Prowling about Panama

by George A. Miller

It is easy to find numerous compilations of figures which astonish and perplex us, even though they do help us to understand the magnitude of the work. And nothing is more disappointing than to try to understand the Canal by looking at it from any point along the bank. You can't see the Canal for the water! It is no different from a great Western irrigating ditch and looks like any quiet river. There are no marks of effort or strain anywhere, and when one looks about on the verdant and peaceful landscape he half believes that the tales of the stirring times back in construction days must have been dreams.

CONSTRUCTION DAYS IN CULEBRA-GAILARD CUT

Culebra Cut looks like the Hudson palisades, and Gatun Lake is like any other beautiful inland sea in a rolling country. The famous Gatun Dam is merely a dyke at the end of the lake and the marvelous spillway is only a picturesque waterfall in the middle of a dam. As for the locks, they are big concrete chambers looking very much like a paved street on top and revealing nothing of the complicated mechanism below; and the germ-proof towns are like any other spotlessly clean villages with screened houses, and show nothing to cause us astonishment.

Any superficial view of the Canal is disappointing. It is like trying to understand a deep mine by looking at the mouth of the shaft. The channel is full of water, the machinery is out of sight, the great achievements of sanitation have been largely removals of materials, microbes, and conditions that have left no trace behind to tell their tale. In one way it is a negative result.

The idea of the Canal across the Isthmus is nearly as old as the discovery of the Isthmus by white men, but it remained for the intrepid builder of the Suez Canal to really undertake in earnest the project of a waterway between the two oceans. DeLesseps was both engineer and promoter and never really understood the size of his project. He had succeeded at Suez, but that was a farmer's ditch beside the Culebra Cut and the Gatun Dam, and the famous engineer was a very old man when he began on the Panama project. The high prestige of his name brought him money on a stock investment basis, and when unprincipled schemers got control of the company the crash and scandal were immense. DeLesseps himself became insane as the result of the worry and disgrace and died in a hospital.

The French attempt began on January 1, 1880, with a great deal of oratory and champagne, also the official blessing of the Bishop of Panama, which seems to have been something of a Jonah on the enterprise.

In striking contrast was the beginning of the American work when a few men climbed out of a boat into water waist-deep and began cutting down jungle brush.

The actual construction and excavation work begun on the Isthmus by the French was of a very high order, and much of it was used by the Americans. The two causes which defeated the French were reckless financing at home and tropical diseases on the Isthmus. So bad did the disease conditions become that in the fall months of 1884 fifty-five thousand people died, and in the single month of September, 1885, the total rate reached the high-water mark of one hundred and seventy-seven per thousand of population. The total of lives lost on the enterprise will never be known, but is far greater than that of many wars which have received a conspicuous notice on the historical page. The collapse of the DeLesseps undertaking was followed by the organization of the New Canal Company, upon which followed a chapter of bargainings and treaties and negotiations and bickerings with the object of selling out the rights and holdings of the company to the highest bidder. In all of these the Panama Railroad figured very largely, and the Republic of Colombia kept a watchful eye on the main chance for herself.