Meanwhile the prospects and progress of the company had been seriously hampered by several exceptional sources of trouble. Political strife on the isthmus disturbed the progress of the works, and led to a large migration of the workmen employed. An act of incendiarism at Colon destroyed a number of the principal buildings erected for the purposes of the canal, and led immediately to the transfer of the headquarters of the company from Colon to a new town created by them, and called by the name of Christopher Columbus. At Culebra, again, where the great work of cleaving a mountain was being proceeded with, there were several unfortunate incidents which caused the employés to desert the place almost in a body. These events were the origin of some sinister rumours most unfavourable to the company. It was stated in the United States that the political troubles had been expressly “got up” by the personnel on the canal, with a view to giving France a pretext for seizing the Isthmus of Panama. In Europe, on the other hand, it was reported, and largely believed, that the United States proposed to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the disturbance at Colon to seize the State of Colombia, through which the canal is carried. It is no doubt true that the United States at that time intervened, with a view to the re-establishment of order on the isthmus, but in despatching Admiral Jouett with an expedition for that purpose, they distinctly declared that their only object was to protect the lives and property of American citizens, and that they would religiously fulfil their engagements to maintain the neutrality and freedom of transit between Colon and Panama.
Another difficulty with which M. de Lesseps and his colleagues have had to contend from the beginning has been the unhealthy character of the climate. In this respect Panama has always had a most unenviable notoriety. The danger was therefore not unknown. Dampier, nearly 200 years ago, spoke of the “malignity of the waters draining off the land, through thick woods, and savannas of low grass and swampy grounds;” and Wafer reported about the same time that “the country all about here is woody, low, and very unhealthy, the rivers being so oozy that the stinking mud infects the air.” Walton, again, expressly declared that the unhealthiness of the isthmus was one of the greatest obstacles to the opening of a canal between the two oceans. “Disease,” he said, “is a barrier against settling on the isthmus to improve it,” and he found that “persons who have withstood every other climate there became languid.” Humboldt appears to have made the climate of Panama a special subject of inquiry, and reports that “for fifty years back the vomito (black vomit of the yellow fever) has never appeared on any point of the coast of the South Sea, with the exception of the town of Panama.” This is explained by the fact that “the tide, when it falls, leaves exposed for a great way into the bay a large extent of ground covered with Fucus ulvæ and Medusæ, the air is infected by the decomposition of so many organic substances, and miasmata, of very little influence on the organs of the natives, have a powerful effect on Europeans.”
Accounts of the extraordinary mortality at the works of the canal have from time to time been circulated in Europe, which read like the description of a pestilence, or of a devastating war. To Europeans especially the climate has been highly fatal. M. de Lesseps and his friends have tried, not unnaturally, to reassure the public, both European and American, on this score. Even he, however, has been compelled to admit a serious mortality. In his report on the progress of the works in 1885, he stated that during the previous twelve months more than 1100 deaths had occurred, of which some 320 were Europeans.[184] In some of the rainy months the mortality was frightful. In October and November it rose to nearly fifty per week. The Canal Executive declared that this large number was swollen considerably by the mortality of sailors arriving at Panama, but, however this may be, the climate is without doubt one of the most malarious and deadly to European constitutions that exists in the world.
These things being so, two results not unnaturally follow—the first, that it was difficult to get the highest class of labour to undertake the work; and the second, that the rate of wages paid, and the cost of the work generally, were exceptionally high. During the years 1884-85-86, the personnel on the canal ranged between 12,000 and 25,000; and although M. de Lesseps announced in 1885 that the Company had undertaken to provide barrack accommodation for 30,000, it is doubtful whether that number was ever employed on the works at any one time. We have already seen that the first contracts made with a number of different contractors provided for the cost of excavation being brought under 3s. per cubic metre. Señor Armero, however, in a report made on the progress of the work in the latter part of 1887, stated that every cubic foot had cost at least 2 dollars, or 8s. 4d. for excavation, being nearly three times the amount at which M. de Lesseps stated the first contracts to have been placed, for something like one-half of the entire work.
With calculations so entirely falsified by results, the Panama Canal Company found it necessary in 1887 to procure fresh capital. They thereupon offered half a million shares, of the nominal value of 500 million francs at 440 francs on 1000 francs, and succeeded in raising a further sum of about 114 million francs, making the total amount of cash received to that date rather over 1001 million francs, or, in other words, within 200 millions of the total amount for which the canal was to have been completed. How far the canal still was from completion at this time we may learn from the report made to the Colombian Government in November 1887 by Señor Armero, who says that the total amount excavated up to August of that year was about 34 millions of cubic metres, out of a total of 161 millions; that the upper and easier part of the work had been accomplished, and that greater difficulties would be encountered in working as the tide-level was approached; that the cost of controlling the water of the Chagres alone would amount to 471 million francs, or, roughly, one-third of the whole estimated cost of the enterprise; that the sum still required to complete the canal would be 3012½ millions of francs, or 120 millions sterling, being nearly three times as much as the whole original estimated cost; and that the amount to be paid on capital loaned during the next six or seven years would add perhaps 40 millions sterling to this amount.
This unfavourable report had naturally a depressing effect upon the scheme when it was made public. And yet the reporter was not entirely unfavourable to the enterprise. On the contrary, he prefaced his report by the following remarks:—
“As up to date the sum expended is 818,023,900 francs, it is evident that the cost per metre of work has been exorbitant. Were we to base our calculations on these figures, the total cost of the canal would become fabulous, and it would probably never be finished. But this is not the way to calculate. We have to look at the costly preliminary works, the purchase of the railroad, the immense amounts of materials which had to be collected, and the purchase and erection of buildings, all of which were expenses which had to be met in order that a work should progress which is perhaps the most important and colossal of modern or any times. Thus the expense of work per metre has diminished as the work has progressed, and only when it shall have been completed shall we be able to determine the cost of all the excavations.”
About the close of 1887, the canal was in extremis. The funds in hand had sunk to a low point, and there appeared to be but little prospect of raising more. M. de Lesseps, however, again proved himself equal to the occasion. Instead of abandoning himself to despair, as the vast difficulties, past, present, and to come, would have warranted, he announced to his fellow-countrymen in a letter to the Premier that he would proceed with the work piecemeal, providing in the meantime a sufficient passage through the canal for the 7½ million tons of annual traffic then anticipated,[185] and looking forward to the completion of the canal, as originally designed, by means of small levies on the annual profits, as in the case of the Suez Canal. The Consultative Commission had, he added, declared the practicability both of constructing on the central mass an upper cutting which would allow of the continuance of the level works by dredging, and of opening the maritime transport between the two oceans as soon as these plans were completed. M. de Lesseps went on to say:—
“This approval leaves for extraction only 40,000,000 cubic metres, 10,000,000 being hard soil, and 30,000,000 dredgable soil. The carrying out of these reduced extractions being materially ensured, we entrusted the task of submitting to us a contract for the execution of the works to M. Eiffel, whose reputation has been established by engineering skill equally exact and bold, and by his great metallurgic works; imposing on him the obligation of applying exclusively to French industry for the supply of materials, and for all other co-operation.
“This morning (November 15) M. Eiffel has engaged to execute these works at his own risk within the period and on the conditions desired by the company. It now rests with the Government of the Republic, inasmuch as French law obliges me to apply to it, to insure definitively the execution of our programme, by authorising the Universal Inter-oceanic Company to issue lottery obligations.”