The worst year had been 1852, the year of Stephens’ death, when cholera swept across the Isthmus, starting at Colón with the arrival of a steamer from New Orleans. Of the American technicians then employed—some fifty engineers, surveyors, draftsmen—all but two died. When a large military detachment, several hundred men of the American Fourth Infantry and their dependents, made the crossing in July en route to garrison duty in California, the tragic consequence was 150 dead—men, women, and children. “The horrors of the road in the rainy season are beyond description,” wrote the young officer in
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