Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

THE ATLANTIC FLEET VISITS THE ISTHMUS

Mr. Tracy Robinson, a charming chronicler of the events of a lifetime on the Isthmus, says of this period: “From the time that operations were well under way until the end, the state of things was like the life at ‘Red Hoss Mountain’ described by Eugene Field:

‘When the money flowed like likker....
With the joints all throwed wide open, and no sheriff to demur.’

Vice flourished. Gambling of every kind and every other form of wickedness were common day and night. The blush of shame became practically unknown.”

The De Lesseps house stands at what has been the most picturesque point in the American town of Cristobal. Before it stands a really admirable work of art, Columbus in the attitude of a protector toward a half-nude Indian maiden who kneels at his side. After the fashion of a world largely indifferent to art the name of the sculptor has been lost, but the statue was cast in Turin, for Empress Eugénie, who gave it to the Republic of Colombia when the French took up the Canal work. Buffeted from site to site, standing for awhile betwixt the tracks in a railroad freight yard, the spot on which it stood when viewed by the writer is sentimentally ideal, for it overlooks the entrance to the Canal and under the eyes of the Great Navigator, done in bronze, the ships of all the world will pass and repass as they enter or leave the artificial strait which gives substance to the Spaniard’s dream.

ROOSEVELT AVENUE, CRISTOBAL, ABOUT TO LOSE ITS BEAUTY

At one time the quarters of the Canal employees—the gold employees as those above the grade of day laborers are called—were in one of the most beautiful streets imaginable. In a long sweeping curve from the border line between the two towns, they extended in an unbroken row facing the restless blue waters of the Caribbean. A broad white drive and a row of swaying cocoanut trees separated the houses from the water. The sea here is always restless, surging in long billows and breaking in white foam upon the shore, unlike the Pacific which is usually calm. Unlike the Pacific, too, the tide is inconsiderable. At Panama it rises and falls from seventeen to twenty feet, and, retiring, leaves long expanses of unsightly mud flats, but the Caribbean always plays its part in the landscape well. Unhappily this picturesque street—called Roosevelt Avenue—is about to lose its beauty, for its water front is to be taken for the great new docks, and already at some points one sees the yellow stacks of ocean liners mingling with the fronded tops of the palms.

Cristobal is at the present time the site of the great cold storage plant of the Canal Zone, the shops of the Panama Railroad and the storage warehouses in which are kept the supplies for the commissary stores at the different villages along the line of the Canal. It possesses a fine fire fighting force, a Y. M. C. A. club, a commissary hotel, and along the water front of Colon proper are the hospital buildings erected by the French but still maintained. Many of the edifices extend out over the water and the constant breeze ever blowing through their wide netted balconies would seem to be the most efficient of allies in the fight against disease. One finds less distinct separation between the native and the American towns at this end of the railroad than at Panama-Ancon. This is largely due to the fact that a great part of the site of Colon is owned by the Panama Railroad, which in turn is owned by the United States, so that the activities of our government extend into the native town more than at Panama. In the latter city the hotel, the hospital and the commissary are all on American or Canal Zone soil—at Colon they are within the sovereignty of the Republic of Panama.