THE BATTLE OF THE LEVELS.
By the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty the United States guaranteed and undertook to maintain the independence of the Republic of Panama. The new republic granted to the United States in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control of a strip ten miles wide and extending three nautical miles into the sea at either terminal, with all lands lying outside of the zone necessary for the construction of the canal, and with the islands in the Bay of Panama. The cities of Panama and Colon were not embraced in the canal zone, but the United States assumed their sanitation and, in case of need, the maintenance of order therein. All railway and canal property rights belonging to Panama and needed for the canal passed to the United States, including any property of the railway and canal companies in the cities of Panama and Colon. The works, property, and personnel of the canal and railways were exempted from taxation in the cities of Colon and Panama as well as in the actual canal zone. Free immigration of the workers and free importation of supplies for the construction and operation of the canal were granted. Provision was made for the use of military force and the building of fortifications by the United States for the protection of the transit. The United States were to pay $10,000,000 down on exchange of ratifications and an annuity of $250,000, beginning nine years from the same date. It will be noticed that the United States enjoyed in the canal zone all the rights, though not the name and title, of sovereignty.
The treaty was finally ratified on February 26, 1904, and four days later the first Isthmian Canal Commission, consisting of seven members, was appointed by President Roosevelt to arrange for the conduct of the great enterprise. Careful instructions were given to the commission. The Isthmian Canal Commission were authorized and directed:—
First.—To make all needful rules and regulations for the government of the zone, and for the correct administration of the military, civil, and judicial affairs of its possessions until the close of the fifty-eighth session of Congress. Second.—To establish a civil service for the government of the strip and construction of the canal, appointments to which shall be secured as nearly as practicable by merit system. Third.—To make, or cause to be made, all needful surveys, borings, designs, plans, and specifications of the engineering, hydraulic, and sanitary works required, and to supervise the execution of the same. Fourth.—To make, and cause to be executed after due advertisement, all necessary contracts for any and all kinds of engineering and construction works. Fifth.—To acquire by purchase or through proper and uniform expropriation proceedings, to be prescribed by the commission, any private lands or other real property whose ownership by the United States is essential to the excavation and completion of the canal. Sixth.—To make all needful rules and regulations respecting an economical and correct disbursement and an accounting for all funds that may be appropriated by Congress for the construction of the canal, its auxiliary works, and the government of the canal zone; and to establish a proper and comprehensive system of bookkeeping showing the state of the work, the expenditures by classes, and the amounts still available. Seventh.—To make requisition on the Secretary of War for funds needed from time to time in the proper prosecution of the work, and to designate the disbursing officers authorized to receipt for the same.
The work of this commission was not wholly satisfactory, and in April 1905 another was appointed, which was ordered to meet at Panama quarterly, the first commission having conducted its operations from Washington.
The first two and a half years of the American occupation were spent mainly in preparing for the great task. One very important question had now to be finally decided. The battle of the routes was over, and now began the battle of the levels. We have seen that the French began with the idea of a tide-level canal. The New Panama Canal Company had changed to the lock or high-level plan, but the French had not advanced in their work to the point when the one or the other scheme must be definitively adopted. The excavation they had carried out was all available for either type of canal. But the Americans had now to come to a decision.
A few more words about the main physical features of the isthmus are necessary for the reader to understand the nature of the problem. The two most important factors in the problem, as we have seen, are, firstly, the river Chagres with its tributaries, the Trinidad, Gatun, and twenty others; and, secondly, the range of low hills on the Pacific side through which any canal from Colon to Panama must pass. The river Chagres is a great mountain torrent which enters the Caribbean Sea a little west of Colon. The canal follows its course inland for about 26 miles, when the river valley turns sharply north-east and the canal continues straight on to the Pacific. The Chagres is not a river to be despised. The rainfall on the isthmus is very heavy, especially on the Atlantic side, where 140 inches per annum have been recorded. The isthmian rivers are all liable to quickly-swelling floods, the Chagres at Gamboa having been known to rise 35½ feet in twenty-four hours. The two different types of canal involve equally different methods of dealing with this formidable stream. It must either be harnessed to the work or firmly and finally shut off from any interference with the canal. De Lesseps, who had chosen the tide-level scheme, proposed to turn the Chagres and other rivers into diversion channels, so that they could get safely to the sea without crossing the line of the canal or having any connection with it. This would have involved a work of excavation and construction scarcely less gigantic than the building of the canal itself.
On the other plan, the Chagres and its tributaries would be made the feeders of the upper reaches of the canal. So far from being politely shown off the premises, the question rather was whether they would be able to supply sufficient water all the year round for the needs of the canal. Then this harnessing of the Chagres meant the taming of its waters in a huge artificial lake, in which the impetuous current would be quenched and through which the dredged channel of the waterway would run. The New Panama Company had recommended the construction of a huge dam for this purpose at Bohio towards the Atlantic end of the canal, and this plan had been adopted by the first American Isthmian Commission, which issued its report in 1901. I may add that the Spooner Act, which authorized the construction of a canal, also contemplated a lock or high-level waterway. As we shall see, Bohio was not in the end adopted as the site of the big dam, but Gatun, where it is now constructed, with its concrete spillway carrying away the overflow waters of the lake down the old Chagres channel to the near Atlantic. I need not say that these were two very different ways of "caring for" the Chagres and its affluents. The tide-level canal would also, of course, be supplied with sea-water, while the high-level will be a fresh-water canal. Colonel Goethals, the chief engineer of the canal, anticipates rather a curious result from this latter circumstance. He thinks the bed of the upper reaches of the canal will in course of time be quite paved with the barnacles washed by the fresh-water from the bottoms of the great ocean-going vessels passing through the canal.
The second physical feature is the hill country or the "Continental Divide" which the canal enters near the point where the Chagres River crosses its course. Here runs the famous Culebra Cut, the nine-mile-long artificial canyon, the biggest excavation in the world. Now the highest elevation of these hills along the centre line of the canal was 312 feet above sea-level. The bottom of the canal at the cutting is 40 feet, so that the vertical depth of the cut on the centre line is 272 feet. The engineers of the tide-level scheme would have had not only to excavate 85 feet deeper—that is, to 45 feet below sea-level—but to make the cutting immensely wider in order to avoid the danger of disastrous landslides. This would have meant an enormous amount of additional work, as well as expense. Nevertheless, the controversy between the two principles was very warmly and equally sustained. It may be mentioned that Mr. Bunau-Varilla was an especially ardent advocate of the tide-level scheme. In fact, he was not for calling the waterway a canal at all; he would have christened it "the Straits of Panama."
However, a decision was necessary, and in 1905 a board of consulting or advisory engineers was appointed, mainly to consider whether the canal should be constructed at high-level or sea-level. Five members were appointed by European governments, and the president was Major-General George W. Davis, formerly of the United States army. The instructions given to this board by President Roosevelt will afford a very clear idea of the problem it had to solve:—