Leaving the Gatun locks and going toward the Pacific the ship enters Gatun Lake, a great artificial body of water 85 feet above tide water. This is the ultimate height to which the vessel must climb, and it has reached it in the three steps of the Gatun locks. To descend from Gatun Lake to the Pacific level she drops down one lock at Pedro Miguel, 301⁄3 feet; and two locks at Miraflores with a total descent of 542⁄3 feet. Returning from the Pacific to the Atlantic the locks of course are taken in reverse order, the ascent beginning at Miraflores and the complete descent being made at Gatun. Gatun Lake constitutes really the major part of the canal, and the channel through it extends in a somewhat tortuous course for about twenty-four miles. So broad is the channel dredged—ranging from 500 to 1000 feet in width and 45 to 85 in depth—that vessels will proceed at full speed, a very material advantage, as in ordinary canals half speed or even less is prescribed in order to avoid the erosion of the banks.
The lake which the voyager by Panama will traverse will in time become a scenic feature of the trip that cannot fail to delight those who gaze upon it. But for some years to come it will be ghastly, a living realization of some of the pictures emanating from the abnormal brain of Gustave Doré. On either side of the ship gaunt gray trunks of dead trees rise from the placid water, draped in some instances with the Spanish moss familiar to residents of our southern states, though not abundant on the Isthmus. More of the trees are hung with the trailing ropes of vines once bright with green foliage and brilliant flowers, now gray and dead like the parent trunk. Only the orchids and the air plants will continue to give some slight hint of life to the dull gray monotony of death. For a time, too, it must be expected that the atmosphere will be as offensive as the scene is depressing, for it has been found that the tropical foliage in rotting gives out a most penetrating and disagreeable odor. The scientists have determined to their own satisfaction that it is not prejudicial to health, but the men who have been working in the camps near the shores of the rising lake declare it emphatically destructive of comfort.
The unfortunate trees are drowned. Plunging their roots beneath the waters causes their death as infallibly, but not so quickly, as to fill a man’s lungs with the same fluid brings on his end. The Canal Commission has not been oblivious to the disadvantages, both aesthetic and practical, of this great body of dead timber standing in the lake, but it has found the cost of removing it prohibitive. Careful estimates fix the total expense for doing quickly what nature will do gratis in time at $2,000,000. The many small inlets and backwaters of the lake moreover will afford breeding places for the mosquitos and other pestilent insects which the larvacide man with his can and pump can never reach, and no earthly ingenuity can wholly purify.
BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF PEDRO MIGUEL LOCKS
One vegetable phenomenon of the lake, now exceedingly common, will persist for some time after the ocean-going steamers begin to ply those waters, namely the floating islands. These range from a few feet to several acres in extent, and are formed by portions of the spongy bed of the lake being broken away by the action of the water, and carried off by the current, or the winds acting upon the aquatic plants on the surface. They gradually assume a size and consistency that will make them, if not combated, a serious menace to navigation. At present the sole method of dealing with them is to tow them down to the dam and send them over the spillway, but some more speedy and efficacious method is yet to be devised. However as the trees now standing fall and disintegrate, and the actual shores of the lake recede further from the canal the islands will become fewer, and the space in which they can gather without impediment to navigation greater. Another menace to a clear channel which has put in an appearance is the water hyacinth which has practically destroyed the navigability of streams in Florida and Louisiana. Conditions in Gatun Lake are ideal for it and the officials are studying methods of checking its spread from the very beginning.
Photo by Critchlow
THE VEGETABLE MARTYRS
The trees in the district flooded by Gatun Lake are being slowly drowned and will finally disappear
The waters of the lake cover 164 square miles and are at points eighty-five feet deep. In the main this vast expanse of water, one of the largest of artificial reservoirs, containing about 183 billion cubic feet of water, is supplied by the Chagres River, though several smaller streams add to its volume. Before the dam was built two or three score yards measured the Chagres at its widest point. Now the waters are backed up into the interior far beyond the borders of the Canal Zone, along the course of every little waterway that flowed into the Chagres, and busy launches may ply above the sites of buried Indian towns. The towns themselves will not be submerged, for the cane and palm-thatched huts will float away on the rising tide. Indeed from the ships little sign of native life will appear, unless it be Indians in cayucas making their way to market. For the announced policy of the government is to depopulate the Zone. All the Indian rights to the soil have been purchased and the inhabitants remorselessly ordered to move out beyond the five-mile strip on either side of the canal. This is unfortunate as it will rob the trip of what might have been a scenic feature, for the Indians love to build their villages near the water, which is in fact their principal highway, and but for this prohibition would probably rebuild as near the sites of their obliterated towns as the waters would permit.