CHAPTER III
THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA
Canal Entrance—Colon in Architectural Transformation—Unchanging Climate—Historic Waterway Routes—Columbus and the Early Explorers—Darien and San Blas—East and West Directions—Life along the Railway—Chagres River and Culebra Cut—Three Panamas—Pacific Mouth of the Canal—Functions of the Republic—Natural Resources—Agriculture and Timber—Road-building—United States Authority on the Zone—Labor and Laborers—Misleading Comparisons with Cuba—The First Year’s Experience.
WHEN the Caribbean is restive, restless is the voyager. After tossing in misery one April night I peered through the port-hole of the steamer’s cabin at what seemed a cluster of swinging lanterns dipping into the sea. They were the lights of Colon. The vessel was riding at anchor to await the morning hour when the approach to the quays could be made.
Daybreak unfolded through the mist, disclosing green foliage ridges and broken forest-clad hills sloping to a shallow bowl. This circular basin is the island of Manzanillo. The town lies as in the bottom of a saucer. Colon is not a harbor in the usual sense, for the curving Bay of Limon which it fringes is an open roadstead. The improvements by the United States will make it a commercial haven.
For all the years to come the blue horizon will be swept by the eager eye of the traveller for the Canal entrance. Seen from the ship’s deck, it is like the smooth surface of a sluggish river, broad and open. The artistic instinct of the French engineers found expression even in the prosaic work of earth excavation. They planted a village in the midst of cocoanut groves, and the palm-thatched cottages charm the eye. The bronze group of Columbus and the Indian, Empress Eugenie’s gift, allegorical of the enlightenment of the New World, may be seen through glasses, while the showy residence built for De Lesseps is discerned.
The De Lesseps House, Colon
Little is noted of the town till the wharves are approached. There is a group of warehouses, a glimpse of railroad yards, a conglomeration of frame houses with peaked roofs and outside balconies and stairways, and then swamps, marshes, and hills beyond. The great transatlantic liners stretched along the docks are far more imposing than the port town itself.
Ashore, the frame structures give an impression of all that is temporary and unsubstantial. Some have been streaked with deep indigo blue, but the sun and the salt air have worn the pigment to a faded azure. Colon has little that is typically and traditionally Spanish, because when the insurgents burned it in 1885 they left only a few brick and mortar buildings. The town which then sprang up was built with economy in view, though pine lumber was not very cheap. The newer city which gradually will replace the aggregation of shanties will be more substantial and more like a permanent seaport. The Gothic brownstone church in which the Jamaica negroes and the whites who profess the Anglican form of faith worship, is the one edifice in Colon that in the transformation should be allowed to remain.