Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

PROPORTIONS OF SOME OF THE CANAL WORK

But enough of the merely big. Let us consider the spectacle which would confront that visitor whom, in an earlier chapter, we took from Colon to view Porto Bello and San Lorenzo. After finishing those historical pilgrimages if he desired to see the canal in its completed state—say after 1914—he would take a ship at the great concrete docks at Cristobal which will have supplanted as the resting places for the world’s shipping the earlier timber wharves at Colon. Steaming out into the magnificent Limon Bay, the vessel passes into the channel dredged out some three miles into the turbulent Caribbean, and protected from the harsh northers by the massive Toro Point breakwater. The vessel’s prow is turned toward the land, not westward as one would think of a ship bound from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but almost due south. The channel through which she steams is 500 feet wide at the bottom, and 41 feet deep at low tide. It extends seven miles to the first interruption at Gatun, a tide water stream all the way. The shores are low, covered with tropical foliage, and littered along the water line with the débris of recent construction work. After steaming about six miles someone familiar with the line will be able to point out over the port side of the ship the juncture of the old French canal with the completed one, and if the jungle has not grown up too thick the narrow channel of the former can be traced reaching back to Colon by the side of the Panama Railroad. This canal was used by the Americans throughout the construction work.

Courtesy Scientific American

THE “SPOIL” FROM CULEBRA CUT WOULD DO THIS

At this point the shores rise higher and one on the bridge, or at the bow, will be able to clearly discern far ahead a long hill sloping gently upward on each side of the canal, and cut at the center with great masses of white masonry, which as the ship comes nearer are seen to be gigantic locks, rising in pairs by three steps to a total height of 85 feet. For 1000 feet straight out into the center of the canal extends a massive concrete pier, the continuation of the center wall, or partition, between the pairs of locks, while to right and left side walls flare out, to the full width of the canal, like a gigantic U, or a funnel guiding the ships toward the straight pathway upward and onward. A graceful lighthouse guides the ships at night, while all along the central pier and guide wall electric lights in pairs give this outpost of civilization in the jungle something of the air at night of a brightly lighted boulevard.

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

IN A TYPICAL LOCK
The bridge across is temporary, for construction purposes only. Gates are still skeletonized awaiting the steel sheathing

Up to this time the ship had been proceeding under her own steam and at about full speed. Now slowing down she gradually comes to a full stop alongside the central guide wall. Here will be waiting four electric locomotives, two on the central, two on the side wall. Made fast, bow and stern, the satellites start off with the ship in tow. It will take an hour and a half to pass the three locks at Gatun and arrangements will probably be made for passengers to leave the ship and walk by its side if desired, as it climbs the three steps to the waters of Gatun Lake 85 feet above.