas, another steamer to cross the Lake of Nicaragua, and then a riverboat steamer down the San Juan River to Greytown on the Atlantic coast.
Here is the original English text of "Travels with Mr. Brown", https://www.kerwa.ucr.ac.cr/handle/10669/14293.
San Jose Costa Rica, December 21, 2022, Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega, alberto.doer@gmail.com.
In a series of letters to the Alta California newspaper, Twain describes his travels through Nicaragua and down the San Juan River. Not published in book form until 1940 as Travels with Mr. Brown, Mark Twain’s commentary on Central America has remained relatively unknown to a good many historians and even readers of Twain. The trip took eleven days to arrive at San Juan del Sur, three days to cross the isthmus, and eleven more days to sail from Greytown to New York City.
José Higinio Vega-Noguera was born in Puerto La Virgen, Rivas, Nicaragua (located at km 120 of the highway Panamericana Sur in the department of Rivas) in 1835 and he was married to María Cristina Noguera, she was born in 1838, and her parents were Higinio Noguera and Francisca Gómez. Their ten children were born in Costa Rica and in Nicaragua. Juana Vega, Francisco Vega, José Angel Vega, Rafael Angel Vega, Jacova de Jesús Vega, Trinidad Sebastiana Vega, Juan Vega, María Antonia Vega, Jesús Trinidad Vega, (Jesús T. Vega's son's daughter's son is Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega) and Adelo Celestino Vega. José Higinio Vega and Felipa Villafuerte had Hermenegilda Vega. Higinio Noguera's great great great grandson is Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega.
Vanderbilt opened the Nicaraguan route for wide commercial use in 1851, and it was done to ferry people to California to “pick nuggets.” After gold was discovered at Sutter’s mine in California, and after President James Polk’s curt but consequential comment before the United States Congress (“Recent discoveries render it possible that these mines are more extensive and valuable than was anticipated”), nothing could stop the stampede to California. Vanderbilt had already made a fortune building and operating steamships, and he took note of the mad rush to California. He had conceived the idea of creating a passage to California via Nicaragua to compete with the Panama route, and the California gold rush made his plans to traverse the isthmus all the more economically enticing.
Twain’s journey through Nicaragua and down the San Juan River was not without incident. He and his fellow passengers faced an outbreak of cholera, which killed a good many of his fellow shipmates. Cholera on steamships was common and traveling on a Vanderbilt steamship was not easy. When his ship arrived in San Juan del Sur on the Pacific coast, an epidemic of cholera, as Twain says, was “raging among a battalion of troops just arrived from New York”. Although no infection occurred in Nicaragua, cholera did break out on the New York leg of the trip, and his steamer San Francisco became, as Twain himself describes it, “a floating hospital” and “not a single hour passes but brings its new sensation—its melancholy tidings”. Passengers were “sheeted and thrown overboard,” and Twain remained sober about the whole affair, noting the responses of his fellow passengers and his own to the epidemic and its toll on human life.
By the time Mark Twain took the route in 1867, some sixteen years after its inauguration, it had not changed much. The route had endured, during the intervening sixteen years, the changing of hands, William Walker’s meddling, the United States Navy's shelling and burning of Greytown, and the territorial disputes between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. But the route that Vanderbilt had marked out in 1851 was still essentially the same in 1867: A steamship to San Juan del Sur, mule or wagons to the Lake of Nicaragua, Puerto La Virgen, Rivas, another steamer to cross the Lake of Nicaragua, and then a riverboat steamer down the San Juan River to Greytown on the Atlantic coast.
Here is the original English text of "Travels with Mr. Brown", https://www.kerwa.ucr.ac.cr/handle/10669/14293.
San Jose Costa Rica, December 21, 2022, Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega, alberto.doer@gmail.com.
Related episode, "A new ebook, The
Lineage of the Portuguese Conquerors of the 16th century" by Rafael
Alberto Vilagut. December 10, 2022, blog Happy and Healthy (Feliz y
Saludable), http://felizysaludable.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-new-ebook-lineage-of-portuguese.html.
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