Huntington feeling the need of employment to while away the tedium of delay, and disinclined to dissipation, undertook the transport of baggage and cargo across the Isthmus. He began with one donkey, and was so successful that he was presently the owner of a train of animals, and while the less energetic gold-seekers were wasting their means and health, the long delay often or twelve weeks enabled him to earn a handsome sum of money, which gave him an important start on his arrival in San Francisco. It is a notable fact that while almost all the delayed passengers suffered from fevers, and many died, Huntington, who worked constantly, and marched on foot in the hot sun many times across the Isthmus, had not a day's illness.

He arrived in San Francisco in August, 1849, having been five months on the way. He saw at once that that city was not the place for him, and on the very morning of his arrival, after buying a breakfast of bread and cheese, hunted up a vessel going to Sacramento. He found a schooner, the master of which -- later the captain of one of the finest steamers on the Sacramento River -- oft'ered him a dollar an hour to help load her, and he earned his passagemoney in this way, and landed in Sacramento richer by some dollars than when he arrived in San Francisco.

His training and natural inborn capacity as a merchantand business man now came into play. Neither he nor his partner and dear friend of many years -- the late Mark Hopkins -- ever spent much time in actual gold-mining. Mr. Huntington, it is said, returned to Sacramento after four days at the nearest mining camp, convinced that gold-digging had too many risks beyond the control of the digger to be to his taste.