The Panama Canal: A history and description of the enterprise

by J. Saxon Mills

CANAL PROJECTS.

It appears that the honour of first conceiving and proposing the project of an artificial waterway through the isthmus belongs to Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón, a cousin of Cortéz, who had been with Balboa at Panama. Cerón had been for twelve years engaged in the search for the strait, and had finally begun to doubt its existence. His thoughts turned to the isthmus at Panama, where the narrowness and low elevation of the land seemed to offer the likeliest chance of an artificial canal. We learn from the old historian Galvano that Cerón prepared plans for the construction of a waterway there—almost precisely along the route chosen for the American canal nearly four hundred years later. Cerón's death, however, put an end to this early project.

It is interesting to find the Portuguese historian Galvano, who flourished in the middle of the sixteenth century, mentioning four possible routes for the canal—namely, Darien, Panama, Nicaragua, and Tehuantepec. The choice, however, quickly confined itself to the Panama and Nicaraguan lines. The reader may feel some surprise that at such an early date as this an engineering project should be seriously considered which was only accomplished in the end by the wealth and mechanical resources of one of the greatest of modern Powers. The explanation is that the tiny vessels of the early sixteenth century could have taken advantage of the natural rivers and lakes in the isthmus, especially those on the Nicaraguan route, and that far less artificial construction would have been necessary than in these days of the mammoth liner and warship.

Charles V., King of Spain, seems to have been quite alive to the importance of these canal projects. In 1534 he directed the Governor of Costa Firme, the old name for the Panama district, to survey the valley of the Chagres, the river which supplies the water for the upper reaches of the American canal. This gentleman, however, seems scarcely to have shared the royal enthusiasm. He may be supposed to have known the isthmus at these points very well, and his scepticism about the prospect of canal construction there in those days was not wholly groundless. The Spanish historian Gomara, who wrote a history of the Indies in 1551 and dedicated it to Charles V., declared a canal to be quite feasible along any of the four routes mentioned by Galvano. It is true he recognized obstacles. "There are mountains," he wrote, "but there are also hands. If determination is not lacking, means will not fail; the Indies, to which the way is to be made, will furnish them. To a king of Spain, seeking the wealth of Indian commerce, that which is possible is also easy."

But Charles V. died without making any practical advance in this enterprise, and a rather remarkable reaction took place under his successor, Philip II. It should be noted that by this time a permanent roadway had been established across the isthmus from Panama to Porto Bello, along which the Spanish treasure-convoys passed from sea to sea without much interruption. The rapidly growing power of the English at sea made Philip fear that, if a canal were built, he would be unable to control it, and would probably lose his existing monopoly of isthmian transit. So he issued a veto against all projects of canal construction. He even persuaded himself that it would be contrary to the Divine purpose to link together two great oceans which God had set asunder, and that any such attempt would be visited by a terrible nemesis.[2] So his Majesty not only forbade all such schemes but declared the penalty of death against any one who should attempt to make a better route across Central America than the land-route between Panama and Porto Bello.

In course of time the king's beard was so horribly singed by English navigators and adventurers in the Caribbean Sea that the Atlantic end of the overland trail became almost useless, and the Spanish argosies were compelled to sail homewards round the far Magellan Straits. But in 1579, as we have seen, Sir Francis Drake ("El Draque" as he was called by the terrified Spaniards) had suddenly attacked, captured, and scattered the Spanish ships off the Pacific coast of South America. So the isthmian land-route was once more resumed, and it took the Spaniard all his time to hold that open.

For many years no progress was made with the idea of an isthmian canal. War between England and Spain was the natural order of things in these Central American regions. In 1655 the English seized Jamaica, and soon afterwards established themselves on the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. The old city of Panama, of which only a picturesque church-tower remains to-day, had been founded by a Spanish governor named Pedrarias in 1519. In 1671 the city was destroyed by that wicked Welsh buccaneer, Sir Henry Morgan. The town was rebuilt two years later by Alonzo Mercado de Villacorta, five miles west of the old site.

The project of a canal across the isthmus was never allowed entirely to disappear. In 1694 a very determined attempt was made to plant a British colony on the isthmus at Darien, a little east of the Panama route. The pioneer was William Paterson, a Scotsman, who founded "the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies." Sir Walter Scott, in his "Tales of a Grandfather," thus describes the project:—

The produce of China, Japan, the Spice Islands, and Eastern India, brought to the Bay of Panama, were to be transferred across the isthmus to the new settlement, and exchanged for the commodities of Europe. In Paterson's enthusiastic words, "This door of the seas and key of the universe will enable its possessors to become the legislators of both worlds and the arbitrators of commerce. The settlers at Darien will acquire a nobler empire than Alexander or Cæsar, without fatigue, expense, or danger, as well as without incurring the guilt and bloodshed of conquerors."

So 1,200 settlers set sail from Leith in July 1698, no doubt with a high hope and courage. In November the expedition arrived and established itself at a point of the coast still called Puerto Escoces, or Scotch Port, in Caledonian Bay, also named from the same event. "New Edinburgh" and "New St. Andrews" were founded, but the settlers soon got into difficulties. The climate was intolerable, and the project was opposed from the outset by the English and Dutch East India Companies, who were alarmed on the score of their own exclusive rights, while Spaniards and Indians were a perpetual menace. Broken down by these adversities the original settlers left the place, but were succeeded at once by another company which, after some successful fighting with the Spaniards, were compelled by the superior forces of the enemy to evacuate the settlements in the year 1700. It is possible that if this attempt at colonization had been made after and not before the Union of Scotland and Ireland it would have met with much less opposition in England, perhaps would have received government sympathy and support. In that case the isthmus would have been added to the British dominions, and a waterway might have been constructed under the British flag. It should be added that Paterson, who had personally surveyed the isthmus, positively declared that the construction of a canal was a feasible undertaking.