January 1 Tuesday – From Sam’s notebook:
“Slept on the Cora on floor & hammocks at woodyard first night out from Castillo. Started at 2AM & got to Greytown at daylight” [MTNJ 1: 267].
From Sam’s Mar. 15 Alta letter:
GREYTOWN, January 1 st .—While we lay all night at San Juan, the baggage was sent ashore in lighters, and next morning we departed ourselves. We found San Juan to consist of a few tumble-down frame shanties—they call them hotels—nestling among green verdure and overshadowed by picturesque little hills. The spot where we landed was crowded with horses, mules, ambulances and half-clad yellow natives, with bowie-knives two feet long, and as broad as your hand, strapped to their waists. I thought these barefooted scoundrels were soldiers, but no, they were merely citizens in civil life. Here and there on the beach moved a soiled and ragged white woman, to whom the sight of our ship must have been as a vision of Paradise; for here a vast ship-load of passengers had been kept in exile for fifteen days through the wretched incompetency of one man—the Company’s agent on the Isthmus. He had sent a steamer empty to San Francisco, when he knew well that this multitude of people were due at Greytown. They will finish their journey, now, in our ship [Schmidt].

Sam noted the choir sang “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” –one of the “wretchedest old songs in the world,” not understanding why it was sang in such breathtaking surroundings [Gribben 588].
Sam arrived at San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua on the Caribbean. There, the steamer San Francisco waited for them bound for New York. It sailed at noon [Sanborn 313; MTNJ 1: 297].