Although information about when the Chinese first arrived in Nicaragua is scarce, Fernando Centeno Chiong, a Nicaraguan historian, journalist and university professor of Chinese descent, published an article in La Prensa about the presence of the Chinese. Chiong wrote that there are some references that exist stating that the Chinese first arrived in Nicaragua in the mid-19th century, most notably during the California Gold Rush, in which people from all over the world traveled to California to mine for gold, tens of thousands of whom travelled by steamboats operated by the Accessory Transit Company, whose director was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. The steamboats' course went up the San Juan River, a site that had been proposed for the Nicaragua Canal, Chiong wrote: