THE ROCK-BREAK THAT ADMITTED THE BAS OBISPO
So trudging through the Cut we pass under a slender foot bridge suspended across the Canal from towers of steel framework. The bridge was erected by the French and will have to come down when the procession of ships begins the passage of the Canal. Originally its towers were of wood, but a man idly ascending one thought it sounded hollow beneath his tread and, on examination, found the interior had been hollowed out by termite ants leaving a mere shell which might give way under any unaccustomed strain. This is a pleasant habit of these insects and sometimes produces rather ludicrous results when a heavy individual encounters a chair that has engaged their attention.
Photo by H. Pittier. Courtesy National Geographic Magazine
AN ANT’S NEST ON THE SAVANNA
The activity and industry of the ant are of course proverbial in every clime, but it seems to me that in the Isthmus particularly he appears to put the sluggard to shame. As you make your way through the jungle you will now and again come upon miniature roads, only about four inches wide it is true, but vastly smoother and better cleaned of vegetation than the paths which the Panamanians dignify with the name of roads. Along these highways trudges an endless army of ants, those going homeward bearing burdens of leaves which, when buried in their subterranean homes, produce fungi on which the insects live. Out on the savanna you will occasionally find a curious mound of hard dirt, sometimes standing taller than a man and rising abruptly from the plain. It is an ant’s nest built about a shrub or small tree, which usually dies off so that no branches protrude in any direction. A large one represents long years of the work of the tiny insects. Col. Goethals has made a great working machine of the Canal organization but he can teach the ants nothing so far as patient and continuous industry is concerned.
A TERMITE ANT’S NEST
The ants’ work kills the tree
We come in due time to the upper entrance of the Pedro Miguel lock. Here the precipitous sides of the Canal have vanished, and the walls of the lock have in fact to be built up above the adjacent land. This is the end of the Central Division—the end of the Culebra Cut. The 8.8 miles we have left behind us have been the scene, perhaps, of the most wonderful exercise of human ingenuity, skill and determination ever manifested in any equal space in the world—and I won’t even except Wall Street, where ingenuity and skill in cutting things down are matter of daily observation. But nowhere else has man locked with nature in so desperate a combat. More spectacular engineering is perhaps to be seen on some of the railroads through our own Sierras or on the trans-Andean lines. Such dams as the Roosevelt or the Shoshone of our irrigation service are more impressive than the squat, immovable ridge at Gatun. But the engineers who planned the campaign against the Cordilleras at Culebra had to meet and overcome more novel obstacles, had to wrestle with a problem more appalling in magnitude than any that ever confronted men of their profession in any other land or time.