Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

“PALMS WHICH BLEND WITH THE SEA”

We reach Colon where lie the docks of the Royal Mail in the early morning. To the right as we steam into Limon Bay is the long breakwater of Toro Point extending three miles into the Caribbean, the very first Atlantic outpost of the canal. For it was necessary to create here a largely artificial harbor, as Limon Bay affords no safe anchorage when the fierce northers sweep down along the coast. In the early days of Colon, when it was the starting point of the gold seekers’ trail to Panama, ships in its harbor were compelled to cut and run for the safer, though now abandoned, harbor of Porto Bello some twenty miles down the coast. That condition the great breakwater corrects. From the ship one sees a line of low hills forming the horizon with no break or indentation to suggest that here man is cutting the narrow gate between the oceans for the commerce of the nations to pass. The town at a distance is not unprepossessing. White houses with red roofs cluster together on a flat island scarcely above the water, and along the sea front lines of cocoanut palms bend before the breeze. No other tree seems so fitly to blend with a white beach and blue sea as this palm. Its natural curves are graceful and characteristic and in a stiff breeze it bows and sways and rustles with a grace and a music all its own.

But the picturesqueness of Colon does not long survive a closer approach. The white houses are seen to be mere frame buildings of the lightest construction which along the seafront stand out over the water on stilts. No building of any distinction meets the eye, unless it be the new Washington Hotel, a good bit of Moorish architecture, owned and conducted by the Panama Railroad which in turn is owned by the United States. The activities of Uncle Sam as a hotel keeper on the Isthmus will be worth further attention.

COLON IN 1884
The author counted twelve ocean liners one day at the docks now standing at this spot

As we warp into the dock we observe that Colon is a seaport of some importance already. The day I reached there last I counted six British, two German, one French and three American steamships. The preponderance of British flags was the first thing to catch the eye; and somehow the feeling that, except for the Royal Mail ship, all the vessels over which they were waving were owned by American capital was not a little humiliating. It is quite probable that in the course of the year every foreign flag appears at Cristobal-Colon, for the ocean tramp ships are ever coming and going. In time, too, the docks, which are now rather rickety, will be worthy of the port, for the government is building modern and massive docks on the Cristobal side of the line.

At present however one lands at Colon, which has the disadvantage of depositing you in a foreign country with all the annoyances of a custom house examination to endure. Though your destination is the Canal Zone, only a stone’s throw away, every piece of baggage must be opened and inspected. The search is not very thorough, and I fancy the Panama tariff is not very comprehensive, but the formality is an irritating one. Protective tariffs will never be wholly popular with travelers.

The town which greets the voyager emerging from the cool recesses of the steamship freight house looks something like the landward side of Atlantic City’s famous board walk with the upper stories of the hotels sliced off. The buildings are almost without exception wood, two stories high, and with wooden galleries reaching to the curb and there supported by slender posts. It does not look foreign—merely cheap and tawdry. Block after block the lines of business follow each other in almost unvarying sequence. A saloon, a Chinese shop selling dry goods and curios, a kodak shop with curios, a saloon, a lottery agency, another saloon, a money-changer’s booth, another saloon and so on for what seems about the hottest and smelliest half mile one ever walked. There is no “other side” to the street, for there run the tracks of the Panama railroad, beyond them the bay, and further along lies the American town of Cristobal where there are no stores, but only the residences and work shops of Canal workers. Between Cristobal and tinder box Colon is a wide space kept clear of houses as a fire guard.

Colon’s population is as mixed as the complexions of its people. It must be admitted with regret that pure American names are most in evidence on the signboards of its saloons, and well-equipped students of the social life of the town remark that the American vernacular is the one usually proceeding from the lips of the professional gamblers. Merchandising is in the main in the hands of the Chinese, who compel one’s admiration in the tropics by the intelligent way in which they have taken advantage of the laziness of the natives to capture for themselves the best places in the business community.