THE PANAMA CANAL.
By MANUEL EISSLER, M.E., of San Francisco, Cal.
I.
HISTORICAL NOTES.
When Cortez, in the year 1530, made the observation that the two great oceans could be seen from the peaks of mountains, he, in those remote days, preoccupied himself with the question to cut through the Cordilleras.
Therefore, the idea of an interoceanic canal is by no means a modern one, as travelers and navigators observed that there was a great depression among the hills of the Isthmus of Panama. As Professor T.E. Nurse, of the U.S.N., says in his memoirs:
"This problem of interoceanic communication has been justly said to possess not only practical value, but historical grandeur. It clearly links itself back to the era of the conquest of Cortez, three and a half centuries." [1] It is a problem which has been left for our modern era to solve, but nevertheless its history is thereby rendered still more interesting, having needed so many centuries to bring it to an issue.
[Footnote 1: From Prof. Nurse's historical essay. See Survey of Nicaragua Canal, by Com. Lull.]
Spain, which acquired through her Columbus a new empire, lying near, as it was supposed, to the riches of Asia, could not be indifferent, from the moment of her discoveries, to the means of crossing these lands to yet richer ones beyond.
India, from the days of Alexander and of the geographers, Mela, Strabo, and Ptolemy, was the land of promise, the home of the spices, the inexhaustible fountain of wealth. The old routes of commerce thither had been closed one by one to the Christians; the overland trade had fallen into the hands of the Arabs; and at the fall of Constantinople, 1453, the commerce of the Black Sea and of the Bosphorus, the last of the old routes to the East, finally failed the Christian world. Yet even beyond the fame of the East, which tradition had brought down from Greek and Roman, much more had the crusaders kindled for Asia (Cathay) and its riches an ardor not easily suppressed in men's minds.
The error of the Spanish Admiral in supposing that the eastern shores of Asia extended 240 degrees east of Spain, or to the meridian of the modern San Diego, in California--this error, insisted on in his dispatches and adopted and continued by his followers, still further animated the earlier Spanish sovereigns and the men whom they sent into the New World to reach Asia by a short and easy route.
Nobody in Europe dreamt that Columbus had discovered a new continent, and when Balbao, in 1513, discovered the South Sea, then it was known that Asia lay beyond, and navigators directed their course there. On his deathbed, in 1506, Columbus still held to his delusion that he had reached Zipanga, Japan. In 1501 he was exploring the coast of Veragua, in Central America, still looking for the Ganges, and announcing his being informed on this coast of a sea which would bear ships to the mouth of that river, while about the same time the Cabots, under Henry VII., were taking possession of Newfoundland, believing it to be part of the island coast of China.
Although these were grave blunders in geography and in navigation, the discoveries really made in the rich tropical zones, the acquirement of a new world, and the rich products continually reaching Europe from it, for a time aroused Spain from her lethargy. The world opened east and west. The new routes poured their spices, silks, and drugs through new channels into all the Teutonic countries. The strong purposes of having near access to the East were deepened and perpetuated doubly strong, by the certainties before men's eyes of what had been attained.
Balbao, in 1513, gained from a height on the Isthmus of Panama the first proof of its separation from Asia; and Magellan enters the South Sea at the southern extremity of the country, now first proven to be thus separate and a continent. Men in those days began to think that creation was doubled, and that such discovered lands must be separate from India, China, and Japan. And the very successes of the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama, bringing from their eastern course the expectancy of Asia's wealth, intensely excited the Spaniards to renew their western search.
The Portuguese, led around the Cape of Good Hope, had brought home vast treasures from the East, while the Spanish discoverers, as yet, had not reached the countries either of Montezuma or of the Inca. Their success "troubled the sleep of the Spaniards."
Everything, then, of personal ambition and national pride, the thirst for gold, the zeal of religious proselytism, and the cold calculations of state policy, now concurred in the disposition to sacrifice what Spain already had of most value on the American shores in order to seize upon a greater good, the Indies, still supposed to be near at hand. And since it was now certain that the new lands were not themselves Asia, the next aim was to find the secret of the narrow passage across them which must lead thither. The very configuration of the isthmus strengthened the belief in the existence of such a passage by the number of its openings, which seemed to invite entrance in the expectancy that some one of them must extend across the narrow breadth of land.
For this the Spanish government, in 1514, gave secret orders to D'Avilla, Governor of Castila del Oro, and to Juan de Solis, the navigator, to determine whether Castila del Oro were an island, and to send to Cuba a chart of the coast, if any strait were possible. For this, De Solis visited Nicaragua and Honduras; and later, led far to the south, perished in the La Plata. For this, Magellan entered the straits, which, strangely enough, he affirmed before setting out, that he "would enter," since he "had seen them marked out on the geographer Martin Behaim's globe." For this, Cortez sent out his expeditions on both coasts, exposing his own life and treasure, and sending home to the emperor, in his second relation, a map of the entire Gulf of Mexico (Dispatch from Cortez to Charles V., October 15, 1524). For this great purpose, and in full expectancy of success in it, the whole coast of the New World on each side, from Newfoundland on the northeast, curving westward on the south, around the whole sweep of the Gulf of Mexico, thence to Magellan's Straits, and thence through them up the Pacific to the Straits of Behring, was searched and researched with diligence. "Men could not get accustomed," says Humboldt, "to the idea that the continent extended uninterruptedly both so far north and south." Hence all these large, numerous, and persevering expeditions by the European powers.
Among them, by priority of right and by her energy, was Spain. The great emperor was urgent on the conqueror of Mexico, and on all in subordinate positions in New Spain, to solve the secret of the strait. All Spain was awakened to it. "How majestic and fair was she," says Chevalier, "in the sixteenth century; what daring, what heroism and perseverance! Never had the world seen such energy, activity, or good fortune. Hers was a will that regarded no obstacles. Neither rivers, deserts, nor mountains far higher than those in Europe, arrested her people. They built grand cities, they drew their fleets, as in a twinkling of the eye, from the very forests. A handful of men conquered empires. They seemed a race of giants or demi-gods. One would have supposed that all the work necessary to bind together climates and oceans would have been done at the word of the Spaniards as by enchantment, and since nature had not left a passage through the center of America, no matter, so much the better for the glory of the human race; they would make it up by artificial communication. What, indeed, was that for men like them? It were done at a word. Nothing else was left for them to conquer, and the world was becoming too small for them."
Certainly, had Spain remained what she then was, what had been in vain sought from nature would have been supplied by man. A canal or several canals would have been built to take the place of the long-desired strait. Her men of science urged it. In 1551, Gomara, the author of the "History of the Indies," proposed the union of the oceans by three of the very same lines toward which, to this hour, the eye turns with hope.
"It is true," said Gomara, "that mountains obstruct these passes, but if there are mountains there are also hands; let but the resolve be made, there will be no want of means; the Indies, to which the passage will be made, will supply them. To a king of Spain, with the wealth of the Indies at his command, when the object to be obtained is the spice trade, what is possible is easy.
But the sacred fire suddenly burned itself out in Spain. The peninsula had for its ruler a prince who sought his glory in smothering free thought among his own people, and in wasting his immense resources in vain efforts to repress it also outside of his own dominions through all Europe. From that hour, Spain became benumbed and estranged from all the advances of science and art, by means of which other nations, and especially England, developed their true greatness.
Even after France had shown, by her canal of the south, that boats could ascend and pass the mountain crests, it does not appear that the Spanish government seriously wished to avail itself of a like means of establishing any communication between her sea of the Antilles and the South Sea. The mystery enveloping the deliberations of the council of the Indies has not always remained so profound that we could not know what was going on in that body. The Spanish government afterward opened up to Humboldt free access to its archives, and in these he found several memoirs on the possibility of a union between the two oceans; but he says that in no one of them did he find the main point, the height of the elevations on the isthmus, sufficiently cleared up, and he could not fail to remark that the memoirs were exclusively French or English. Spain herself gave it no thought. Since the glorious age of Balbao among the people, indeed, the project of a canal was in every one's thoughts. In the very wayside talks, in the inns of Spain, when a traveler from the New World chanced to pass, after making him tell of the wonders of Lima and Mexico, of the death of the Inca, Atahualpa, and the bloody defeat of the Aztecs, and after asking his opinion of El Dorado, the question was always about the two oceans, and what great things would happen if they could succeed in joining them.
During the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spain had need of the best mode of conveyance for her treasures across the isthmus. Yet those from Peru came by the miserable route from Panama to the deadliest of climates. Porto Bello and her European wares for her colonies toiled up the Chagres river, while the roughest of communication farther north connected the Chimalapa and the Guasacoalcos in Mexico, and the trade there was limited sternly to but one port on each side. As late as Humboldt's visit, in 1802, when remarking upon the "unnatural modes of communication" by which, through painful delays, the immense treasures of the New World passed from Acapulco, Guayaquil, and Lima, to Spain, he says: "These will soon cease whenever an active government, willing to protect commerce, shall construct a good road from Panama to Porto Bello. The aristocratic nonchalance of Spain, and her fear to open to strangers the way to the countries explored for her own profit, only kept those countries closed." The court forbade, on pain of death, the use of plans at different times proposed. They wronged their own colonies by representing the coasts as dangerous and the rivers impassable. On the presentation of a memoir for improving the route through Tehuantepec, by citizens of Oaxaca, as late as 1775, an order was issued forbidding the subject to be mentioned. The memorialists were censured as intermeddlers, and the viceroy fell under the sovereign's displeasure for having seemed to favor the plans.
The great isthmus was, however, further explored by the Spanish government for its own purposes; the recesses were traversed, and the lines of communication which we know to-day were then noted.
In addition to the fact that comparatively little was explored north or south of that which early became the main highway, the Panama route, there is confirmation here of the truth that Spain concealed and even falsified much of her generally accurately made surveys. No stronger proof of this need be asked than that which Alcedo gives in connection with the proposal by Gogueneche, the Biscayan pilot, to open communication by the Atrato and the Napipi. "The Atrato," says the historian, "is navigable for many leagues, but the navigation of it is prohibited under pain of death, without the exception of any person whatever."
The Isthmus of Nicaragua has always invited serious consideration for a ship canal route by its very marked physical characteristics, among which is chiefly its great depression between two nearly parallel ranges of hills, which depression is the basin of its large lake, a natural and all-sufficient feeder for such a canal.
In 1524 a squadron of discovery sent out by Cortez on the coast of the South Sea, announced the existence of a fresh water sea at only three leagues from the coast; a sea which, they said, rose and fell alternately, communicating, it was believed, with the Sea of the North. Various reconnoissances were therefore made, under the idea that here the easy transit would be established between Spain and the spice lands beyond.
It was even laid down on some of the old maps, that this open communication by water existed from sea to sea; while later maps represented a river, under the name of Rio Partido, as giving one of its branches to the Pacific Ocean and the other to Lake Nicaragua. An exploration by the engineer, Bautista Antonelli, under the orders of Philip II., corrected the false idea of an open strait.
In the eighteenth century a new cause arose for jealousy of her neighbors and for keeping her northern part of the isthmus from their view. In the years 1779 and 1780 the serious purposes of the English government for the occupancy of Nicaragua, awakened the solicitudes of the Spanish government for this section. The English colonels, Hodgson and Lee, had secretly surveyed the lake and portions of the country, forwarding their plans to London, as the basis of an armed incursion, to renew such as had already been made by the superintendent of the Mosquito coast, forty years before, when, crossing the isthmus, he took possession of Realejo, on the Pacific, seeking to change its name to Port Edward. In 1780, Captain, afterward Lord Nelson, under orders from Admiral Sir Peter Parker, convoyed a force of two thousand men to San Juan de Nicaragua, for the conquest of the country.
In his dispatches, Nelson said: "In order to give facility to the great object of government, I intend to possess the lake of Nicaragua, which, for the present, may be looked upon as the inland Gibraltar of Spanish America. As it commands the only water pass between the oceans, its situation must ever render it a principal post to insure passage to the Southern Ocean, and by our possession of it Spanish America is severed into two."
The passage of San Juan was found to be exceedingly difficult; for the seamen, although assisted by the Indians from Bluetown, scarcely forced their boats up the shoals. Nelson bitterly regretted that the expedition had not arrived in January, in place of the close of the dry season. It was a disastrous failure, costing the English the lives of one thousand five hundred men, and nearly losing to them their Nelson.
At this period, Charles III., of Spain, sent a commission to explore the country. These commissioners reported unfavorably as regarded the route; but fearing further intrusion from England, forbade all access to the coast; even falsifying and suppressing its charts and permanently injuring the navigation of the San Juan and the Colorado by obstructions in their beds.
It is, however, a relief here to learn that when Humboldt visited the New World, he could say: "The time is passed when Spain, through a jealous policy, refused to other nations a thoroughfare across the possessions of which they kept the whole world so long in ignorance. Accurate maps of the coasts, and even minute plans of military positions, are published." It is also true that the Spanish Cortes, in 1814, decreed the opening of a canal, a decree deferred and never executed.
It was reserved for our century to see this great project carried into execution, and it is but just that as a chronicler of events I should connect with the Canal of Panama the name of a family who have done much to bring the scheme, so to say, into practical execution.
As early as the year 1836, Mr. Joly de Sabla turned his views toward the cutting of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. He resided at the time on the Island of Guadeloupe, one of the French West India Islands, where he possessed large estates. Of a high social position, the representative of one of France's ancient and noble families, with large means at his disposal and of an enterprising spirit much in advance of his time, he was well calculated to carry out such a grand scheme.
He soon set about procuring from the Government of New Granada (now Colombia) the necessary grants and concessions, but much time and many efforts were spent before these could be brought to a satisfactory condition, and it was not until the year 1841 that he could again visit the Isthmus, bringing with him this time, on a vessel chartered by him for the purpose, a corps of engineers and employes, medical staff, etc., etc. After two years spent in exploring and surveying a country at that time very imperfectly known, he returned to Guadeloupe to find his residence and most of his estates destroyed by the terrible earthquake that visited the island in February, 1843.
Undaunted by this unexpected and severe blow, Mr. De Sabla persisted in his efforts, and in the same year obtained from the French government the establishment of a Consulate at Panama to insure protection to the future canal company, and also the sending of two government engineers of high repute (Messrs. Garella and Courtines), to verify the surveys already made and complete them.
After receiving the respective reports of Garella and Courtines, Mr. De Sabla decided upon first constructing a railway across the Isthmus, postponing the cutting of the canal until this indispensable auxiliary should have rendered it practicable and profitable. He then presented the scheme in that shape to his friends in Paris and London, and formed a syndicate of thirteen members, among whom we may recall the names of the well known Bankers Caillard of Paris, and Baimbridge of London, of Sir John Campbell, then Vice President of the Oriental Steamship Company, of Viscount Chabrol de Chameane, and of Courtines, the exploring engineer.
A new contract was then entered upon with New Granada in June, 1847, and early in 1848, the Syndicate was about to forward to the Isthmus the expedition which was to execute the preliminary works, while the company was being finally organized in Paris, and its stock placed.
The success of the undertaking seemed to be assured beyond peradventure, when the unexpected breaking out of the French revolution in February, 1848, dashed all hopes to the ground. Several of the prominent financiers engaged in the affair, taken by surprise by the suddenness of the revolution, had to suspend their payments and of course to withdraw from the Panama Canal and railroad scheme. Others withdrew from contagious fear and timidity. Finally the term fixed for carrying out certain obligations of the contract expired without their fulfillment by the company, and the concession was forfeited. Another contract was almost immediately applied for and granted with unseemly haste by the President of New Granada to Messrs. Aspinwall, Stephens and Chauncey, which resulted in the construction of the actual Panama Railroad.
These gentlemen acted fairly in the matter, and in 1849, calling Mr. De Sabla to New York, offered him to join them in the new scheme. Unfortunately they had decided upon placing the Atlantic terminus of the railroad upon the low and swampy mud Island of Manzanillo, while Mr. De Sabla insisted on having it on the mainland on the dry and healthy northern shore of the Bay of Limon. They could not come to an understanding on this point, and Mr. De Sabla, whose experience and foresight taught him the dangers that would result to the shipping from the unprotected situation of the projected part (now Colon--Aspinwall), and who well knew the insalubrity of the malarial swamp constituting the Island of Manzanillo, withdrew forever from the undertaking, after having devoted to it without any benefit to himself, the best years of his life and a large portion of his private means.
One of his sons, Mr. Theodore J. de Sabla, after having actively co-operated with Lieutenant Commander Wyse, in the original scheme of the present canal company, is now one of Count de Lesseps's representatives in the City of New York, and a director of the Panama Railroad Company.