While taking passage across Panama, Nahl sketched the people and places he encountered.
Later, Nahl turned some of his sketches into oil painting, as in this Incident on the Chagres River (1850)
Working in Sacramento and San Francisco, Nahl also turned the tales of overland travelers into canvases depicting the hardships of the passage. Here, a family to the gold fields has just lost the team that was to carry them across "The Great American Desert."
