As soon as we had got pratique, we started in our launch for the shore, to learn our fate. From the Port of Balboa on the Pacific, to the Port of Colon on the Atlantic, is 44 miles by canal: by sea the distance is 10,500. If the Powers that Were would not let us through, we must practically again circumnavigate the whole continent of South America. We had already done it once to a very large extent: Pernambuco to Valparaiso. Was it to be our fate to do it a second time?
Though Mana was anchored close to the entrance of the fairway, yet she was hull-down on our looking back when we were abreast of the Balboa frontage, so great is the length of the dredged channel through the smooth shoal water of the Bay, before the Canal begins to have visible land on either side of it.
Messrs. Balfour, Guthrie & Co., of San Francisco, had most kindly advised their agents of our being en route, and consequently, when we landed at Balboa, there was a motor-car in waiting. We whisked off, got fresh meat and vegetables for the ship, put it aboard the launch, and despatched her with orders to return to take us off an hour before dark. Then we drove straight to the City of Panama to call on the British Minister, Sir Claud Mallet. He was most kind. He sent us under convoy of the Consul to see Colonel Harding, the acting chief of the Canal in the absence of Colonel Goethals. Colonel Harding was pleased to grant Mana the exceptional privilege of at once passing through the Canal, on the ground that she was a scientific research ship,—a favour for which we owe much gratitude both to him and to the Government which he represented. We have sometimes however regretted this stroke of luck, as, had we been compelled to take the s’utherly route, we should have been at Punta Arenas just at the time Sir Ernest Shackleton was there seeking a vessel to rescue his men from Elephant Island, a job for which Mana was eminently fitted.
In accordance with arrangements made, next morning a pilot came off and took us, under our own power, from the outer anchorage, up the dredged channel, to the mooring dolphins opposite Balboa, a distance of about 5 miles. Balboa is the name of a new town built by the Americans on the Eastern bank of the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal. The ground on which it is situated is not flat, also there are a couple of isolated volcanic cones, that rise to a height of 363 feet and 650 feet respectively, in its midst. A fine sanitary city has been designed, and largely brought into being, and as the work of construction of the Canal proceeds towards completion, for there is still much work to be done, so everything connected with the Canal will be concentrated there. To this new town of Balboa adjoins the old city of Panama, the capital of the Republic of Panama, but now isolated from the rest of the republic, being entirely surrounded by U.S.A. territory.
Before we go through the Canal, it will be well to have a general idea of its character. Let us first consider that of the Suez. The Isthmus of Suez is a level neck of sand, only slightly raised above sea level. Across it a gutter has been dug: the Mediterranean Sea, unobstructed, flows along that gutter, until it blends its waters with those of the Red Sea.
The Panama is an entirely different proposition. The Isthmus of Panama is a neck of land formed of volcanic debris and rock. It is only partially level; it is humped in the middle, but that hump is hollowed like a saucer. So we have this sequence:—A level. A hump. A level.
The Canal therefore is made in this way. Firstly the middle, or humped part, is changed, by means of embankments, from a semi-dry saucer into a deep high-level pond, i.e. into a pond whose surface is 85 feet above the level of the sea. That pond is filled, and kept filled, with sweet water by the rainfall on high country around it—the inner slope of the edge of the saucer. As we are only concerned with two embankments which go to form the pond, we will refer to one as the Eastern and to the other as the Western.
Next, the Pacific Ocean is brought up a distance of about 4 miles, to the foot of the Western Embankment, by digging a simple gutter through level country, just as has been done in the case of Suez: similarly the Atlantic is brought a distance of about 5 miles to the foot of the Eastern Embankment.
Finally, each embankment is equipped with a series of water steps, or locks, whereby a vessel is lifted up from the ditch into the pond, or lowered from the pond into the ditch. Water of the pond, in measured doses of a lockful at a time, and on which dose float one or more ships, is first shut off from the pond, and is then permitted gently to escape into the Pacific Ocean ditch, or into the Atlantic Ocean ditch, as the case may be.
No drop of Atlantic sea water ever mingles with the sweet water of the Central Pond. No drop of Pacific sea water ever mingles with the sweet water of the Central Pond. The Atlantic with the Pacific do not commingle directly or indirectly.