Alighting at Culebra station on the Panama Railway, and proceeding to the western side of the cut, one obtains the most impressive view of the Canal works, and this is the spot usually visited by travellers and tourists. I first stood there in January, 1907, and returned in April, 1908. The impressions obtained were very different on these two occasions. In January, 1907, after two and a half years of American occupation, what struck me most was the enormous mass of material which had been removed by the French companies, and the comparatively insignificant appearance of the American excavations, which could readily be distinguished from the older work, already coated with vegetation. It was then that I began to appreciate the heroic labours of the French engineers, whose achievements under circumstances of great difficulty are being daily more and more appreciated and praised by their successors. Turning to study the progress of work, I watched with delight the operations of the 100-ton steam shovels, which at a distance, when the human hands are not seen, appear endowed with volition, and remind the spectator of elephants at work. The cars were loaded with surprising celerity, and the dirt-train was hauled off to the distant dump by an old Belgian locomotive, part of the machinery taken over from the New Company. But then the hitch came—there were no cars to take the place of those already filled, and the steam shovel was idle. Looking round, I found that many other steam shovels and their crews were idle from the same cause, the machinery for transportation not having been provided in proper proportion to the machinery of excavation. That the time required for the completion of the rock-cut was limited by the possible rate of transportation of spoil, and not by that of excavation, had long been known, and the report of the Board of Consulting Engineers contains elaborate diagrams of space available for shovels and for tracks. It was apparent, therefore, that the organisation of the work was not yet perfected. In like manner, as far as I could judge during my first short visit, the West Indian labour was not yielding the best results, owing to white foremen and coloured labourers not being in perfect harmony.
THE CUT, LOOKING NORTH FROM CULEBRA.
THE CUT, LOOKING SOUTH FROM CULEBRA.
While, however, the fighting force, so to speak, of the Isthmian army was obviously imperfect in many respects, great results had evidently been achieved by the auxiliary services. The Department of Sanitation had already made the Isthmus healthier than most equatorial countries, food and quarters were excellent, law and order were well maintained.
On the first day of my second and prolonged visit, April, 1908, fifteen months later, I went at once to the same spot on the Culebra Cut opposite to Golden Hill and again surveyed the scene of operations. The change was enormous. The gorge below me was greatly enlarged, the shape of the hills altered, the face of the landscape changed. As I gazed into the deep trench below, the thought flashed across my mind, "If my life be spared a few years longer, I will sail through this on a ship."
The reason of the great change was readily apparent: organisation had now been perfected. In the first place, the whole width of the cut was laid down in railway tracks, tier above tier at the different levels, so that the view was like the approach to the metropolitan terminus of one of the world's great railways. Up and down these tracks there came and went without ceasing the spoil-trains, now composed of larger trucks than formerly, with new and ingenious devices for rapid unloading. The number of steam shovels visible was much larger than in 1906, yet they were kept constantly busy, and all the time the drilling machines were at work boring holes for charges of dynamite, and gangs of men were completing the preparations for explosions in other holes already made.[18] Yet if the eyes were raised for a moment from the busy scene below, they rested on a silent wilderness of tropical forest, stretching unbroken to the horizon. I stayed until, at the approach of sunset, the work of the shovels ceased, and hundreds of men swarmed out of the Cut, and sought their quarters and the evening meal. But all was not over for the day, for now, when the Cut was cleared, the shot-firing began. At intervals there occurred a deafening explosion, the earth trembled as in a considerable, but preternaturally short, earthquake, and masses of rock rolled down the slopes, disintegrated and ready for the shovel-man when he should arrive next morning. I paid many visits to the Cut, between Empire and Pedro Miguel, but oftenest at Culebra itself. The sight never palls, and is one of the wonders of the world. The Pyramids are another wonder of the world which in common with many thousands in all ages I have thought it worth going to see—but to go to Culebra is as if one were privileged to watch the building of the Pyramids. Yet how few go to the Isthmus on purpose to see these things, and, mirabile dictu, how few Americans! How is it that this people, so enthusiastic in all that relates to national achievement and addicted to foreign travel, does not include the Isthmus among its many recognised places of pilgrimage? Of the Americans whom I met on the Zone there was scarcely one who had come voluntarily for pleasure. The hotel accommodation, it is true, is limited, but it is more than sufficient for present needs, and is good, as hotels in the tropics are reckoned. Moreover, Panama is now one of the healthiest places in the Equatorial Zone. English tourists going out to the West Indies by the Royal Mail are generally able to cross the Isthmus and see something of the work while their ship is unloading at Colon; but I would venture to suggest, to such of these as care to follow the world's progress, that they should make arrangements beforehand to step off at Colon, cross to Panama, put up there, visit thence the Canal works at various points, and proceed by their next ship. The West Indian tourist season coincides with the dry season on the Isthmus. At Panama the mosquito is almost an extinct animal, and though the heat there is sometimes trying, a run up to Culebra brings one to a dry and bracing atmosphere where a fresh breeze is almost always blowing.
[18] During 1908 no less than one million dynamite charges were exploded.