The Pacific Division, including the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks, and the canal from the foot of the latter to deep water in the Pacific.
Under this classification will be described the construction work on the canal, work which at the time of the author’s visit was clear to view, impressive in its magnitude, appalling in the multiplicity of its details, and picturesque in method and accomplishment. With the turning of the water into the channel all this will be hidden as the works of a watch disappear when the case is snapped shut. The canal, they say, and rightly, will be Goethals’ monument—though there are those who think it a monument to Col. Gorgas, while quite a few hold that the fame of Theodore Roosevelt might be further exalted by this work. But whomsoever it may commemorate as a monument it was even more impressive in the building than in the completed form.
Photo by S. H. Elliott
BAS OBISPO END OF CULEBRA CUT
One Sunday late in my stay on the Isthmus I was going over the line from Ancon to Culebra. As we approached the little tunnel near Miraflores I noticed an unusual stir for the day, for on the Canal Zone the day of rest is almost religiously observed. Men were swarming along the line, moving tracks, driving spikes, ramming ballast. I asked one in authority what it all meant. “Oh”, said he, “we’re going to begin running dirt trains through the tunnel, and that necessitates double tracking some of the line. The Colonel said it must be done by tomorrow and we’ve got more than 1000 men on the job this quiet Sunday. The Colonel’s orders you know”.
Yes, I knew, and everybody on the Canal Zone knows.
CHAPTER X
GATUN DAM AND LOCKS
