At the same time that yellow-fever work was commenced, an attack was also made upon malaria. Mr. Joseph L. Le Prince, who was in charge of similar work in Havana, was placed in charge of this work.
The anti-malarial work in the towns of Colon and Panama was exactly similar to that in the city of Havana. But the country along the line of the Canal between the two termini, Colon and Panama, was entirely different, and the problem was much more extensive than it had been in Havana.
The anopheles, the malarial mosquito, is peculiarly a country mosquito. In general, he likes clear, fresh water in which grass and algæ are plentiful, such as is found along the banks of the small mountain streams of Panama, or the fresh water ponds and pools. The grass and algæ give protection to the larvæ from the fish. Wherever the small fish can easily gain access, there mosquitoes cannot breed.
For the purpose of looking after malaria along this fifty miles of country district, the region was divided into twenty-four sanitary districts, known as Panama, La Boca, Ancon, Corozal, Miraflores, Pedro Miguel, Paraiso, Culebra, Empire, Las Cascadas, Bohio, Matachin, Gorgona, Juan Grande, San Pablo, Tabernilla, Frijoles, Largarto, Lion Hill, Gatun, Mount Hope, Colon, Nombre de Dios and Toro Point. Some years after, when the railroad was being relocated, we had an additional sanitary district, embracing the town of Lirio and a working force in that neighborhood for several miles up and down the road. Later, a quarry was established at the old city of Porto Bello, for the purpose of getting stone for the Gatun locks, and here we had another sanitary district.
Porto Bello is about twenty miles north of Colon, on the Caribbean Sea, and in our time was accessible to Canal employees only by water. It was the northern terminus of the old royal highway, built by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and a good road at that time. This road had become entirely overgrown and was impassable even to a man on foot. It was originally well paved and well graded. I spent a great deal of time in trying to cross the Isthmus on this road, and succeeded in getting as far north from Panama as San Juan, a town of about one thousand inhabitants, on the Pequini River, and on the royal road about half-way across the Isthmus. There had been some travel between this town and Panama which had kept the royal highway sufficiently open to be traversed by pack animals. The Alcalde, a man of about seventy years of age, told me that no one in his memory had crossed on the road from San Juan to Porto Bello.
Porto Bello has a beautiful landlocked harbor, decidedly the best for hundreds of miles up and down the Caribbean coast. This coast is not subject to hurricanes and severe storms of that kind, but during the winter months the north wind, locally known as a “norther,” blows sharply for several days at a time, and makes it very uncomfortable for vessels lying in the open roadsteads which characterize all the other harbors. Two or three times every winter all the vessels lying at the docks in the harbor of Colon have to get up steam and go to sea on account of the severity of these northers. The harbor of Porto Bello is entirely protected from these northers by a mountain which runs out into the sea. Behind this mountain is a spacious and deep harbor.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century Porto Bello enjoyed one of the largest export trades in the then commercial world, though it was never a very populous town in its halcyon days, probably not having more than fourteen or fifteen thousand inhabitants, and this only during the period when the great fair was going on. As soon as the fair was over, the population dropped to a couple of thousands.
Professor William R. Shepherd, of Columbia University, estimates that the bullion shipped from Porto Bello amounted to about forty-two million dollars ($42,000,000) per year. If we take into account the value of gold then as compared with the present time, we can see that the export commerce of Porto Bello during the sixteenth century and early seventeenth was very little under two hundred million dollars ($200,000,000) per year.
Porto Bello had such a reputation for bad health that merchants, shipmasters, sailors and everybody got away as soon as possible after the fair was over. Indeed, I have seen it stated that it was the health conditions that limited the length of the fair; that the shipmasters would stay as long as they had crew enough to work their ships. When sickness had reduced the crew to the minimum which was able to work the ship, the shipmaster sailed away and thus broke up the fair.
Porto Bello was established by royal decree when the Spaniards abandoned Nombre de Dios, a town on the Caribbean coast about twenty miles east of Porto Bello. Porto Bello was strongly fortified by the Spaniards. Four different large and extensive stone forts were erected at various points about the harbor. These masonry structures were considered very strong for their day, and were well armed and well manned. One of the largest was built well up the side of the mountain which formed the protection for the harbor on the north, and where we afterwards established our quarry, above referred to.