Reporter Bayard Taylor didn’t care much about finding gold, but he did want to taste the adventure of going to California to see the gold fields for himself. So he was thrilled when his editor gave him tickets for passage on steamships to get there, assigning him to write about all he saw for the newspaper. Bayard traveled by ship down to Panama, where he was to cross the isthmus and catch another ship north to California. But his journey across Panama was not quite the adventure he expected.